Amtrak's new venture cars at Charing Cross, 5/24/22

Give us a run down of what you saw, post pictures if you'd like...any info is welcome.
User avatar
David Collins
Youtube Railfan Guru
Posts: 2759
Joined: Fri Sep 25, 2020 10:46 am
Location: Bloomfield Hills, Mi
Contact:

Amtrak's new venture cars at Charing Cross, 5/24/22

Unread post by David Collins »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX6dILqE-OA

Bear with me, this is quite the story,

When I had received word that Amtrak Midwest's new venture cars were making their wolverine debut on Tuesday, May 24th, 2021, I wanted to make sure to get a good shot of them. Unfortunately, the train they first came in on, Amtrak 350, arrives at Pontiac before school is over, and it was finals week for seniors, so I had to miss that. However, Amtrak 355 is 350's counterpart (when it comes to the consist). What I didn't know was that 350 got into Pontiac late due to various reasons (from what I've heard, there were problems with the cars...uh oh...). However it still wasn't late enough to for me make it from school, so I gave my broski Sonny (who's a photographer) a call asking if he wanted to go see it on 355.

We met up at a pretty cool place, Charing Cross, and we waited, and waited, and waited. About 30-40 minutes after it was supposed to pass, the headlight finally became visible where we were standing (the abandoned platform at the old SEMTA/GTW station). However, it took nearly 15 minutes for the train to get there. As it got closer, I noticed that the marker lights were lit on the lead engine, and also it was going VERY SLOW (15 miles per hour when they normally go 60 miles per hour through there), which at that moment I put two and two together and realized this was a reverse move.

The conductor on the train was running it from the headend (he gave us some horn taps and a wave). The actual engineer was on the rear, who (I believe) happened to be RRFan user Buster Manning gave us a light show...? I dunno, still pretty cool though!

This was also the first video I shot in 4K with the drone

Buster Manning
Railroadfan...fan
Posts: 674
Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:16 pm

Re: Amtrak's new venture cars at Charing Cross, 5/24/22

Unread post by Buster Manning »

Nope, not me

Post Reply