I Woke up and headed downstairs to the restaurant in the hotel to have breakfast. They offered an All-You-Can-Eat breakfast buffet so I chose to have that. The pancakes I had were rather hard but other than that the food wasn’t bad. After breakfast, I packed up my bags and got ready to check out. The plan today would be that I would check out of the hotel and get a taxi over to the Amtrak Station in Amsterdam, spend the rest of the day there trainwatching and eventually meet up with Rich, and spend my last night of this trip at his apartment. I arrived at the station at 11:15am. Shown here are the trains I photographed while spending a disgustingly hot day at the Amtrak Station...
 This Local Freight came by with GP40-2 #6237 for power at 11:23am.  BNSF C44-9W #5432 leads Train Q-380 (Conrail Train IHSE) at 11:25am. BNSF Power is common on this train.  At 11:34am, Amtrak Train #48, the Eastbound Lake Shore Limited passes through doing about 70mph with P42DC #188 for power followed by 184.  C44-9W #9047 leads Train Q-157 through Amsterdam at 11:51am.  C40-8W #7924, a former LMS unit leads this Westbound Autorack train at 12:12pm.  AC6000CW #656 leads this Eastbound Manifest at 12:17pm.  Next up is this Eastbound van train with AC6000CW #608 for power at 12:52pm.  C40-8W #7362 (Conrail #6201) leads this Westbound van train at 1:07pm.  CSX C40-8W #7929, another former LMS Lease Unit leads Train Q-169 (Conrail Train TV-BN) on Track #2 at 1:25pm.  At 2:33pm, Amtrak Train #287 arrives into Amsterdam with P32AC-DM #717 for power.  Lease Unit HLCX #6515, an SD40-M3 with an SDP45 body shell leads this Westbound Autorack train at 2:55pm.  CSX C40-8W #7380 (Conrail #6244) passes through Amsterdam with Train Q-119 (Conrail Train TV-9) at 3:07pm.  At 3:35pm, Amtrak Train #286 arrived with P32AC-DM #706 for power.  SD70MAC #747 leads Train Q-156 (Conrail Train TV-302) at 4:09pm.  Union Pacific SD70M #4962 leads Train Q-151 (Conrail Train TV-151) at 5:11pm. |
This ended up being a very hot, humid day. I figured that by late afternoon we would have gotten a nasty thunderstorm but it never actually rained. Around 2:45pm, an ice cream truck showed up at the station and I wasted no time in buying a Watermelon Flavored Italian Ice treat and a can of pop to cool off with since all I really had was 1 can of warm Diet Pepsi in my bag and the water fountain in the station! This was a welcome site as several passengers also bought some cold treats from the ice cream truck! Things started getting interesting as the day wore on. Train #283 was otherwise estimated to arrive in Amsterdam at 5:00pm on time but repeated calls to Julie at and after 5:00pm said the train was not yet in Albany but was still estimated to arrive on time? It turns out that tragedy struck about 24 miles East of Amsterdam in the Town of Colonie. Amtrak Train #286 struck and killed a man walking his dogs alongside the tracks. The train was traveling in the section of track that is rated for 100mph speeds. This tied up Amtrak Traffic in both directions for about 3 hours while the investigation took place. Amtrak Trains #283 and #49 were stuck in Albany waiting for the track to reopen. The caretaker at the station here in Amsterdam kept everyone informed of the situation as it made local news headlines that evening. Rich showed up at the station around 7:30pm to pick me up and told us that Trains #283 and #49 were lined up at CP-169 waiting for a freight to clear. At 8:12pm, running over 3 hours late, Train #283 arrived at Amsterdam with repainted P32AC-DM #704. Shortly after he departed, #49 blew through at 70mph now running over 2 hours late! Rich and I left the station and took a drive out to see some other trainwatching spots. We ended up driving as far as Verona, near the Turning Stone Casino which is just East of Syracuse before we stopped at a gas station, got some snacks and hopped on the Thruway and headed back to Schenectady. It was after dark and there wasn’t much freight traffic all evening. So ends Day #5... |
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