12222 results for Americas,USA; refer to date index:

April 19th, 2003

On a quiet line in Vermont, there are only two regularly scheduled trains - an Amtrak in the morning and an Amtrak in the afternoon.

April 29th, 2003

My girlfriend took the train from Brattleboro to the Buffalo-Depew train station.

June 10th, 2004

Taking a few minutes out of a busy day, Laura and I took pictures of Amtrak's Vermonter heading through Brattleboro. The tracks through Brattleboro are on the New England Central (NECR) and operate at the same frequency as the CN Dundas sub. The detector in Brattleboro uses a distinctly synthesised voice and gives both axle and car count.

June 15th, 2004

I wanted to catch Amtrak open hoppers parked in Brattleboro that I'd seen on the 14th without a camera handy. They were already gone! I did find the detector on the NECR line through Brattleboro. It's the first crossing out of the city to the West about 3 miles from town, at mile 116.

June 16th, 2004

Finally, just before leaving Brattleboro, I heard an EOT on my scanner and got to the tracks just on time to catch a short local train heading North on the NECR tracks in town.

December 19th, 2004

Travelling from Ste-Agathe, QC (the site of the Ste-Agathe sub, abandonned in the late 1980s) where I grew up to the US, we stopped at Ste-Thérèse yard, near a recently abandonned and torn down GM car factory and the site of a CP-QGRY interchange, then on to Beaconsfield and across the border to the origin of Amtrak's Vermonter at St. Albans.

December 20th, 2004

We woke up at 6am in St. Albans hoping to catch the 6:35am Vermonter outbound. We missed it by a hair, and after learning from NECR's friendly AGM that there would be no more trains scheduled until about 13:00, we headed South to Burlington, eventually working our way down the VRS line to Rutland. We then headed to White River Junction to spend the night, finding NECR 324 switching in town shortly after we arrived. They continued switching until well after we went to sleep.

December 21st, 2004

We got up in White River Junction and headed for the tracks just in time to see the Southbound Vermonter. After that we toured the museum next to the station and proceeded along the tracks to Bellows Falls before concluding our travelling in Brattleboro.

December 22nd, 2004

We went looking at Deerfield yards, and while we did find them, I blew all my pictures of them. :( So it goes. In the afternoon I found a Guilford train heading to the NECR from the yard in Deerfield and chased it at its whopping 5 miles an hour from Bernardston to Northfield before running out of light.

December 24th, 2004

Having a few minutes to get away a couple of points during the day, I checked the Brattleboro yard, finding it again having shifted its cars around. Brattleboro seems to host a lot of what appear to be coal cars, though I can't figure their purpose there. The yard seems to be switched only at night, which makes finding trains there tough. I also tried to get better shots of the Deerfield Guilford yard. While my shots were better, I really should try again another day (not this trip, unfortunately) to see if I can do it right.

September 7th, 2005

We headed from my parents' place in Quebec to Laura's parents' place in Brattleboro, Vermont via the scenic route. While Laura had a meeting in Montreal, I spent an hour on the pedestrian bridge in Beaconsfield where I caught 6 trains from 4 companies (CP, CN, AMT, Via), with one foreign unit for good measure. We went to eat on the border between the burroughs of St-Henri and Verdun in Montreal and caught a CN TankTrain unit train heading through town on our way to find food. After that, Laura and I headed to Farnham in the townships to see what Montreal, Maine, and Atlantic had to offer. We found a pair of MMA-lettered GEs switching the yard there but not too much else. From there we went across the border to St. Albans where we caught NECR train 324 leaving town. We heard it get a clearance to Milton to meet a northbound. We did beat it to Milton, but then didn't find the tracks. By the time we found the tracks, we watched the train go by from five or six cars back at the grade crossing line up and didn't try to photograph it. We then found the train it was meeting, which turned out to be a unit train of 6-bay hoppers, but we found no roads to the head end of the train.

September 8th, 2005

We got up early and checked the NECR yard in Brattleboro. NECR #324, which we saw on the 7th, in both St. Albans and Milton was parked on the track nearest the road with no crew. It remained there for the rest of the day, not starting up until around 20:00. Meanwhile, we heard an NECR train head north through town but did not get to it on time, and missed both the north and south-bound Amtrak, but later in the day heard WJED - the Guilford train from White River Junction to East Deerfield yard and we caught it both in Brattleboro and again, after running some errands (GRS tracks in the area are limited to 5-10 mph) in Bernardston.

September 10th, 2005

I heard someone say they would be in Brattleboro in 10 minutes, so, wasting no time, I got to the yard and caught NECR #323 arriving with 107 cars and 3 units. The train switched for a while and then had to clear the main into a siding 1700 feet shorter than the train to meet the southbound Amtrak Vermonter. GRS' EDWJ went by after I left the tracks but I needed to get back and did not get to see it heading North. Later in the day, we heard an MEC train heading South and caught WJED (EDWJ's counterpart) heading back through Brattleboro, and chased it to Vernon.

September 11th, 2005

We drove back from Brattleboro to Guelph, and took the opportunity to see what Depew looks like in daylight. We caught a few trains, but the sun was directly down the tracks and I blew the pictures of the only westbound that came along.

