Bill's Excellent Adventures / Summit Day 2

My turn to write according to Billy;

We started off with a simple trip along the old Lewiston Lower branch to scout relics. Slowly but surely, things are disappearing on the old branch. The Crowley Jct. wye is almost impossible to find now. More bits of siding in Lewiston and Lisbon are gone.

We made a trip straight up Route 1 to Rockland to see the Maine Eastern. The morning run to Rockland was long gone and did beat us to the depot. By the time we got there the train had backed up to the runaround. We got to watch the FL9 uncouple and progress to the roundhouse around the train. The train wasn't leaving for a couple of hours so we decided to see what we could and head out. After lunch at Amato's we saw the now turned FL9 reconnect to the train and sit out the wait. We toured the Atlantic branch where Dragon Cement loads on to barges (not much to see from the road) and left town.

The next stop was Waterville after a whole lot of non-rail countryside. Once we reconnected with the Lower Road north of Augusta we assumed things would improve. However, without a scanner (doah!) we were out of luck. Absolutely nothing around other than a distant glimpse of an old faded unit near the shops. Lots of open track to see units - if they were there to be seen! Same thing was true with the main all the way to Leeds Jct. Nothing but empty tracks. Skunked!

Things got more exciting as we approached Leeds Jct. though. After detouring because of a traffic accident near our turn, we again got skunked at the junction - at first. Headed back to Lewiston we decided to go over to College Ave. and that's when we we caught our eastbound. It turned out to be a winner too. Two kinds of Pan Am on the point. 505 with the older blue and gray, plus the "rumored to be painted" 307 in the newer dark blue Pan Am paint trailing. It was deja vu all over again. Last night we caught nearly the same thing (511 & 506) westbound at Fairgrounds. The crews even had the front door open for us both times. Our current train turned out to be a Rumford job (coal cars) and stopped at the signals at Leeds Jct. We followed it and got some close up shots there. It was around 6:30 pm +/-. Billy was on the phone to the W.F.P.T. to get someone to post confirmation of the paint scheme on 307 (that might make this a "news exclusive" of sorts). A couple of other railfans were about at Leeds but Billy had the cell phone to leap ahead of the game!

Before we could leave we saw a westbound waiting for the Rumford job to clear. It turned out to be 373, 353 and 621, potentially NMED or WAED. Not bad. We got our meet at Leeds Jct. but it wasn't fancy like the folks from Pennsylvania tend to see. We later saw this guy go through Danville Jct. after meeting another eastbound at Rumford Jct. at about 8:50 pm. No stats on the eastbound since we were eating a fine dinner at the Fireside Inn's restaurant.

No details but the SLR's 517 (old 393) got their clearance to leave Lewiston Jct. at about 8:50pm. I later caught the end of it in Mechanic Falls as I was heading home at 9:10.

As Billy says: "Till next time railfans";

BC