Category Archives: USA & Canada Road Trip 2015-2016

USA & Canada Road Trip: Train Spotting & Railfanning

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While on the road trip we did come across the occiasional railroad and here are some short videos taken on the spare of the moment.


Two short clips of the MBTA Commuter Rail going through a crossing in Framingham, Massachusetts on 19 Nov & 17 Dec 2015. I had hoped to get a good video while I was here but due to various reasons we didn’t have time to go rail fanning. Sharing this mainly for the sound of the horn which I felt was worth it.


20th Dec 2015 in Nova Scotia, somewhere on the way to Halifax.
EMD SD75I CN5688 leads with GE C44-9W CN2650 and another EMD SD75I CN5660.
Sorry about the wind noise, it was very windy and very open area.


Canadian National Intermodal Freight heading into Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada on December 21st 2015.
Featuring CN GE ES44AC locomotives 2831, 2888, 2891 & 2821.

Note that due to the loud background chatter during the first part of the video I had to cut out some of the containers passing, but all the locomotives are shown. For the second part of the video I was able to get closer to the track, but unfortunatly all the locomotives had already passed at this point (I had hoped for more power mid train or at the rear but sadly not).

@1:09 2821.
@4:05 closer look trackside.

Main Layout – Broadway Limited Paragon 2 GE AC6000 CSX #634 / 2604

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A quick layout run around with my new Broadway Limited Paragon 2 GE AC6000 CSX road number 634 and BLI number 2604.
I test out some of the sounds and run it around the main loop a little. Amazing loco, fantastic sound and really great detail, really well made, solid model. I picked this up from Hobby Emporium Inc, Tyngsboro, MA, which is a super store with great friendly staff and were really helpful. This was during my trip to the US and then later Canada earlier in the year.

Florida to Nova Scotia by Road – Part 1: London to Orlando

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Today I leave on a flight to Orlando, Florida where I will be meeting up with a friend before embarking on a road trip up the east coast of the US and up into Canada over to Nova Scotia. Actually I’m writing this after the event, as I didn’t actually have time to pack properly, let alone write the post, but nevermind that. This is the shortest notice of a trip I have done todate, with only 2 weeks between the first mention of the idea and actually going! It started out as an invitation to visit my friend’s new place in Nova Scotia, but then I had the opportunity to fly out earlier and join the trip up from Florida. The time was so short that I didn’t even have time to fix the minor issues with my new laptop, and so ended up taking my 5 year old Vaio. As I couldn’t get my new laptop to play nice, I grabbed a spare SSD (which I normally use for video recording) and dropped that into my old vaio. The newer Vaio has a different type of SSD, and its an ultrabook, so it wasn’t practical to swap out the drive, where as the older model is only 6 screws or so. As I was worried about the airport security scrutinising my laptop and the risk of it saying it was unlicensed (as it was a re-install on a new drive and I didn’t have time to sort that out) I had to quickly go buy a retail copy of windows, I ended up with Windows 10 Pro (which I didn’t really want but its all they had) and I got that finished mere hours before running out the door for my flight. My packing was the worst and most unplanned ever, and forgot several items I really should of thought about, but I can get replacements in the US later. I hope to be able to get some photos and maybe some videos while out there, including some US or Canadian trains, but will have to see what happens there. I also still need to edit and upload the layout update ‘Weekend Engineering 4’ which I filmed before leaving, that should be fun with a core 2 duo, how I wish I had my i7 ultrabook with me….

DSC_0001Time for a quick coffee before my flight, in a very nice and cute penguin cup.