December 21st, 2005

We got up in Bangor a little later than we'd have liked and headed up to Brownville Junction to see what we could find. We just missed MMA 8569, a freshly painted MMA unit, heading into the shops at Derby, but caught 2 MMA F40s and a variety of other interesting trains including NBSR over the course of the day in the area. We also met two area railfans who guided us through the day, and without whom we would not have caught much of what we saw, so thanks Kevin and Matt!

December 22nd, 2005

We slept in Lewiston, Maine with the intention of catching St. Lawrence and Atlantic's only daytime train we could be sure existed the next morning. We caught it and an MEC train at Danville Junction, and pondered how to shoot at the Lewiston Junction locomotive facility. Once we caught the SLR train we headed to eastern New Hampshire to see if we could catch the New Hampshire North Coast's gravel train, which we did - at Sanbornville.

December 23rd, 2005

We spent the night with a friend in rural New Hampshire and got going late in the morning, working our way West toward Vermont. On the way, we stumbled upon a tourist railway, though not operating at the moment, in Meredith. We proceeded on to White River Junction and headed South along the NECR Palmer sub, stopping to check on the Concord and Claremont, to Bellows Falls where we watched an HLCX-painted Vermont Rail locomotive switch a handful of cars from VTR trackage onto NECR trackage.

December 26th, 2005

In spite of being a lousy day out, I wanted to get out of the house. At 05:15 I heard the detector at mile 116 go off and just had to investigate. I watched 2 units run light through town and then went back to bed. NECR #324, normally through Brattleboro in the middle of the night, passed through at around 11:30, Amtrak #56 at 12:30 and Guilford's EDWJ (East Deerfield-White River Junction) went through at about 15:30.

December 27th, 2005

Someone on the NECR list indicated that the Vermonter would have a cab car instead of a second unit, so I made an extra effort to make sure I caught it, after having missed the morning freight thanks to family obligations.

December 28th, 2005

I went after NECR's Southbound, hoping to shoot it at the bridge in Miller's Falls I accomplished this, but somehow accidentally put my camera into Manual mode instead of Aperture Priority, and didn't notice... causing a number of washed out pictures (originals here). I ran them through a histogram equalisation and they look less (or at least differently) awful, and will figure out what to do with them and the originals when I get home. I then went to Greenfield, hoping to catch EDWJ, which ran unusually early, and rushed back to Brattleboro to catch it there (where it ended up sitting for 2 hours waiting for permission to proceed. I guess it doesn't pay to be early!)

December 29th, 2005

Leaving Brattleboro for home in a nasty rain storm, we caught one last NECR train heading through town with 4 NECR units.

December 30th, 2005

We slept in Schenectady, New York on our way home, hoping to wake up to find some Deleware and Hudson (CP) trains in the area. We did find one, parked inaccessibly in the distance. We found the overpass of the CSX and the D&H trackage at South Schenectady, shooting one manifest freight at a nearby grade crossing on the CSX. We then proceeded along our main goal of getting home, stopping at Utica to see (kind of) the NYSW and at Geneva to see the Finger Lakes Railway before stopping at Lyons to see some CSX trains before hitting the road as bad weather rolled in. On our way to Geneva, we passed a Finger Lakes train going the other way through Woodstock, New York, and pursued it West to nearby Seneca Falls. Its EOT sounds different from most and broadcasts on 160.205, so we didn't recognise it until we saw the train pass. CSX, for its part, mostly gave us intermodal trains with big GEs for power, reminding me somewhat eerily of CP! This concluded are 2 week travelling adventure ostensibly to see family for the holidays.

January 7th, 2006

Laura and I drove down to St. Catherines to meet up with Brian and explore the CSX and NS mains South/West of Buffalo. We caught 23 trains of various descriptions and went home happy as clams with 511 pictures and 21 videos.

June 24th, 2006

I took Kevin, Steve, Brian, and Laura down to the US for Kevin and Steve's first taste of American railfanning. We worked our way along the coast of Lake Erie all the way to North East, Pennsylvania, stopping at Angola, Dunkirk, and Westfield. Our total haul for the day was around 38 trains, including several that we saw without shooting as we travelled. BNSF's lone "vomit bonnet" led NS #310 through Angola, among other interesting catches.

September 2nd, 2006

I heard a train in Brattleboro and went down to the tracks to see what was up. I found NECR #611 working the yard. The crew mentionned to eachother that they'd need to switch the wye and this was all the encouragement I needed to stay, eventually getting the train entering the unhealthy looking Brattleboro wye, resulting in me being a shade late getting back for lunch, and a bit of a comical conversation by the crew about what, exactly, the caption for my video of the event should be.

September 3rd, 2006

An EOT device was blaring on the scanner all day in spite of Labour Day. Eventually I went down to the yard to see what was there. NECR #611, three units light power, was parked and remained so for around a day and a half (from the night of the 2nd to the morning of the 4th).

September 5th, 2006

We headed up to NMH for a little while, and watched NECR #611 switch along the causeway for a few minutes in Brattleboro on our way home.

