Railfanning the Lake State Railway

I've been on vacation this week and my wife and I decided to go up north for a couple of days to my family's cottage in Harrisville, MI. While we were there we took a trip up to Alpena for a few hours and I drove by the Lake State Railway facilities and was lucky enough to get a quick look at a pair of locomotives recently repainted into LSRC's latest paint scheme. This was the first time I'd ever seen the new paint scheme in person.

Fast forward a few hours and as we were heading into Harrisville, I drove over one of the crossings with LSRC's mainline between Alpena and Bay City. There in the distance I saw some headlights coming my way so I stopped off on the side of the road and waited for the train to come through. I remember watching plenty of D&M / LSRC trains go by this exact same crossing when I was a kid, so it was kind of neat to to be there again.

I'm not sure of the train ID or anything like that, but I do know I was able to get some pictures of LSRC #'s 303 and 4303. After some searching around the internet, I learned that these two are the first GP40-3 Road/Slug set for LSRC and the first two four-axle locomotives to receive the new paint scheme. Click here for a link to what I found on RailPictures.net. Since this is a railfanning post, I'll let the pictures do the rest, here they are.

A look at the crossing where I watched plenty of trains go by as a kid.

A closer look at the actual grade crossing (the modeler in me was interested in this kind of detail)

You can just barely see the lights coming in this picture.

A little bit closer now, this was a full six minutes after the picture above. It was a pretty slow train.

Another shot for the modeler in me. This is the area just to the north of the crossing.

Finally, a train and we're only six pictures into this.

In the front was LSRC #303

Here is a look at the connection between the two locomotives.

Here is a good look at #303 after it crossed the road.

A look at #4303 running behind #303

Some patched hopper cars that look to be pretty old.

Not sure what exactly to call these with the platforms on each end, but they look cool.

This wasn't completely planned out, so it was kind of nice to be able to get some railfanning in during my vacation. This is the first time I've actually taken pictures of a moving train out in the real world  in at least 15 years. The last time I did I was probably around 10 years old and having my parents take the pictures for me in this exact same location. It definitely has me wanting to get out and do some more though. I'll have to see if I can set aside some time specifically for railfanning the LSRC again the next time I'm up north.