"Up North" Gawking (District 1 sightings)

Another POWA with seven engines, and six big G's. They're waiting at 120 for clearance east.

Anyone had heard of either a derailment or a stop & protect at Leeds Jct. Rd.?

I went by last night and noticed red tape strung from the crossing light post to where the signal box was. Thats right, was. Its flat, still secured to the ground by the footings and conduits. Was definitely hit hard, from the looks of it by something running roughly parallel to the tracks. Could have been a vehicle, but something 'unrailed' looks more likely.

I received a notification on Facebook about that. It was a vehicle crash that took out the control box. Notification was as follows.

Jan. 17. 10:24am
Wales, Me. MVA (Leeds Junction Road). Single Vehicle hit Railroad Crossing Controls.
Patient refusing Medical. Railroad has been notified.

I guess they did a number on it because I heard District 1 telling the train crew that they would be out for a week.

Another late POWA, they got into Danville at around 15:00 with NS 3489/MEC 370/MEC 510/MEC 317, but they had to wait a while for DJ-1. They went up the SLR main to drop some cars, then headed back to their train to wait until DJ-1 got that switched up. Amazingly, they were on the move about an hour later, got a few shots of them before the light faded:

Coming up on Poland, there wasn't much color in the sky, and it was fairly cloudy.


Then onto Hacketts, some clouds moved out of the way, and provided a bit more light:



Then the final shot at the rock cut in Auburn near 164, nearly missed this one due to an accident on Washington St, a guy wrapped his pickup around a tree, and there was another car off to the side missing the front bumper. Fortunately, seemed like the truck driver was alright, struck on the passenger side.



Got a bit of lens flare on that, and it ended up being the final shot of the day, too little light to continue on. D1 told them to tie down by the Annabessacook Rd. since they didn't have a recrew on hand.

Mikejf wrote:I received a notification on Facebook about that. It was a vehicle crash that took out the control box. Notification was as follows.

Jan. 17. 10:24am
Wales, Me. MVA (Leeds Junction Road). Single Vehicle hit Railroad Crossing Controls.
Patient refusing Medical. Railroad has been notified.

I guess they did a number on it because I heard District 1 telling the train crew that they would be out for a week.

Thanks!

Yeah, quite a number is right! The floor of the box is in place, or close. The walls are laying flat on the floor. I'll take a picture tomorrow if I can remember to grab my camera. It's a sight...

>Got a bit of lens flare on that, and it ended up being the final shot of the day, too little light to continue on. D1 told them to tie down by the Annabessacook Rd. since they didn't have a recrew on hand.

Yeah, you know what? The lens flare made the shot. Kudos.

From CentralMaine.com:

CentralMaine.com wrote:Pan Am Railways is again under fire from Oakland residents for leaving railroad cars idle on sidings in town for months on end.

Residents of Railroad Avenue in downtown Oakland say about 100 cars have been left idle and vacant for about three months near their homes. At night, the neighbors say, they hear people in the vacant cars.

Jennifer Lally, of Railroad Avenue , said she and her husband, Daniel, looked into one of the train cars and saw empty beer cans, bedding and clothes.

“It looks like there’s evidence of drug use,” she said.

There were also beer cans that had been cut in half and had ashes in them that looked like wadded up newspaper that had been burned. Lally said she had concerns about the fires.

Read the rest of the article at: https://www.centralmaine.com/2015/01/21 ... residents/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So they openly admit to trespassing on railroad property? Nice.

It would be nice if PAR could at least send someone to close the dang doors and put metal seals or something on them. Seals wouldn't keep a determined intruder out, but would show the cars weren't totally abandoned. "The [broken windows] theory states that maintaining and monitoring urban environments to prevent small crimes such as vandalism, public drinking and toll-jumping helps to create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness, thereby preventing more serious crimes from happening." <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory>

Makes sense to me, but I know how corporate inertia, etc., can be.

690 wrote:So they openly admit to trespassing on railroad property? Nice.