September 6th, 2006

NECR #611 showed up with a great set of engines - ex-Conrail-ex-CN-ex-BN-NECR - and so we watched them switch for a few minutes, also getting the Vermonter no its way through. In the evening, I finally heard GRS WJED on the scanner, and we went down to the station to shoot it in somewhat dark lighting conditions.

September 7th, 2006

We made a field trip to Westfield, Massachusetts to see the Pioneer Valley Railroad and their funky CF7 units, catching a Guilford train at Hatfield on our way to Deerfield yard and seeing the Vermonter at Northfield on our way home.

September 8th, 2006

Seeking a few parting shots of NECR before we took off in the evening, I headed down to the causeway to watch NECR #611 work, where I was greeted with comments about the return of "that Canadian", so: hi Mr. Conductor!

September 9th, 2006

On our way out of Vermont, the muffler on the car decided it wanted to go straight home. We ended up stopping in the small town of Sidney, New York for a night in a hotel and emergency repairs to the car, which were amazingly completed by 9:15am at a local shop called B&M for less than we'd have paid at home. After leaving, we heard a train on the D&H tracks and pulled off the interstate to shoot NS #168 with 2 NS SD70M-2s for power, then headed up to Binghamton to see what we could find there, and then on to Scranton for Steamtown, which occupied us until a thunderstorm came in. We rushed back to New York, caught a great D&H lashup in Binghamton, and headed for Rochester for the night, catching a few trains of interest along the way.

September 10th, 2006

On the last leg of our extended trip home, we stopped at Buffalo's Depew train station for around 5 hours to see what we could find, catching 16 trains: CSXT Q114, Q117, Q632, Q115, NS #310, CSXT Q112, Q109, Q386, Q396, AMTK #64 (VIA #97), Q2??, Q140, Q364, Q268, AMTK #288, and AMTK #63 (VIA #98).

December 28th, 2006

D&H 7303 led on CP Galt sub on the 27th, but we were on our way south at the time and could do nothing about it. We spent the 28th in Altoona picking up NS trains, catching 17 Conrail-painted units including one SD80MAC among many trains, stopping to see Horseshoe Curve, Cresson, and surrounding sites... More to come!

December 29th, 2006

We took off from Altoona northward searching for shortlines, stopping to check the NS/Nittany and Bald Eagle interchange at Tyrone and their base at Lock Haven, shot the RDCs at Bellefonte, and returned to the other side of Altoona to hunt for the Everett at Hollidaysburg, following their tracks until we found them switching at Roaring Spring before heading to Gallitzin for one coming out of the tunnel and wrapping up the day at Cresson and Lilly.

December 30th, 2006

We headed for Horseshoe Curve to start the day catching two there, moved to Cresson for the Amtrak and a few trains, and migrated toward South Fork in hopes of finding the SD80MACs. We didn't immediately, but did meet an SD80 nut named Dan who we chased while he chased a coal train the short hop up to Summerville, and then headed up to Creslo Station to shoot coal train C90 coming from the mines -- with 5 SD80MACs for power (3 at the head end, 2 pushing). After spending an unholy amount of time chasing and watching the SD80s, we returned to Altoona to see the museum, which closed the week before for the season, and then spent some time exploring the area around the museum and Amtrak station.

December 31st, 2006

With 2006's dying hours at hand, we returned home from Altoona stopping to see what we could find on the way, culminating in a stop just outside of CSX's southernmost Buffalo yard at Lake Avenue, where a CSX security officer gave us a CSX 2007 calendar and wished us a happy new year. Happy new year indeed!

August 25th, 2007

On our way to a cousin's wedding in Ann Arbor, Michigan, we stopped in Durand, Michigan for a couple of hours, pausing briefly to see if we could find the TSBY's shops in Owosso. We waited in Durand for the daily Central Michigan train to come down, assured by a local railfan that it was scheduled to, but alas could not wait long enough. We caught CN #271 meeting CN #148 (parked just east of us from before we arrived), a Detroit-bound train, and what may have been CN #276 with 2 UP units at Durand, and an 0-2-0 steamer preparing for an excursion in Owosso.

August 26th, 2007

After the last of the wedding celebrations in Ann Arbor, we headed for Toledo, Ohio in the afternoon and then to Alliance, Ohio to meet a friend in the evening. We found a lot of interesting stuff, mostly parked, in Toledo in the two hours or so we were there, and caught a Wheeling and Lake Erie train parked under the Interstate 80 overpass, which caused us to jump off the next exit and backtrack, in the town of Parkertown, Ohio.

August 27th, 2007

Not one of my best-ever days of exploring... we took off from our hotel in New Philadelphia, Ohio a bit north to Brewer, Ohio for the Wheeling and Lake Erie shops. We asked for but were not granted permission to enter the yard to see the shops and were told there were no trains scheduled until a few hours later. Disappointed and photoless, we headed south and east, crossing into West Virginia at Steubenville and working our way up to Wheeling, sometimes hearing but never finding any trains. We to enter the yard to see the shops and were told there were no trains scheduled until a few hours later. Disappointed and photoless, we headed south and east, crossing into West Virginia at Steubenville and working our way up to Wheeling. After crossing through Pennsylvania, we returned to West Virginia at Morgantown. We got off there and looked at the two sets of tracks straddling the river through town on the map. One showed on the map as a shortline we had no other record of, the other as CSX. A quick survey of the tracks showed that neither was accurate, with the CSX tracks being a bicycle trail and the other's use being ambiguous. By now coming up on 5 pm and still trainless on the day we headed south again, disappointed, only to see head/ditchlights coming under the Interstate 79 as we were getting on Interstate 68. Off the next exit, back around, into Morgantown, and off to find a shootable location for the mystery train on the mystery tracks. After a while, a slow, 120-car CSX coal train passed us at a small bridge we managed to find in time. From there we made Cumberland a few minutes before sunset, narrowly missing the Capitol Limited Amtrak train and getting a handful of units parked around the shops and the yard, making up for an otherwise abysmal day.

