Hedley Junction

[sailormatlac]

Serious rebuilding took part in Maizerets (D'Estimauville) yesterday. During the afternoon, I took some time to go to Maizerets Domain to take picture of vegetation, ditches and river there for scenery reference. I quickly found out the surrounding land was more than 5 to 7 feet lower than the roadbed.

So I did some jigsaw surgery!

Seriously, our original way to build benchwork really ?*$%*?$%@$#... Very little forgiving when doing landforms and not the best way to get a perfectly level benchwork. Never do that! IF I ever rebuild a benchwork, I'll do it like it should... Live and learn!



During the railfanning trip, I stumbled upon the old double track mainline hidden in grass. I knew it was there, but was sure it was pulled out during the recent track rebuilding. Looks like they didn't care to pull it up. So far, it is one of the rare remnant old QRL&PCo's electric traction golden days. The original 85 lbs rail was still there. So small, no wonder Murray Bay Sub was plagued with speed and weight restriction until they upgraded the track in the late 70s-early 80s.



Finally, I had a good surprised when I surveyed "La rivière aux taupins" - a small brook I once talked. The place was famous as a duck nesting area centuries ago and was known as La Canardière. Well, there was five Mallard ducks eating happily in all their glorious colors... Very nice birds, I could have spent the day watching them. I'm seriously thinking about adding ducks to this scene on the layout. Each time I go there, they are all over the railway bridge area.



This little railfan trip only made it apparent to me that Murray Bay Sub is now a thing from the past. The bogus touristic trains is just another gimmick that only killed the freight traffic when the clown took over the line. No offence intended, but touristic trains like Le Massif are the most boring thing you can watch. They are short, they run to fast too appreciate them, you can't feel the locomotive under real tractive efforts, they do no switching and you never see interchange cars. If it was a real suburban passenger train, that would be a different story, but as it is, it is pitiful. There's rumours that CN would handle freight traffic in the future. I remember there was such a provision when the line was sold to Le Massif, but I wouldn't bet my bread and butter on that. Only Donohue and a few lumber mills could still be customers and those industries are facing hard times.

Matt