One hour, two Amtrak trains

I took a weekday off to take care of some personal things, and realized I had a couple of hours in the early afternoon free. There are times when we are sitting in our backyard and can hear Amtrak trains blowing for the Morris Road crossing on the "high-speed" line between the Albany/Rensselaer and Schenectady stations. Despite being about six miles away, it is easy to hear. Originally the line was four tracks, but it was later cut down to one. In 2016, New York State funded adding a second track as part of its "high speed train" initiative.

Since the line is only mostly used for passenger trains, (usually only 4 trains each way per day), railfanning by the crossing would mean mostly just sitting around getting sunburned. But today I realized I could look up the Amtrak schedules online and determine about when they were due to cross the road. I then noticed that two trains, one EB and the other WB, passed the crossing within an hour of each other. That would be worth spending my my lunch time waiting.

My wife offered to come along with Harrison, so away we went. I checked the schedules again right before leaving and noticed that all of the EB trains were marked as "delayed". I didn't know why, but the website had revised train times so I adjusted my schedule.

When we arrived I found out why there were delays. One of the tracks was out-of-service for maintenance work, and we could see in the distance at least a half-dozen various track repair vehicles. There were also several construction trucks parked on the side of the road by the crossing.

Around the time the first train was due, three MOW vehicles rolled down the track to the other side of the crossing and parked. I assume that the workers wanted to be by their trucks for their lunch break instead of way down the track.

The first train was eastbound and its speed surprised me. It was hauling, which I think is around 70mph. It was also very quiet in its approach, and I can understand why people who aren't paying attention can have these trains sneak up on them.

The next train was a westbound train and it wasn't going as fast. I had crossed the tracks for a better picture angle, and as I walked to my car over the crossing a woman driving by yelled out the window "Wow, that was really flying!" Another view of the train is the lead off photo of this blog post.

As before, Harrison really didn't watch the trains but at least he didn't cry. After trainspotting, we drove to a nearby park and walked with our dog and played on a picnic blanket with Harrison. During that time, a third passenger train passed the park on the same track.

All in all, it was a pretty good afternoon.