August 28th, 2007

Tuesday morning we woke up at our hotel in Hagerstown and, determined not to duplicate the previous day's failure to get anything went to what seemed like a safe shortline to catch something. We travelled across the mountains on secondary highways to Union Bridge, the home of the Maryland Midland, and found the yard inaccessible with no sign of life. After a few minutes driving around we were pleasantly surprised to see serviceable tracks up a street to a local industry, and upon cursory inspection found a locomotive switching inside. Overjoyed, we travelled back down the hill and set up to wait for the train to come out of the industry and head back to its yard. Within minutes, the lone GP9 popped out of the facility... and backed back into it. After two hours of playing hide-and-seek with a train that had no obvious intention of leaving and with no decent shots we headed back south, following the Maryland Midland tracks southward. We periodically checked backroad crossings to see the state of the tracks in a vain attempt to get ahead of any train that may have been running and were baffled to find the tracks grown in and abandoned one crossing after finding them shiny. We determined that the line ended in a gravel pit and was abandoned beyond it. Somewhere on this exploration our scanner antenna disappeared from its mounting on our roof, although curiously our scanner continues to function reasonably well without anything but the base. From there we went on to the Brunswick MARC station and sat there with a friend from the area we had travelled there to meet until it was time to go toward Washington, DC for dinner.

August 29th, 2007

We stayed at our friend's house in Silver Spring, MD and took the DC Metro into downtown Washington, DC. As the CSX tracks merged in with our Metro line, a 3-unit gravel train pulled up along side us. As the Metro is substantially faster than the freight train, we got off at a station along the way, shot the gravel train, and boarded the next Metro just a few minutes later. Although we passed a large passenger yard just before DC union station with a wide variety of very interesting equipment, we took no photos of the various equipment including an Acela set and several Virginia commuter trains we saw parked.

August 30th, 2007

We stayed in Easton, Maryland after a late-night drive to the Maryland-Delaware penninsula, and headed directly for Federalsburg, Maryland for the Maryland and Delaware. We found the company's shops and office in short order, and a pleasant company employee when asked told us that the train was on its way to Cambridge, Maryland, and would be going across the entire network to the interchange with NS at Seaford, Delaware, before returning to Hurlock Junction. Acting on this information, we went directly to Cambridge where we found that the railway's self-touted tracks to the harbour in the city were abandoned and removed. Slightly frustrated, we started heading out of town, and went up a road toward a large grade crossing. As we approached, the crossing activated and we set ourselves up waiting for the Maryland and Delaware train with its small set of cars and rare CF7 locomotive to finish its work and head back east. After a long wait, it came back out and we chased it briefly, finding it too slow to chase and still get anywhere else in one day. From there we headed into Delaware to the interchange at Seaford hoping to find something - anything - there, but quickly decided heading north to the Norfolk Southern yard at Harrington would be a better bet. Sure enough, as we pulled into town we found ourselves pacing a covered hopper unit train of some description. Hoping to get ahead of it, we pulled off at a road where we found two locomotives sitting on the main. We looked around for a way to shoot the train but weren't able to find an angle. Hoping the train would proceed northward, we headed north a few miles until we found a good shot and began to wait. It quickly became obvious that the train wouldn't be coming so we returned to Harrington and found the train, complete with the two units that had been sitting on the main, sitting there talking to the Diesel Doc. We went into town, shot the yard power, returned to the head end of the train and shot what we could of it, then headed north for New Jersey. We crossed just south of Wilmington and quickly found a yard in Penns Grove with two NS trains in it. We shot them as best we could then took off northbound hoping to make it to Connecticut before it got too late.

August 31st, 2007

We woke up in West Haven, Connecticut and after a brief exploration of New Haven decided it was a bit too urban for our schedule or taste, so we proceeded east along the electric line out, stopping at Bradford to go into the station there. As we parked an Amtrak electric (other than Acela) passed. We waited on the platform about 15 minutes and an Acela train passed. We continued eastward toward New London where we wanted to find the NECR/PWRR interchange, but got distracted by switching sounds in Old Saybrook where we got off the I-95 and found not one but two Providence and Worcester trains switching, as well as our second Acela for the day. We checked the Amtrak schedule and found no trains coming for about 20 minutes, so we took advantage to go east to New London with a train coming to shoot there. We crossed directly into Groton on the far side of the river through town and quickly found a wide open public parking lot facing a railway drawbridge where we waited for the Amtrak train we knew we were ahead of. We heard it coming around the corner on the other side of the river and watched it stop at Union Station and then one of the PWRR trains we had seen switching Old Saybrook crossed the bridge ahead of the Amtrak. After that we were out of time and headed north to Worcester to meet a friend before continuing on to Brattleboro, Vermont.

