2008/05/26: Northern New Brunswick

This is from my Confessions of a Train Geek archives. The text is 17 years old, with a few tweaks here and there.

Today was a good train day in northern New Brunswick.

Going North

For me, the action started in Miramichi with the arrival of the eastbound Ocean, VIA 14. It was pretty much on time, with VIA 6413 and 6421 leading a Renaissance set of cars.

Here it is leaving Miramichi, just before passing the crew shack.

I noticed an SD40 over at Ultramar but didn’t have time to go see which one it was. It definitely looks like there are no RS18s stationed in Miramichi any more. That’s a shame, although I can’t say I blame NBEC, given the lack of customers there.

As I passed over the NBEC main line at Bathurst, NBEC 1851 pulled train 597 right under me toward the yard, with several loaded woodchip cars and a few empty lumber cars. I assume those were from the UPM-Kymmene lumber mill on the Nepisiguit Subdivision.

I heard train 597 asking the dispatcher where train 402 was. They hadn’t checked in, but I soon heard a track foreman call in to say that 402 was at mile 132 (Belledune). I hastened there and saw train 402 stopped on the main line by the Chaleur Lumber spur. [today it’s owned by Interfor and still receives rail service, from CN]

After a couple of minutes, they throttled up and NBEC 6900 and CFMG 6906 pulled a long train toward Bathurst. I assume they stopped to drop some empty centerbeam cars there.

There was an interesting car in train 402. It looks like a relettered CN cement car.

An Evening Around Bathurst

At 16:20, I heard and saw train 586 (the empty ore train) leave Belledune but I didn’t get any photos. There are a bunch of empty gypsum cars at Belledune, but given that the plant is shut down for a maintenance outage, I doubt they will be loaded for a few days.

Later, I was approaching Bathurst again around 18:20 when I heard some shunting over the scanner. I assumed that was the ore train getting its train together before heading to Brunswick Mines. Imagine my surprise when I saw the tail end of train 403 leaving the yard! 403 was quite late today.

There was an interesting MOW item in the Bathurst yard. I’m guessing this is a tie remover?

I saw and chased train 587, the empty ore train to Brunswick Mines, but I’ll put that in another post.

Just a little teaser

VIA, Again

I decided to catch VIA 15 (the westbound Ocean) at Nepisiguit Junction. They were pretty much on time, and I didn’t quite get to the east switch when Loto-Quebec VIA 6414 came around the bend.

They had to stop to reline the switch left open by train 587. The engineer did the job then climbed back into 6414 as they accelerated toward Bathurst.

Back in Bathurst, I shot VIA 15 leaving the city from the St. Anne overpass in the failing light.

It was a good day for trains.

Do you like posts like these? Come to Real Rails 2025 where I’ll be talking about the New Brunswick East Coast Railway!