I'm like the US Postal Man.....

I'll brave all weather elements to catch me some trains.


Eric and I headed up to Dickerson, Maryland today to check out a new place for some railfanning. When we got to the car we had clear blue skies, but as I was getting ready to back out of our spot I looked left and saw some big dark clouds moving in rather fast. Eric said let's just go since we are already down here so we took off. The wind was a blow'n and the rain was a fall'n, but we found that it was tappering off as we drove past Point of Rocks on our way to Dickerson.

As we were crossing the Monocacy River we noticed traffic was stopped and a fire truck backing up towards us. As we came off the bridge we saw that cars were turning around and that the police had the road blocked due to trees that had fallen in the roadway. We got turned around and were going to find a different route but that was going to take about 40 mins. We decided to backtrack our way back to Point of Rocks.

We pulled in behind the station and got setup with the laptop and converted scanner so that we could monitor the rails for movement. About 20 mins after our arrival we were greeted with CSX 279 heading WB from Rockville with empty coal cars. We were so excited to get some action from the tracks coming from this direction for a change.



After the train passed I headed back to the car to escape the cold and wind. Eric informed me that we had some movement on the "hot tracks" as I like to call them and I headed towards the station to find my spot. I happened to notice the time and had a gut feeling that I was going to have a little disappointment. Sure enough. I got this great picture of Amtrak's Capitol Limited (enging 59) on a WB approach from Washington, DC.



The slight disappointment was that it wasn't a freight train which I truly prefer. But it was a train nonetheless.

After the train cleared I headed back to the car and we called it a day since the rails were looking pretty quiet and the skies were starting to look questionable again.

As always...it was worth the short trip from home. Next time we'll definitely check out Dickerson but will probably...more than likely end up at the ole Rocks.