September 1st, 2007

I heard horns as a train entered Brattleboro but didn't have the scanner on and so had no warning. After a few minutes it became apparent that the train was still in town so I went down to check it out and found NECR #323 parked on the siding in town with no crew. It didn't leave until around 2 the next morning.

September 2nd, 2007

I went down after lunch to shoot the hour-late southbound Amtrak Vermonter, finding it with locomotive AMTK 4 trailing. Several minutes later it crossed the detector 3 miles away at Vernon at 13 miles an hour.

September 3rd, 2007

The very last day of our trip saw us waking up at a friend's house in Burlington, Vermont and stopping in at St. Albans to see what was around, crossing Lake Champlain to see Rouses Point and finding the Amtrak Adirondack with its complement of border guards and not much else. We saw a few other trains from the 401 as we returned home later in the afternoon but did not have the time to stop. With that, our 10-day, 4300 km mixed social and railfan trip came to an end.

December 19th, 2007

We left home around 10 am, almost immediately finding a CP train with an NREX unit at Puslinch on our way by on highway 6. After crossing into the US, we followed the Falls Road railway from Lockport to Brockport, ending up in Rochester.

December 20th, 2007

We started out from our hotel in Henrieta outside Rochester at the crack of dawn, heading up to Lakeville to see if we could find the LAL working. At that hour there was little sign of life and pretty soon we heard a Rochester Southern train leaving Rochester, so we headed down to Caledonia to get ahead of it, where we waited a fair time for it. It came with 4 units and 70-odd empties around 9:30 after which we headed back to Lakeville. We heard switching as we got closer, and then it abruptly stopped. Hoping for an LAL train to be leaving we headed for a crossing just out of town and sat for a while, eventually going back into town and just missing a switcher... twice. We sat for a while near the yard eventually figuring out the crew had gone for lunch and shot the lone unit parked mostly inaccessibly from a street in town. From there we headed to the Ontario Central in Victor, where we found no signs of life and proceeded eastword to Phelps and north to Newark in the hopes of getting the Ontario Midland. There was little sign of life there either and the tracks looked like we had missed them earlier in the day. We headed a bit east to Lyons to get a late lunch and then a bit further east to Clyde where we waited for CSX to make up for our lackluster shortline performance, but all we got was 2 Amtrak and a UPS train before hearing Finger Lakes arrive at Lyons. We tore back to Lyons hoping to get them there, with the sun coming out for the first time in days as we went, disappearing again as we arrived. We followed the Lyons runner up to Geneva trying to get ahead of the FGLK train we knew was around, beating it to the yard at Geneva in last light. Damn these short days.

December 21st, 2007

We started out in Oneida and headed straight for Reber Rd outside Rome in the community of Stanwix, New York to watch CSX trains while waiting for the daily run of the Mohawk, Adirondack, and Northern. It came after a couple of hours and we spent a few minutes chasing it in Rome after spending a lot more minutes trying to find it again. After that we returned briefly to Reber Rd., found the tracks dead, and proceeded to Utica. We went to see the NYSW dead line but found it completely obstructed by a long cut of high gons. We went back to the Amtrak station and shot a considerable rush, punctuated by the return of the MWHA with its lone C424 and 5 cars.

December 22nd, 2007

Matt came down from New Jersey to meet us in Amsterdam. We shot several CSX and Amtrak trains there before heading down to Rotterdam Junction to see if Guilford was around. It wasn't, and we headed south to Delanson on the D&H to see what was happening there. On arrival we found a small Kia high-centred on an uncleared road and proceeded to spend the next few minutes using our winter gear and Matt's tow hook to remove the vehicle. Much to the entertainment of all concerned, Matt's Pt Cruiser saved the day. We then shot DH 931 - a CN run-through train with NS power - and NS 169 meeting before heading off to an unpronounceable town a few miles away to try and track down a mysterious new shortline that appeared at Delanson six days earlier.

December 23rd, 2007

We started out in Glens Falls, New York with an eye toward getting the Batten Kill railroad in Greenwich, NY on the off-chance they'd be outside the barn. As we got ready to go we realised it was a silly idea and headed straight for Whitehall, NY. On our way we picked up an EOT and tore off to the next grade crossing where we just missed 3 NS units running southbound light power on the D&H. After a brief southward chase we realised we would not get ahead of them and returned on our original track to Whitehall. A few minutes later VRS Rutland DS indicated that the Whitehall job had already left Whitehall back for Rutland so we skipped Whitehall and went straight for Rutland, catching the Whitehall job returning to Rutland with 5 units and 42 loads. After a quick crew change and switch, they took off with 4 units and 37 loads for Bellows Falls and we returned to Whitehall to see what the D&H had to offer. Eventually the northbound Adirondack came, then 931 came -- the same one we shot over a day earlier not 100 miles away in Delanson -- followed shortly by the southbound Adirondack. We got 931 going through the station after meeting the Amtrak and then returned to Rutland taking a few hasty long exposures of AMTK 716 getting ready to head south before calling it a night at a relative's house in town.

