August 4th, 2006
Having still not replaced my stolen scanners, I went downtown to see a rail grinder parked in Guelph. To the best of my knowledge no rail grinder has ever been to Guelph before, but LMIX RG309 has been parked in Guelph for three days, apparently coming out at night to grind.
Guelph, Ontario
(map) The city of Guelph is my home town and is just East of Kitchener-Waterloo on the GEXR Guelph sub, and the Ontario Southland Railway/Guelph Junction Railway track, the other end of which is at Guelph Junction.
August 12th, 2006
We attended a friend's wedding in Burlington and escaped to the tracks briefly between the wedding and the reception, catching CN #394 with BNSF 134 leading before heading back. It reminded me how much I do enjoy railfanning in spite of my scanner setback. Finding properly priced good scanners around here is proving to be quite tricky (I bought my previous ones in the US).
Burlington, Ontario
(map) The city of Burlington has a population of about 150,000 people and is just to the East of Hamilton. It is also home to Burlington West and Aldershot.
August 13th, 2006
We picked up Kevin and went to a railfan-heavy Paris Junction for the day, catching 16 trains. Night train CN #395 with a new crew was first up with three BNSF units, followed by VIA #70, CN #399, VIA #671, CN #398, VIA #72, CN #390, #331, VIA #73, CN #148, #385, #392, #330, #393, VIA #76, and CN #435.
Paris, Ontario
(map) Paris is just West of Brantford on the CN Dundas sub and was once the site of the junction between the Dundas sub and the completely defunct Drumbo sub that connected Paris and Stratford. There's also a large trestle in Paris.
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CN #395 passes through Aldershot with 3 BNSF units, each in a different paint scheme.
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CN #399 comes to a stop to work Paris West.
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VIA #671 zips around CN #399.
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CN #398 passes through.
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VIA #72 passes zips by.
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CN #390 follows VIA #72 through toward Brantford.
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CN #331 passes through, finding a stop signal at Paris West and discovering at the last moment that they had work to do at Paris.
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VIA #73 passes with VIA 6416, two trainsets, and VIA 6403, the CBC unit.
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CN #148 slowly goes through with CN #331's conductor, giving him a ride back to "the box" to pick up his new paperwork.
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CN #392 passes CN #385 in front of us.
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VIA #76 heads for Brantford.
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CN #435 enters Paris Junction as the light transitions to the far side of the tracks.
August 26th, 2006
We went to Radio World and picked up a new scanner and antenna, stopping at mile 30 on the way home to try it out. We spent most of our time trying to figure out how to decode the unclear instruction manual for the non-intuitive ICOM scanner, only getting it tuned to a frequency after the second of two trains (392 and 435) had passed. It took until evening to figure out how to actually make it scan.
Scotch Block, Ontario
(map) Scotch Block is an excellent photography location at mp 30.0 CN Halton sub, between Milton and Georgetown.
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CN #392 climbs the hill with 2 BNSF pumpkins and a WC ex-Algoma Central unit.
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CN #435 comes down the hill.
August 27th, 2006
The day after two days of rain is generally known as Monday. This weekend has proven to be fairly poor for weather, but we nevertheless took out our new ICOM IC-R20 scanner and Larsen 5/8s wave antenna out to mile 30 to give it a real world test, having finally figured out how to program and use it. We just missed CN #394 with BNSF-only power, catching CN #338, #148, and #393.
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CN #338 climbs the escarpment.
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CN #148 whistles at us on its way up the hill.
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CN #393 heads West.