There are two "crimes" described in this article: people loitering/sleeping/living inside the boxcars, littering in/around them, vandalizing them, lighting fires inside them, etc.; and abutting property owners who took a quick peek inside, followed by immediately contacting the railroad and the police.

I'm curious why you chose to call out the latter rather than the former.

If you're my neighbor, you're away on vacation, and I hear strange voices coming from your garage, I might venture onto your property to take a closer look, followed by alerting you and the local police after I discovered that the garage was littered with charred Natty Ice cans and syringes. In doing so I would have openly admitted to trespassing on your private property. Would you be more concerned about that than about the hooligans who trashed your garage?

Tough sh*t about the cars. The RR won't close doors unless they are a threat to passing trains. Customer opens and closes doors.

Send a MEC cop to take a look every so often.

newpylong wrote:Customer opens and closes doors.

Okay, but when might any of those have last been on a customer's property? If the cars say Guilford on them, then maybe Guilford (or whatever it's called this week) should close 'em up.

I do agree that hobos/tramps/vagabonds/transients/derelicts and the local "wayward yootz" should just stay the hell off RR property, or get county-funded accommodations.

Send a MEC cop to take a look every so often.

Are they back up to two for all of Maine now? I know of one, and there might be another down Portland way.

MEC407 wrote:

690 wrote:So they openly admit to trespassing on railroad property? Nice.

There are two "crimes" described in this article: people loitering/sleeping/living inside the boxcars, littering in/around them, vandalizing them, lighting fires inside them, etc.; and abutting property owners who took a quick peek inside, followed by immediately contacting the railroad and the police.

I'm curious why you chose to call out the latter rather than the former.

If you're my neighbor, you're away on vacation, and I hear strange voices coming from your garage, I might venture onto your property to take a closer look, followed by alerting you and the local police after I discovered that the garage was littered with charred Natty Ice cans and syringes. In doing so I would have openly admitted to trespassing on your private property. Would you be more concerned about that than about the hooligans who trashed your garage?

The latter is going to happen no matter if the doors are closed or not. As for taking a peek, there's not a problem with that, but when you're actively climbing around on the cars to look inside, that's when it becomes an issue. They already say they heard voices and whatnot coming from the cars, they can simply call the railroad based on that, there no need to climb around to see what's going on.

MEC407 wrote:

690 wrote:So they openly admit to trespassing on railroad property? Nice.

There are two "crimes" described in this article: people loitering/sleeping/living inside the boxcars, littering in/around them, vandalizing them, lighting fires inside them, etc.; and abutting property owners who took a quick peek inside, followed by immediately contacting the railroad and the police.

I'm curious why you chose to call out the latter rather than the former.

If you're my neighbor, you're away on vacation, and I hear strange voices coming from your garage, I might venture onto your property to take a closer look, followed by alerting you and the local police after I discovered that the garage was littered with charred Natty Ice cans and syringes. In doing so I would have openly admitted to trespassing on your private property. Would you be more concerned about that than about the hooligans who trashed your garage?

I would even take it one step further and fully challenge the idea that the neighbors committed any crime whatsoever. I'm not going to dig through the legal doctrines right this moment but suffice it to say I doubt very much that abutters and neighbors "in the general vicinity" could or would be charged with trespassing for checking on possible criminal activities on a railroad Right of Way.

I would even take it a second step further and assert that some of the property owners may have residual rights, privileges or other legal status in regards to the specific section of Right of Way that passes over land which once was a fully unencumbered section of their land parcel even if they are not the original owners who ceded the land to the railroad (in this case well over 125 years ago).

690 wrote:
The former is going to happen no matter if the doors are closed or not. As for taking a peek, there's not a problem with that, but when you're actively climbing around on the cars to look inside, that's when it becomes an issue. They already say they heard voices and whatnot coming from the cars, they can simply call the railroad based on that, there no need to climb around to see what's going on.

Where in the article does it say that the neighbors were actively climbing around on the cars? I've now re-read the article three times and I don't see that. It says they looked inside, which would require no climbing at all if the doors were open. It might not even require being on the ROW if the neighbors have a clear view of the cars from their yard.