December 24th, 2007

We left my cousin's house in Rutland after a lazy breakfast toward Brattleboro, our destination. We heard GMRC 263 and locomotive 801 that sounded like different trains. We weren't sure until we found 263 with 801 leading fairly far east in Chester, where we waited for them on finding rusty rails. A large cloud bank was rolling in rather suspensefully on this first day of sunlight on our trip. The train took a while to arrive in Chester - we overestimated how far ahead of it we were - and when it did come, it stopped just short of the shot I wanted for the crew to buy lunch in town. After a few minutes delay and some mercy from the clouds, we got our shot and then b-lined it to Brattleboro for our own lunch and seasonal family reunion.

December 27th, 2007

On the 26th I woke to the sound of a whistle as a train left Brattleboro. This time I woke up at dawn and turned my scanner on, almost immediately hearing NECR 323 and 324 converging on Brattleboro. We headed down to the yard and shot both, then chased 324 the three miles to the first crossing south of town by the detector at Vernon before returning for breakfast. My lunch later was interrupted by the sound of Pan Am WJED entering Brattleboro and so I went down to the yard to watch it and the Vermonter head south.

December 28th, 2007

I went down to Brattleboro yard to see the morning 323/324 meet again. 323 arrived on queue but 324 was nowhere to be seen and we soon found out the meet would be taking place in Putney. Hours later I heard 324 arrive in town -- with 323's power. I went down to the yard to see it come in and found it with 5 units, including GEXR 3843! Then two local railfans showed up at my perch on Riverside Rd and told me that 324's train had come apart in Putney and they'd be going back for it. I went to the Amtrak station to wait for them to head back north for the second half of their train and was immediately blocked in by passengers for the southbound Amtrak. I waited at the platform whether I liked it or not for the southbound Vermonter and the northbound power move with my old friend Barney leading.

December 29th, 2007

We left Brattleboro for my parents' place in the Laurentians, stopping only at St. Albans to see CN 323 with 8814-8840, my first of the CN 88xxs. Weather was miserable and rainy all the way up, so we did not stop to see NECR 323/324 meeting in Brattleboro, VRS 307 coming into Burlington, or the three trains queued up at Rouses Point on the D&H. Next time.

June 28th, 2008

We went on an Alco hunting expedition for the Canada Day long weekend, starting with the BSOR, NYLE, and WNYP with a stop at Angola for CSX and NS along the way.

June 29th, 2008

We started our day out in Medina, scoping the Falls Road toward Lockport to chase a winery excursion train back to Medina. From there we caught CSX Q364 at the small town of Corfu and went off to the other side of Rochester to check out the OMID at Sodus. Finding nothing there, we headed up to Lyons until we got rained out and headed to Henrietta for the night. At our hotel, we looked up the address of the Rochester and Genesee Valley Railroad Museum which Laura had found in the Rochester Visitors' Guide earlier in the day. We went off in the evening to see if we could find them, hours after their scheduled closure. We found the museum and started photographing the equipment parked out front. Moments later, LV 211, the museum's RS-3M, came down a hill and the crew were as surprised to see us as we were to see them. Checking that museum out definitely paid off.

June 30th, 2008

Using information from the fine folks at the Rochester and Genesee Valley Railroad Museum, we returned to Sodus first thing in the morning and asked at Ontario Midland's office what the itinerary was for the day. We found the northbound OMID outside Newark as it departed the interchange at about 10:30 and then took off to Avon to find the Livonia, Avon, and Lakeville where we expected to find them switching. They had already taken off and so we headed back to Henrietta to find them and some lunch at MacGregor's, whose parking lot backs on to the LAL-CSX connecting track. After CSX Q377 and Q393 passed, the LAL came back southbound, and we headed back to Avon to get them returning to town, the tracks being too fast to chase. From there we headed home, catching CP #426 and #155 near Guelph Junction and GEXR #432 at Wellington Rd 29 back in Guelph. A perfect end to a perfect trip.

December 1st, 2008

Laura took a few photos out of the window of Amtrak 463 at Utica station on her way back from visiting family.

February 14th, 2009

We started our day in Rouses Point, New York, where we found the D&H quite quiet. We crossed Lake Champlain over to St. Albans, Vermont, where the NECR showed equally little sign of life, so decided to follow the VRS through Rutland to get to Brattleboro, our destination. Not long after leaving Burlington, we heard two extras being set up to meet in Chester, Vermont. Being two hours from there we had lots of time to wonder if we'd see it, and along the way we were distracted by an SBU blaring around New Haven, Vermont. We knew we were near a train on the Rutland-Burlington line but after trying to find it unsuccessfully for a while, we pushed on, ultimately reaching Chester about an hour after the meet had taken place. We caught the westbound in the woods about 5 miles out of town, but didn't get ahead of the eastbound until Bellows Falls, where the train was headed.

February 15th, 2009

We woke up to the sound of horns and heard NECR #611 heading through town. We chased it to the main crossing in Vernon.

