I am currently watching the webcam in Roanoke (19:30 BST UK time). There are regualrly interesting freight trains but today is the first passenger train I have seen.
It arrived about 15 minutes ago as a shove manouver from left to right and then pulled forward into the platform. It is headed by 3 Amtrak locos 176, 187 & 2.
I am wondering is this a normal service or a special train. There about 10 modern carriages at the head and currently there seem to be a number of private cars including 3 dome cars, one of which is unusual in that the dome is the whole length of the car.
A Great Dome and two private cars left Chicago on the #50 The Cardinal today. This could not have been the same cars you saw in Roanoke. There have been a lot of private car movements here in the U.S. over the last several weeks. A convention of private car owners was held recently in Colorado and there are a lot of these cars still trying to get back home.
Andy, I did a little more checking and what you likely saw was the “Virginia Autumn Special” sponsored by the North Carolina Transportation Museum. It is made up of private cars and likely was pulled by leased Amtrak power. Roanoke has no regular Amtrak Service.
Thank for the information, that fits the schedule exactly. It certainly was an impressively long train, far longer than the platform.
I managed to quickly grab some screen shots of the back end of the train which is where the private cars were. Unfortunately I did not think of this when the front of the train was in view.
According to the North Carolina Transportation Museum website the train was fairly full.
These screen shots were taken from the Hotel Roanoke webcam:
If reference is made to the www.pbase.com website and a search made for ROANOKE VA then quite a lot of railway pics are available including the infamous red caboose. [;)]