Rough Day For Auburn Traffic

WAPO parked at Strawberry Ave., Lewiston.

We started off on the usual "patrol" of the area north (east) of Lewiston.  We immediately found WAPO parked at Strawberry Ave. with it's tail hanging well into the "singley" track down past the old Fairgrounds.  The light was good on the matching paint jobs so I got out for a photo.  We figured an eastbound might be near, but strangely, nothing was heard on the scanner.  So, we pushed on. 

Nothing else was moving as it turned out.  We thought we had RUPO nearby but that turned out to be way off base.  Meanwhile we noticed a lot of MOW activity.  The parking area at Leeds Jct. was full.  We eventually figured there must be some kind of maintenance block.  Sure enough, we saw one on the Androscoggin River bridge.  The sun was good here too.  So we pulled in to the Veterans Park for pictures.  The spring runoff pretty well filled all the outlets at the falls.  

Crew on the Androscoggin River bridge, L-A

 We headed off to do other things and kept the scanner on.  About 4pm we heard a crew tell District-1 that they were on board the 307 and they'd call back later for a Form D.  We heard the paperwork start when we headed over to Spring St. in Auburn for a spot we haven't used much, by Office Depot and Rite Aid.  We parked and went over to the crossing. 

WAPO crossing over Center St. Auburn.

 On the radio we had heard that the middle unit was shut down because it was low on water.  No big deal, they'd fill up at Danville Jct.  It wouldn't have been either except they lost another unit.  (I don't know which.)  Apparently it died shortly after it passed us.  The train sped up a bit as usual but then that sort of tapered off gradually.  I didn't catch how many cars the train had but it was pretty long, and slowing.  We walked back to the car and in the process noticed that the last car just cleared Hampshire St. but not by enough to shut down the crossing gates and lights.  This was about 4:30pm.  Apparently the head end was by Adams St (where Rt. 100 meets the rotary).  The brakes were applied based on the faint squeals we heard - to prevent rolling backward I presume. 

WAPO at Spring St. crossing in Auburn.

Not long afterwards we heard the crew talking to District-1.  Apparently the Auburn PD was already with the crew.  After a few minutes the old form D to MP164 was cancelled and a new form D was created for the train to sit still where it was.  Then a little while later DJ-1 was getting form D's to wander beyond "yard limits" and rescue the train.  It read something to the effect of "authority to run east on single track to end of stalled train" around MP161.  Further authority had to be granted to head west but we were headed to Hebron at that point and may have missed some of it.  We did recall that it was nearly 6pm before the last form D was issued.  I guess getting the computer to allow all those little things to happen is the sign of a creative dispatcher.  Key Auburn streets were blocked for about an hour and a half during a Friday rush hour.

I wouldn't want to have been near that situation.  As it turned out, we were lucky enough to escape before any real traffic snarls happened.  We were at the clear end of things anyway.  Hopefully it wasn't as rough as I imagined. 

BC

Traditional media's followup:  Lewiston Sun Journal article 4/20/13