Missed again

I am not a very serious railfan.
I can tell you the models of the Ontario Northland's locomotives and I know where to lookup where their passenger cars originated but the minute I see much else I am hopelessly lost. I have never spent days chasing trains up and down dusty roads or climbed high cliffs to take spectacular shots of trains in mountains.

What I do is walk over to the station when the train is going to be there and take some pictures. One time this summer I did wait for the Northlander (Toronto to Cochrane) where the tracks crossed a river channel just north of New Liskeard but that is about it.
I have taken lots of pictures of the Ontario Northland tracks that go out to the airport in Moosonee. These are a relatively recent feature of the line -- the extension of the tracks past the former military base and across Butler Creek was a bit controversial. Local truckers feared they would lose business when freight that was formerly offloaded to trucks at the station and driven to the airport ended up staying on rails the whole way there.

Today, there is a small bridge across Butler Creek and a couple of tracks at the airport that are mostly used for cargo heading up north or into the warehouses near the airport.

Two pictures I do not have are those of a train crossing the Butler Creek bridge and of switching at the airport itself.

I have lots of pictures of trains crossing the Store Creek rail bridge; I have a pretty good idea when the train is going to go across and sometimes I have the patience to wait a few minutes for it.

Freight activity does not have to adhere to the same kinds of schedules as passenger traffic. It is not easy to predict when a train is going to be at the airport. Twice, I have been at the former base when I saw trains running along the line to the airport.

Tonight was one of those nights. Naturally no camera with me. It was raining and it was dark but I bet I could have gotten some kind of shot as the locomotives and their cars headed past on the other side of the former military buildings as I watched from the parking lot of the convenience store at the base, Le Tempo.

Oh well, another time perhaps I will get lucky.

A few views of the same part of Belleville

I wrote yesterday about figuring out the viewpoint/direction of one postcard by looking at another. To do so I went through a bunch of old cards of Belleville. Interesting to see how many come from similar viewpoint. the most recent one could be aerial but wonder if the others done from the top of the city hall clock tower?
The first one shows the lower (Bridge Street) bridge shown in the postcard I posted earlier, the last two show the current arched bridge.

Solving a postcard mystery with another postcard

I have a few old postcards of Belleville, Ontario (and other places). For most of them, it is easy to figure out what area they cover, there are obvious and persistent landmarks that I can pick up. Sometimes I am confused.

One postcard that confused me for a while was called Birds Eye View, Looking Down the bay, Belleville. I thought this must be looking south, towards the Bay (of Quinte). But I could not place it. One building that seemed very distinct was the reddish one with curved window tops in the lower right. It made me think of Belleville's gothic City Hall but, the City Hall has a tower on the street side.

Then I looked at another postcard, Front Street and the Moira River. This one is clearly taken looking north past the intersection of Front  and Bridge streets. And I saw the same building on the right side of the picture. So, now I know the first shot was taken looking away from the Bay, up Front Street towards the north.