On Sept 26th, Saintjohnrailfan and myself decided to take a trip to McGivney to catch some action. It has been a long time since I ventured up that way so I was looking forward to it.
We arrived at 4:30am to see a green over red signal facing east so we knew 121 must be on it's way. After close to an hour of waiting, we saw the bright headlights of 121 coming in the distance. It looked like the sun was rising on the horizon as we looked towards Moncton. So we set up our shots and sat ready. I used my usual spot next to the crew shack. I love this spot for two reasons. First.. The dusk to dawn light on the building helps light up the shot. And two.. The rush you get from the train rolling by so close and at that speed!
At approx 5:30am 121 rockets through McGivney.
After 121 finished we tried to figure out if a 474 was due through. Matt had a heads up about one coming from Edmundston to Moncton but the signals all shown red. So we pretty much figured we missed it.
So we headed towards Chipman. We had some time to kill before 305 would roll through so we explored around checking out different locations for shots. We ended up at the Bronson Settlement Rd. There is a hot box detector there and a nice straight stretch. After about an hour wait 305 rolled though with an SD70M-2 leading and one as a DPU.
We only caught 2 out of 3 trains but it's better than nothing. Definitely not a wasted day!
Just for fun I recorded 121 rolling by with my cell phone. The quality isnt that great, but it shows more of what I see as I record a train next to the crew shack at McGivney.
