Nearly Shooting Fish in a Barrel

Today - National Train Day - an excursion train ran from Rockland to Augusta and back. It turned out to be a 470 Club and MRG excursion from Rockland to Brunswick and then up the Lower Road to Augusta. Since this involved all of the right ingredients; Maine Eastern equipment; a built for New Haven FL9; passenger cars; decent sun; and most importantly to me; NEW TERRITORY, in our own back yard no less! The Augusta line, a.k.a. "Lower Road", hasn't seen regular trains in a lot of years so I've ignored it mainly. This would have been the day to use that prior reconnoitering, had we done it. For so called "locals" we were a bit out of our element.

We dropped by the "station" area in Brunswick. A few cars were starting to arrive along with a flagger of some sort. However that is a lousy place to photograph a train so we headed out toward Cooks Corner. Our first encounter with the special run was to be in the Shaws parking lot in Brunswick. DT&I Fan and I set up by the cut along the road. We got there a bit early not really sure of the schedule. The light was not ideal but some clouds diffused the light. Sure enough other fans showed up as train time approached. Each had more info we could use. One of them was bumped from the train when one of the cars did not return to the line in time. He was animated about the fact that it had been shipped out just last week! Gee, that sounded very familiar. See last Sunday's posting.

From Shaws we opted to head northward out of town, eventually finding rt. 24 which follows the unused Augusta line past Rock Jct. in Brunswick. Along the way we found the Bowdoinham boat landing which already had a gaggle of railfans, even some we recognized. Though we moved on down the line (we weren't that familiar with the railfan opportunities of the line so we were "on the fly" here) we started to head down the line again. As we saw nothing of use nearby, we returned to the boat launch as Paul Lodge pulled in with his assortment of video cameras to produce a Train Time episode. It seems he and Joey were the only ones working on this so I asked for a camera to take up the line. We had to move along quickly to stay ahead of the train so we left without much chance to talk but now we had a tripod and video camera.

Up the line in Richmond, we found the town area to be a bit crowded with buildings, poles, vehicles, trees and people to be very photogenic. However, on the north edge of town we found a nice curve with a crossing in the middle. As a bonus, it had an old signal facing us. As we set up the tripod, I noticed that the quick release clamp on the camera was missing and the tripod required one. A little "McGyvering" with electrical tape solved the issue ahead of the approaching train with time to spare. (We later found Paul again and changed tripods) Joey called from rt.24 just as the train was passing us so you may hear not only my shutter but the ring of a cell phone. We later waved a couple of times but never got a chance to stop and chat with him. He toughed out both legs of the excursion.

The next spot was "Riverside" village next to a church. Again their was a crossing and now we had a MERy. flagger to cover for the inactive flashing lights. We also noticed that the fans were getting much thicker too. Further down we got to Gardiner where a trail follows the tracks the rest of the way. Just before the trail is the depot - only a white spot of the roofline appears in my photo to the right. While a nice building, it is a bit closed in around there so we kept going a few yards farther to a store parking lot with more open access to the tracks. At least the lower level view was different. The steep and curvy Cabosseeconti Branch took off nearby - and by the way - its famous steep and curvy trestle lives on though hidden by trees.

Away from the crowds, which now included bikers and hikers using the trail, we found a really cool church along the tracks in Hallowell. The crossings in town were covered by many flaggers, probably volunteers. However this crossing had crossbucks, almost no traffic and only one fan, who joined us for a nice chat at the hill overlooking the close cropped crossing. It turned out to be a nice spot and our last encounter with the excursion. The train stopped in town and we kept going north. With the capital dome in sight, we slipped out of town on the side streets.

We made a loop up to Waterville yard to follow the freight main back to Lewiston. The recently painted Pan Am plows were easily seen from the street in Waterville. The scanner was pretty quiet however. After a spin down the backroads up to Fairfield, we turned around to head home with nothing of note to see anywhere. Talk about getting skunked. We heard detectors in Readfield and Lewiston, but saw NOTHING. That is much less than normal, but heck, I got my FL9 fix earlier, so no complaints.

A spin buy the junctions topped last week though - 2 GP40X's right behind a "slave". Again, I had to take a photo - because two are twice as cool as one! Love those flared radiators. Quite the contrast to the "slave" or "slug" with none. (no engine!)

Happy National Train Day!

BC