OK this was the coolest railfaning night I've ever had. It was supposed to be a 30+ mile bike ride, and I didn't even come close because I spend most of the night chasing trains
So I started in winchester and headed north and didn't see much of anything till I got to mishuam, and I saw the gravel train go by. Then I got to the cement plant on the wilmington woburn line and they were switching it out. I've never gotten to see them switching that place before. It was very interesting. The crossing lights on the old woburn loop don't go on until the train is practically on top of the crossing. And you gotta figure people that drive that road often probably have never seen a train going across the street. So this car slammed on its brakes as it almost got side swiped by a train. So that whole thing was very cool. I even got a wave from the guy on the back of the hopper, who must of that I was some kind of wierdo -he was right- anyway.
So then the train headed south. I was going to keep heading north but i had a change of plans. So I followed it south to the lights right before anderson station. It waiting there for maybe 20 minutes until an mbta train came and passed it. So no activity in wilmington cold storage. Plus large piles of sand, so no activity anytime recently either. So once it started moving, I followed it further and it picked up one box car at the plywood place. Didn't drop anything off though. Also for some strange reason, the little white security pickups were ignoring me even though i was "seanking" around behind all the offices.
Then it headed up to tighe/rhostiens, pulled a bunch of cars out of rhostiens, and then dropped off a bunch at both places.
Meanwhile another pair of MBTA trains flew by. At this point I started to get cold so I took off, plus I don't think there are any more customers, so it would be running straight to... boston i guess.
So the whole train was about 25 or so cars I'd say. It had maybe 8 filled with scrap metal, including lots of car wheels. (it was parked under olympia ave for a while ) Any idea where these were off to?
This was pretty fricken sweet! Hopfully next time I go out for an urban ride, hopefully I won't have as much train luck so I can actually get some biking in