February 17th, 2009

We left Brattleboro on the morning of the 16th and went to NMH, where I caught up with some of my old teachers and classmates for most of the day. In the late afternoon, we cut across Mass. to the Hoosac tunnel in Florida, but the Guilford gods did not love us and no trains were forthcoming, although a local railfan reported a Bow coal empty was supposed to be on its way. We slept in Utica that night and on the 17th we started the day there, shooting the Mohawk, Adirondack, and Western and an NYSW unit from afar that came in by surprise. We chased the MHWA to Rome, where we followed the wrong spur and took a while to find it out in the industrial park on the east side of town. From there we chased CSX Q091, the ultra-high priority vegetable train to Lyons, catching it only once at Syracuse yard, and there only barely. From Lyons, where we missed Q091 by about 7 minutes, we headed up to Geneva to see what we could find on the FGLK, and chased the Lyons job back to Lyons before heading out to the Rochester and Genessee Valley Railroad Museum south of Rochester and finally completing our trip by getting back to Guelph a few minutes past 10pm.

May 8th, 2009

On our way to the wedding of one of my oldest friends in rural New Hampshire, we stopped in to see the Ontario Midland, CSX, HRRC, and PVRR, finding very little running. We brought our camera in for a cleaning, and it was returned to us without charge because of an apparently immutable piece of dirt on the sensor, so another railfan trip goes into the record with a great big spot in the upper-right corner of all my photos.

May 9th, 2009

Travelling from southern Vermont to eastern New Hampshire for a wedding, we explored tracks north out of Concord and into Meredith.

May 10th, 2009

Back in Brattleboro, we got up early to see NECR 324 heading through town.

May 11th, 2009

Returning home from New Hampshire we stopped for the night in Henrietta, NY. In the morning we chased the LAL from the RGVRRM museum back into Henrietta, then went back to the museum to pick up my sunglasses which I realised in Henrietta I had left on the trunk.... they were present, on the road, and had miraculously not been run over. From there we went over to R&S' tracks, found them shiny but with no indication as to where or how far away a train was, and pushed on to Brockport on the Falls Road, which we followed fruitlessly back to Lockport where we found a CSX local leaving. From there we went to Depew, missed 3 as we approached, and caught 377 and 63. Back in Canada a few minutes later we caught CP 254 at Guelph Junction and watched VIA 87 while our pizza was baked at a nearby pizzeria.

June 3rd, 2009

I headed down to New England for my high school reunion and picked up WJED at Brattleboro with a PanAm painted unit meeting the northbound Vermonter.

June 4th, 2009

After arriving at NMH before my classmates, I headed back out to the tracks for a bit for Amtrak 55 and NECR 323.

June 9th, 2009

On my way home from reunion I stopped to chase the Batten Kill, which operates exclusively with the venerable RS-3. I asked the crew at Greenwich shops where the train was and was told it was parked at Cambridge, so headed up there to wait for them to come on duty and chased them to Greenwich Junction where I broke off and headed for Whitehall. There I caught CP 253 and continued north. Coming into the Laurentians I saw QGRY rather than CP power at Ste-Therese yard so bailed off the 15 and went for a closer look.

June 5th, 2014

We stopped to check out the engine shop in St. Alban's and NECR 324 at Brattleboro on our way to Massachusetts.

March 1st, 2016

Kicked out of my office by my staff and told to take a vacation, I headed south through Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont to mostly visit friends and take the occasional hour trackside along the way. On the 1st, we drove to Portland, Maine passing, but not stopping at, Mount Washington, a place I intend to eventually return to.

March 2nd, 2016

Travelling from Andover, where we slept, into Boston, we stopped at Lowell Junction for a few minutes to see what we could find. In the afternoon, travelling from Boston to the area of Milford, New Hampshire, we took the scenic route via Worcester station and found it very hospitable and welcoming to railfans.

March 4th, 2016

Travelling north out of Massachusetts, we heard NECR 321 out of Brattleboro and found it at Bellows Falls station before staying the night in that town.

March 5th, 2016

The final leg of our trip saw us wake up to the persistent sound of a symmetric braking unit on the scanner in Bellows Falls, which led us to parked-running Guilford engines on the Walpole side of the river, before we turned north to see the Claremont and Concord, west to Rutland, and north to Burlington, stumbling completely by chance on a local working the Omya plant in Florence that we did not hear on the radio. We wrapped up our impromptu vacation stopping in Montreal to visit family.

January 4th, 2017

We arrived in San Francisco for a few days vacation and immediately went to the Golden Gate Bridge.

January 5th, 2017

We explored downtown San Francisco's streetcars and cablecars.

January 6th, 2017

We travelled around the Bay to Mountain View and up the other side to Oakland to check out the USS Hornet and Jack London Square.

January 9th, 2017

Disneyland! Because, we're already here... interesting train systems in the park.

January 10th, 2017

We went to explore the Cajon Pass for two hours. We were not disappointed!

January 5th, 2018

Leaving our motel in Plattsburgh, we stumbled across one of the two remaining D&H units light power and got off the highway to see it pass.

January 9th, 2018

We explored the North Carolina Coastal Railway (CLNA) on our way to Wilson, North Carolina for a meeting inspired by an article on net neutrality in Wired.

January 10th, 2018

We stopped to visit a friend in Lavonia, Georgia, and followed the HRT before lunch from Toccoa to a year-old wreck site in Eastanollee, before doing a bit more exploring on our way to Atlanta.

