On Thursday the 28th I didn’t get a chance to head out in the daylight hours – we had a “happy hour” after work with our entire team, so I couldn’t miss that. But once that was wrapped up, I headed out for a while and managed to catch trains on both the Norfolk Southern Lehigh Line as well as CSX’s Trenton Line.
My intention for the night was to find and shoot at the old Belle Mead station on the CSX Trenton Line after a suggestion from Steve Barry. But on the way down, and while I was in the Manville/Hillsborough area, I heard NS 65J – a loaded unit trash train – heading through Bound Brook. So I decided to take a little side trip and bag them at the Valley Road crossing in Hillsborough – I figured that was the best place to get ahead of them.
As I crossed over the tracks I could see his headlights in the distance. So I did a quick setup, and a couple minutes later, 65J came rolling across the crossing.
[cpg_imagefixnormal:114783]Not a bad start to the evening. Now to get back on track, so to speak, and find the Belle Mead station.
Well, I couldn’t find the dirt road that Steve told me about in the dark, so I opted to continue southwest and go back to the Hopewell station – somewhere I knew exactly how to get to.
As I pulled into the parking lot deja vu set in as a train was rolling east past the station. The question was, would this be the only train tonight?
After his markers cleared, I checked the signal to the east – it was red. OK, but the question is will it stay lit after the tail end of this guy clears the block?
I got my answer in a couple minutes, as another eastbound was calling a signal to the west of Hopewell, and then the signal turned green. Cool! Well, this turned into a parade as three trains in a row came through Hopewell, the third being Q740 – the loaded unit Tropicana juice train (which I screwed up the timing on the shot – the nose of the lead locomotive is way too close to the edge of the frame).
[cpg_imagefixnormal:114782] [cpg_imagefixnormal:114781] [cpg_imagefixnormal:114780] [cpg_imagefixnormal:114779] [cpg_imagefixnormal:114778] [cpg_imagefixnormal:114777]After Q740 cleared the signal, it went dark, and the scanner followed, only waking up with Q740 calling signals to the east. I figured that would be it for the evening, so I packed things up and headed back to the hotel. Not too bad of an evening…even considering the screwup.
Thanks for looking!
Tom
