… of my enforced hibernation and I’ve actually made it out of the house.
And even as we speak, I am hurtling through the night and the Canadian Maritime Forest somewhere in between Miramichi and Bathurst. Well, not exactly “hurtling” because the speed of this train is, shall we say, “disappointing”.
Last night I went to bed early with the idea of having a decent 10-hour sleep but in actual fact I didn’t sleep at all. Not for a minute. I saw every minute of that ten hours and probably much more besides.
When the alarm went off I arose from the bed, did some paperwork and then packed everything ready to go. We had a hot drink and then headed to the bus stop in Florenceville. We arrived early for the bus too – regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on one occasion it came early and left me behind.
The drive down to Moncton in the frost was quite uneventful.
There was also quite a lot of fog everywhere this morning as you can tell in this photo taken at the company’s offices in Fredericton.
We stopped there to pick up passengers and the wait meant that we could nip to the bathroom at the petrol station next door.
As it happens, I’m a big fan of these Prevost coaches. They are nice and big and comfortable. Although this one is registered in Nova Scotia you’ll notice that the licence plate says “apportioned”. What that apparently means is that the road tax is shared between Nova Scotia and the other Provinces in which the vehicle operates.
You’ll see that it carries passenger authorisation plates for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Our bus was not actually all that late, which makes a change. But now there’s a four-hour wait for the train, always assuming that it’s on time of course, which is unlikely.
When they opened the check-in, I deposited my suitcase and staggered over to the chemist’s for some medication, and then across the road to Sobey’s for some supplies for the journey. I suppose that I’m going to start eating and I want to have some food when I’m ready.
Waiting here in the waiting room at Moncton station a train suddenly appeared, so I photographed it thinking that it was mine.
However it turned out to be a passing freight train, double-headed with a Canadian National locomotive that I couldn’t identify at the front. If it’s 9551, it’s a GP40-2LW built in 1975.
The second locomotive is 2754 and is in the livery of Citibank’s “Citicorps Railmark Incorporated”, a company that leases railway equipment to various railways, but she was apparently actually purchased by Canadian National earlier this year.
She’s a model ES44AC built by my former employers, General Electric, and a similar locomotive carrying that number was built for the Union Pacific Railroad.
My train pulled up a short time later, double-headed by two locomotives that I was not able to identify. She was only 20 minutes late, which is something of a record,
As you can see, the train went past the station and then reversed in to the platform which seemed to me like a strange way to do things but it obviously works for them.
Once it was in at the platform we had to walk almost the whole length of the train to the carriage that was apparently allocated to us
For a change, I’m in the modern part of the train. It might be much better fitted out but it’s not as comfortable which is rather bizarre.
So off we went with me coughing all the way, and I’ve eaten a banana and a lump of baguette, the first food that I’ve had for 72 hours. So now I’m going to settle down and try to sleep. Surely I can’t go 48 hours without any sleep at all?
