Ride The Rails With Benny Plant

On Saturday morning I was laying in bed and heard a train horn around 9:30 am. I was sure came from the Barrie Line. I was a bit confused at first because I know there is no weekend service as of now. I was thinking that perhaps one of the trains had some mechanical problems and therefore had to go down back to Toronto for repairs. Then about half and hour later I heard another train! Well now I was even more confused. After a while I figured they were doing crew training since CN crews are finished as of June 30.

Again on Sunday the same thing happened but there was more trains this time and all day. I think there were about 6 or 7. I happened to catch one going south while on a bike ride. That was pretty cool because I haven’t watched a southbound train before. Looked like there was only one guy in the cab though.

I really hope that the trains keep running on weekends until June so I can get some good videos since I haven’t filmed the Go train in a while.

Sorry for the lack of posts of late. I thought I would write about this event since there hasn’t been one for a while.

See ya

Pine Orchard was still a mudbowl this past weekend. My dad hasn’t even bothered to wash his prized Passat because he knows it’s just going to get all muddy again real soon. We need some warm dry weather to get rid of all that water. Pine Orchard is so easy to go to though. Never anyone there and lots of room to watch. We can see the signal(s) and the approach from either direction is great. What’s not to like? It’s also only about 15 minutes from our house and we don’t get shut out very often.

If you click on the picture here you will see 301 just coming up from the south across Vivian Side Road and if you look real close you can see three brand stinkin new locos (first was a SD70M-2,  second two were ES44DC’s) hauling 12,000 tons of freight. I know the weight because we heard the engineer talking with another train (450) as they met at Zepher. No wonder they needed three locos. It’s not every day you get to see three new locos on one train. It was quite a sight.

I just received my May edition of Trains Magazine and am looking forward to going through it. If my dad sees it I won’t get it for a while.

See ya!