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Caption: A fallen flag EMD 645 leading double stacks at track speed on the Halton... need I say more? Q122 and the NTSB regulations which screwed it was left with an outlawed C44-9W pair, one dead and one without the mercy of PTC exemptions. A miraculous retaliation from Battle Creek gifted them with IC 6250, an internationally friendly PTC & LVVR equipped 6-axle (both things CN hasn't finished equipping to some ex-CREXs). Here they are sweeping north on the approach to Tansley as they hit the outskirts of Burlington to begin their battle upgrade. Had the circumstances applied to anything else offered by CN with work along the way, we could reasonably expect that it would have been a treat exclusive to the Americans. I can't say I've recieved many shocks to the system quite like this train gave me, as I had to do a lot of convincing to myself to believe that such an event was actually going to turn out well for me. Night train, backlit sun, dropped before the border... I was waiting for an excuse to justify not going out for it. I assume these things were more common back in the days of early 2000s foreign power?
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Awesome capture of this rare event ! And with the old signal bridge to boot ! On this occasion I was at the site of the old Freeman Station at Burlington West, hanging out and watching the action. A white pickup truck nearly smoked my car, roaring into the parking lot so fast ! The driver popped out, grabbed a shot and took off ! The excitement meter was definitely in the red zone !
Nice location choice for this train. I guess we had lots of options since it was dull and cloudy out.
@Aitch Hmm… white pickup truck… reminds me of this admin for some random train photo website based in Canada. Did this man have a goatee with frizzy grey hair and go by the name of Host
? Jokes aside, there was about 20 of us at Snider West, scattered across the Pioneer Village station parking lot watching them crew change, with enough trespassing in public view that the outbound crew for Belleville became extremely wary of the foamfest and called trespassers in to RTC about a dozen times across the 24 mile span of the York Sub! CN police confronted those who stuck around long enough to get the short end of the stick.
@Kevin Flood cloudy days are often the best to see what people really go for in this hobby. Side shot to emphasize the lashup, or telephoto to debunk that this wasn’t a lucky draw of intermodal upfront on a random manifest?
@Eric Fallas – It’s funny (to me at least) because that was the first time in many years I’d gone out to watch trains, so the whole situation was quite memorable. I certainly do appreciate the great lengths that many folks go to to capture a shot and then share it for all to enjoy.
Aitch – sorry about that, yeah that was me. I came in hot (my bad) and I noticed the potholes got *really* big and tried to avoid them. I was following the train for a little bit as I shot it at one other location. After that I had to go elsewhere.
I’m not the only ‘fan in a white pickup truck though, f.y.i
I hope we can meet up under different circumstances next time! If you are a regular at that location I do occasionally drop by when in the area while wife does shopping.
As for Eric’s comments on the FPON era, yeah they were fairly common, even leading, but there was so much other stuff IC SD40′s were kind of the bottom of the barrel for what people cared about… (just about everything else was coming across SD40 or otherwise)
Here’s some OS’s from the late and great Ken Lanovich who posted to FPON (https://groups.io/g/fpon) who basically gave us a lineup of what was coming the day before it came here. You had to subtract the Battle Creek and Sarnia taxes as leaders could change at those two points, but it happened. They trailed a lot more times too. You can search the archives if you join – so much stuff happened…. there wasn’t a day that went by where you had only one good thing to choose from…
392 by Blue Island 22:30, IC 6250, CN 56??, CN 5706, CN 5322
356 by Blue Island 08:30, IC 6201, CN 5625, 101 cars.
(356 may have terminated in Sarnia)
X392 departed Blue Island 17:45, IC 6256, CN 5562
Train 390 by Harvey 23:10, IC 6112, GTW 5949, CSX 8756, IC 6203, 102 cars
A video from 2009:
https://youtu.be/QHYdGPrH2Xc?si=ntFz_gFGbSzW5vHQ
Now there’s dozens of videos on youtube thanks to this 122 coming in the true youtube area.
The IC ‘merger’ was in 1999 and IC painted units survive in good numbers to this day. Something to be said about that when you compare to Conrail on NS or CSX – both acquisitions happened at the same time.
Also check out the comments on Joe Bishop’s photos which I copied my info from
http://www.railpictures.ca/?attachment_id=54089
The jokes write themselves I guess haha. It was a total shot in the dark, not expecting that it was actually you who scrambled into Burlington West for this train. Anything for the shot!
This wasn’t much of anything, shot wise or train wise. Burlington west is a neat location for trains but it’s not exactly the best condition place to drive on as it’s not maintained by the public road authority.
I didn’t have a lot of time for 122 but I did get 2 shots, good enough for me.