Cape Breton & Central Nova Scotia Railway

I wonder if the financial company that bought Railamerica will sell off all of the railways it now has. Who would buy CBNS? CN?

Any updates on how well (or not) this RR is doing?
Also there is a Yahoo "Atlantic Rails" Group with a very active membership:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AtlanticRails/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Hello,
may I ask - what happend to the CB&CNS GP18 4700 ? Heard something about it was sold in 2003 . Who is the new owner ?
regards
Roland Marx
Germany

Although its not always accurate, the current 'Canadian Trackside Guide' lists the 4700 as stored on the CBNS. The guide has the unit number in parentheses which "identifies that unit is stored unserviceable pending repair, declared surplus or retirement." The previous two 'guides' also listed 4700 this way. It could be that the guide is out of date or that 4700 really is OOS.
Perhaps someone closer could verify.

My last visit to the CB&CNS was on 5 feb 2007 and the 4700 are on the dead line with several unit. Here is a link of what they look like: http://s196.photobucket.com/albums/aa28 ... B4700a.jpg

Looks sad. Thanks for posting the photo link.

I think of the MLW's that this little GP18 helped send to the scrapper. NO PITTY HERE

HI I'm working on a project to save the history of the S&L and use it as a trail with as much history a we can find. We need pictures and any info that we can find. Since DEVCO has closed the old buildings are all but gone and with out pictures along this trail no one will remember the sites the stations collierys etc. any help would be great

thanks lawrence

[email protected].

Had my camera with me on the way home from work last Friday evening and caught westbound Cape Breton & Central Nova Scotia #305 stopped at Antigonish, NS.



The former CN Station in the background is now the Antigonish Heritage Museum. CN sold the line to Rail America in 1993.

Here’s some shots when we had passenger service here too:

- CN #19 Cabot w/b with through cars to Montreal, December 27, 1975.

- VIA-CN #19, September 1976

- VIA #603 w/b from Sydney to Halifax, March 1983.

Nice shots NS VIA FAN! Very cool to see the leased CN GP40-2L mixed in with the HATX units. I really do wish the station was still in use and we still had VIA service here. A couple of RDCs running the line from Syndey to Halifax just makes a lot of sense, but too bad short-sighted central-Canadian focused governments had their way.

I've been living in Antiognish for 3 years now, and while I have seen a number of trains going through (and I hear them all the time), I haven't been able to make it trackside for any pictures. With only one or two trains in a typical day, just heading down for the day to wait for a train could be a long ordeal! (I'm used to being near the CN/VIA main in Southern Ontario, where having to wait as much as an hour for the next train seems like a long time!)

Do you know anything about the CB&CNS schedule, if there really is one? I really want to be able to do some railfanning here, and if I had a general idea of when the trains were coming through it would help a lot. Is there any general pattern or typical timetable to their operations?

Does the CB&CNS still deliver Cars of Fuel to the Bulk Fuel Dealer at Antigonish?

timberley wrote: Do you know anything about the CB&CNS schedule, if there really is one? I really want to be able to do some railfanning here, and if I had a general idea of when the trains were coming through it would help a lot. Is there any general pattern or typical timetable to their operations?

CBNS 306 usually passes through Antigonish around 12 > 1pm then to Havre Boucher where it becomes 305 and is back in Antigonish at suppertime: 5 > 6pm.

Havre Boucher is usually a good spot to railfan mid-afternoon with 305 making up their train from the cars brought over from Port Hawkesbury/Point Tupper by a local……occasionally 306 will go across the causeway to do the work at Tupper.

You can get some good shots of 305/306 working Havre Boucher yard with Cape Breton in the background across St. Georges Bay......
......then follow it back with good photo opportunities from the Trans-Canada 104 overpass at Monastery and on through Tracadie, Afton and then Williams Point with Antigonish Harbour in the shot.

sd40luver wrote:Does the CB&CNS still deliver Cars of Fuel to the Bulk Fuel Dealer at Antigonish?

No more deliveries to the bulk fuel plant. The last time I remember any setting out or picking up cars in Antigonish were pulpwood cars at Northeast Timber which was behind the Tim Hortons at the east end of town.

NS VIA FAN wrote: CBNS 306 usually passes through Antigonish around 12 > 1pm then to Havre Boucher where it becomes 305 and is back in Antigonish at suppertime: 5 > 6pm.

Havre Boucher is usually a good spot to railfan mid-afternoon with 305 making up their train from the cars brought over from Port Hawkesbury/Point Tupper by a local……occasionally 306 will go across the causeway to do the work at Tupper.

You can get some good shots of 305/306 working Havre Boucher yard with Cape Breton in the background across St. Georges Bay......

Thanks for the info! I'll try to get out soon when I have a free afternoon and see if I can catch these in Antigonish. I unfortunately don't have access to a vehicle these days, making the possibility of heading up to Havre Boucher unrealistic. However, I have seen a few trains running across the causeway this summer while travelling through to Sydney/Ingonish (once was the local, another time appeared to be the 306 running across).

Just caught the 306 (I believe) heading eastbound through Antigonish, but around 5:35pm. Happened to have the camera with me so I got some good photos, which I'll put up soon when I can.

Here's 306 at Antigonish on Oct. 13, 2010, around 5:40pm. Lead units were LLPX GP38-2 2269 and two HLCX SD40-2s.


*While it looks like that car was taking a huge risk, the train was only moving at around 15mph, and the car had stopped and started once he saw how much time he had...not nearly as dramatic as it looks! **EDIT* Ken V. pointed out that this is not in fact illegal in NS, so my assertion that it was has been removed**