I hate April Fools’ Day. Call me a cranky old man, but I don’t care for pranks.
This year, I chose to spend part of April 1 trackside. I hadn’t planned it, but when I awoke that Saturday morning, I felt like seeing trains.
I arrived at CN’s Rivers subdivision and found an eastbound train approaching. It had an interesting combination of formerly leased locomotives on the head end, ex CREX CN 2769 and “humpback” CN 2037. I have no idea why it’s called a “humpback” but I’m told that’s another railfan term.
I photographed this from the Hall Road crossing, and took some video with my phone.
Once that train passed, I continued west to Diamond and found my friend Brian and his fiancé Deanne there. I spent the rest of my time there chatting with them. It was good to catch up.
While we were talking, another eastbound train came rolling along.
This train had two locomotives – one on the head end and one in the middle, both with the CN 100 “logo” on them.
I recall that it wasn’t particularly warm out that day. Brian and I just jumped out of his vehicle to take photos then retreated to the warmth between shots.
Eventually the end of the train came into view, with a distributed braking boxcar bringing up the rear. I’m not sure if I will ever get used to a boxcar on the end of a container train.
Just One More Thing
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I too hate April Fools Day, simply because it’s become a social media challenge to one-up each other. I should have done as you did and just taken off to go shoot trains. Your shots in the snow make me appreciate that our snow has finally retreated, although it took a destructive ice storm and weirdly warm weather to do it.