January 11th, 2018

We explored along an abandoned line eastward until finding the tracks back and a CSX local working at Waycross, before heading south to the railfan platform at Folkston. After having supper with friends in Jacksonville, we finished the day at the The Ponce, a railfan-friendly hotel in Saint Augustine with its own viewing platform for the Florida East Coast.

January 12th, 2018

We started the day on the FEC in Saint Augustine before heading to Kennedy Space Center.

January 21st, 2018

On our way home via Skyline Drive in Virginia, we followed a chirping SBU to a stopped CSX local in Middleton after lunch.

June 7th, 2019

On my way to NMH to 20th reunion, I caught a southbound NECR with 3 rather thoroughly rebuilt SD40-2s switching the yard.

December 24th, 2019

We took off on a social and exploratory road trip to the US, catching our first local UP near Watertown, New York.

December 26th, 2019

Leaving family near Buffalo, we continued westward, stopping for three eastbounds at the museum at North East. We found the Bessemer and Lake Erie with a rare BLE leader in the yard in Conneaut but could not get a good shot from the one forested vantage we found across the valley, and finished the day with a stop at the Napoleon, Defiance & Western Railroad, a railroad with the dubious distinction of being known for its rather exceptional lack of maintenance.

December 27th, 2019

Railfanning Chicago is rather like shooting fish in a barrel if you handle the city itself. I am a country boy and so it isn't really my cup of tea. We did manage to catch a little bit of action as we entered and exited the city for (non-railfan) touristy reasons, although the day was off toa slightly bad start when I followed a different line from the one I thought I was following out of the city: with an EOT squawking away nearby but no sign of the train it was attached to, we admired the diamond at Stillwell for a few minutes before carrying on.

December 28th, 2019

We followed the Iowa Interstate (IAIS) from Davenport to Omaha, catching an eastbound intermodal and ethanol train almost immediately, and parked but noisy power with a work clearance but not moving at Newport. We finished the day at the west end of the line watching headlights reflecting off the sides of nearby freight cars without the power ever actually materialising, to the amusement of a friendly railway security officer.

December 29th, 2019

We wandered our way from Omaha, Nebraska to the middle of Kansas and had a banner day of catching parked shortline equipment and briefly chasing a westbound coal train.

December 30th, 2019

Heading south out of Kansas, we just barely caught a six-engine eastbound BNSF whose symbol we didn't catch in Newton and stayed in the town of Ardmore, Oklahoma, where we caught a slightly different kind of train...

December 31st, 2019

We worked our way through the jungles of Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston Texas on our way to spend New Year in the tourist trap of Galveston.

January 1st, 2020

We started the year in Galveston, took the Bolivar Ferry, which is free and state-run in a place where socialism is anathema, and worked our way into Louisiana on the hunt more for crawfish than trains.

January 2nd, 2020

We left Lafayette in bad weather hunting more for crawfish than trains, which we found nearby, and set our sights on the streetrunning at Gretna on the New Orleans and Gulf Coast. There was trackwork near the streetrunning and nothing was running over it -- bad luck -- but we did find two working on the line.

January 3rd, 2020

We started the day at Pascagoula, Mississippi, catching a single CSX out the window of the hotel in torrential rain before going off to explore, and quickly find, the Mississippi Export Rail. We were lucky enough to catch it on the causeway near the company's shops in Moss Point before proceeding on to the port city of Mobile Alabama to check out another shortline, the Alabama Export, where we found two G&W units switching and a single pre-G&W painted unit elusively switching in a spot we simply couldn't shoot.

January 4th, 2020

A light train day as we headed south, stopping only briefly to shoot the parked power of the Florida Northern.

January 5th, 2020

Disney World.

January 6th, 2020

We traveled out to Port Canaveral to board the Disney Dream for a tour and caught one at Titusville on the return to our hotel.

January 7th, 2020

Disney World.

January 8th, 2020

Traveling from Orlando to Miami, we stopped at Port Salerno to see the spot where I started watching trains (unsuccessfully) up close as a kid. This time, we did catch one northbound.

January 9th, 2020

We explored Miami before boarding the Disney Magic for a five day cruise.

January 11th, 2020

Our first port of call was Key West, which is famous for once having been the end of the Florida East Coast's sea route, destroyed by a hurricane in the 1930s. In honour of this history, there are local tourist road trains in large numbers floating around the downtown.

January 14th, 2020

Our trip nearly over, we got off the ship in Miami and wandered north to Jacksonville, stopping only once for a train at West Palm Beach.

January 15th, 2020

Working northward, we stopped for gas and trains in Florence, South Carolina. The Amtrak station agent politely declined our request to shoot from the platform so we made do with looking through the fence.

January 16th, 2020

Working our way up the I-81, we happened upon a slow Winchester & Western northbound approaching Clear Brook, Virginia, right on the border with West Virginia, and caught it at the next exit -- 10 minutes later.

January 17th, 2020

We completed our 21-state tour of the US and returned to Canada, catching the Delaware-Lackawanna switching at Steamtown in Scranton and a northbound NYSW at Onativia Road near Lafayette, New York.