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North East Railfans Watch the Tracks with Live Train Cams and Maybe You Should Too

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Lake Shore Railway train cam looking east – CSX freight passing by

Do you have any idea how many long trains roll by every day?

How many of you know about the live train cameras located right next to the tracks at the Lake Shore Railway museum in North East? If you live or work here, you’re aware of how many trains we have every day, easily 50, often far more. There are double CSX tracks and a single Norfolk Southern track with all manner of freight on trains that are often well over 100 cars long. Amtrak passenger trains are also in the mix.

Quick and easy research project: Open the live camera feeds and count how many cars there are on each train. Cars are anywhere from 55 to 68 feet long, some are longer. Tank cars vary, but 60 feet is common. Calculate how long the train is. Prepare to be amazed.
Lake Shore Railway train cam looking west – CSX locomotives with around 100 oil tank cars in tow

Railfans often wait by the tracks at the museum to watch the trains go by, but they don’t have to and neither do you, just check out the live stream from the comfort of wherever you are.

Tank cars, probably more than you realize

It can be pretty interesting and thought provoking, especially when you see the trains that are nothing but tank cars filled with oil, a virtual pipeline of oil. Other trains might have 10 or 20 tanks cars of various chemicals mixed in between all sorts of cargo. Trains are great for moving freight, but oil, especially, is perfect for moving in pipelines and the recent chemical spill in Ohio makes an even stronger case for moving oil and other chemicals in pipelines wherever possible and it underscores the need for every community to have well trained personnel who can handle a major chemical spill from trains like these should it occur, something our municipal and county officials need to be prepared for.

Oil tank cars as far as you can see

All trains are not the same

There’s a lot more variety in the trains passing by than you might think, railroads share locomotive power and you will see not only CSX and Norfolk Southern locomotives, but Union Pacific, BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe), Canadian Pacific and Canadian National as well, in paint schemes old and new and occasionally you’ll see a locomotive with special commemorative paint, flatcars filled with unusual cargo like military equipment or some other very large industrial machinery and there’s even the rare sight of a passing steam locomotive, you just never know.

If you’ve ever been curious about what’s going through North East every day, and maybe you should be, take a look sometime at the live cameras. You might be surprised.

Train cam looking west
Train cam looking east

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Filed Under: North East live cameras, Trains and railroads Tagged With: ,

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Comments

  1. Don’t they need a cam set up for the RR tracks on Loomis where so many accidents have happened? Thank you for the info of the RR tracks and the Sunset cams!

    • These cameras were installed by the Lake Shore Railway Museum, not by the railroads or any municipal governments. For cameras to be placed anywhere else, some other group would have to do it.

  2. Just now, I decided to do what I suggested above and counted the cars on a CSX train heading east. I counted 173 cars, though I think that may be off by one or two because I was distracted for a moment. There was a wide variety of cars on the train, so lengths varied, but if we take the short length of 55 feet instead of what was likely a longer average length, I come up with 9515 feet. that’s 1.8 miles long. Think about that.