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

CSX BOSTON SUB, East Worcester Yard Report.

P-523 @ 18:17 1025 - 8 cars cabcar 1714.
B-722 @ 18:35 6246 # 1 west thru CP-45,# 2 east to North Grafton.
P-527 @ 19:07 1028 - 6 cars cabcar 1719.
Q-423 @ 19:30 652 - 5000(Divercity In Motion) 45 cars from Providence & Worcester R.R.LV @ 19:45 Thanks to for posting.
P-529 @ 19:32 1058 - 6 cars cabcar 1528.
P-536 @ 19:49 Cabcar 1528 - 6 cars 1058 pushing (Boston / South Station).
P-533 @ 20:45 1137(GP40MC) - 4 cars Cabcar 1704.
Q-115 @ 20:50 7379 - 7569.
Q-117 @ 21:05 5236 - 342.
Amtrak Trains #'s 448 & 449 "Lake Shore Limited"To /From Chicago / Albany have been annulled and replaced by chartered coaches.Due to trackwork on the CSX "Berkshire Sub"In the single track area's.
I have a report from fellow W.F.P.T. member Bobby McQueen from the cab of his Freightliner Century S.T. tractor the first Circus train(R.B.B&B) went thru Chattam,N.Y. at 10 am.The second circus train departed East Worcester yard on the Boston Sub at 6:15pm.
Live From Worcester,Mass Union Station. CP-45 CSX Boston Sub.
Billy Leazer W.F.P.T.


The Worcester Foreign Power Team. The Heart And Soul Of Railfanning.Hebron Any Power Team. The Guardians Of Danville Junction.

Brunswick Sidetrip

DT&I Fan and I headed down to Falmouth for our fix from Maine Modelworks. On the way we sighted DJ-1 sitting on the freight main at Walnut, CPF185. We figured we'd swing by the crossing near there and see what's up. The signals were all red and the switch lined for the main, but no movement. We could hear the units idling, but the train was around the curve and out of sight. After a bit of a wait and a harmless visit from Cumberland's finest, we eventually decided it was time to move on to the store because nothing was happening on the scanner either. Turns out there may have been a crew change in the works. A long wait.

A conversation with another customer at the store led us to believe the wait at CPF 185 had something to do with a local running up to Brunswick. Apparently we had just missed it before our stop there before. It sounded like a mission so we headed that way up Route 1 (bypassing Freeport on 295 of course). I've never seen GRS action in Brunswick and we had a chance here.

We drove down to the town end of the interchange to see what turned out to be our local readying to leave. We headed back down to the other end through the traffic and we camped out at the crossing. After plenty of sitting and rainfall it finally started to crank up and move.

Other than seeing some cement cars that don't normally make it over our way we did see one of the Maine Eastern passenger cars headed south. No word on why but it could be heading anywhere for some work or even a new owner. The Rockland passenger trains ought to be starting up fairly soon. It's not a caboose but close enough for me.

On the way home we visited "the junctions" and I just couldn't pass up another shot of an ex-Southern GP40X (now GP40-3 "master" unit) sitting at Lewiston Jct. Those flared radiators just look cool.

BC

"Baby Tunnel Motors"

The misnomer of "baby tunnel motor" has been applied to the GP-15 locomotive over the years. They were introduced in 1976 by General Motors/EMD to compete with the massive rebuild programs going on at that time to upgrade road switchers economically. They happen to have the same type of rear radiator section as the much larger "tunnel motors" - intakes down by the walkway rather than up by the roof as seen above where the two units are back to back - so they get mis-named this way. The larger ones were designed to stay cooler under a heavy load in tunnels - cool air is lower - so they were less likely to overheat and quit. A recent Trains article reinforced that point. These little guys probably avoid rugged mainline tunnels but they work hard on locals and switching.

The top photo is of a Missouri Pacific GP-15 leading a westbound local through Lindsborg, KS in 1982, about 5 years after delivery. It is crossing the UP's Salina to McPherson branch. The intersection was right on the campus of Bethany College that some of us attended. The unit in the photo is the second in a large order of 160 placed by MoPac who bought more than everyone else combined. It was common to see these on locals mixed with another geep, usually a GP-38. For some reason this particular unit is one that doesn't show a UP number. Maybe I jinxed it with my photo. This MoPac line had runthrough trains from the D&RGW out of Pueblo, CO so occasionally the real SD40t-2 tunnel motors came by as well.

This photo is of a UP GP-15 taken from the railfan park in Rochelle, IL June 2007. Believe it or not Skull just happened to call a few minutes before this shot - looking for Wheelman back in New England somewhere I guess. The old C&NW ordered 25 of these rigs so that may be the orgins of this one, though later MoPac units had the longer nose. The UP gobbled up MoPac and C&NW so they inherited what was left of 185 units. At this point I had heard that the UP was going to phase out the GP-15's so I grabbed all the shots I could. The UP across the prairies in recent years seemed to follow the same practices as the old MoPac and match these guys up with a GP-38 for locals.

Bringing us back to Maine, we find that the St. Lawrence and Atlantic has been leasing some GP-15's. These came from three that Safe Handling brought in to use on the the old Maine Coast RR when operations changed hands. This was a temporary arrangement while the line was upgraded for passenger service. The Maine Eastern RR, subsidiary of the Morristown and Erie RR, took over on a more permanent basis so the GP-15's migrated over to the nearby SLR. The left photo is from February 2007 at the Danville Jct. diamond for Pan Am. The photo on the right is from April 2008 at Lewiston Jct. Maybe the fact that Safe Handling is a large customer in Auburn has something to do with their arrival. They are still in Conrail blue. Conrail was one of the 4 customer for these units. They inherited a motley assortment of old units from the 6 bankrupt roads, so they were in need of modernization and ordered 100. All I need now is a sample of the 25 Frisco units and I'll have a complete set! Somewhere in the print and slide files I may just have one too.

BC