MAINTENANCE DAY ON THE CAPTINA DIVISION

Traveling over to my mom's on a very fine June day, I wondered down St. Rt. 148 towards Powhatan Point heading towards NS' mine loader.
As I pulled up, the coal train just arrived at the loader. As loading the train is a very slow process and I didn't have the time to loiter, I moved on, hoping to catch either a loaded on heading towards the river, or another empty one heading up to the mines.
In the back of my mind is the last time I came this way and caught all three running the line.
But, as I traveled on, I came across a loaded train just sitting on the main and this got me wondering if he was waiting on an empty coming from the Point.

Well, as this photo shows, this crew is the answer why the first train was not in much of a hurry, nor was the second, aas I found a maintenance crew transferring from rail to road at a crossing. It was a very interesting watching the crew work. Basically it is all done with hydraulics. I've run things similar-lift or lower the lever and the rail wheels go up or down. In this case the wheels were going up and the truck drives off the crossing and on its way!
So, the rails are clear for all to proceed, right? Wrong! A little bit further down the line is this contraption that I have no idea what it is called. What it did was lift and tamp the ballast around the rails and ties. At least that is what I saw it do.
Here is a series of photos of this machine.

The first show the machine approaching the crossing (a different one than the first), then it cross the road, pounding on the rocks. Look closely at photo three and you can see the rods coming down.
Finally, after very slow progress the machine is across the road. For being on a country road, there was a lot of traffic waiting to go!
I must have been heavy maintenance day, on down the road I caught a glimpse of another rail truck with crew working on the rails (too distance for a photo).
So goes maintenance day on the Captina Division