Railfanning the Essex County Turtle Back Zoo Railroad on April 13, 2025

Описание: Welcome back to the Turtle Back Zoo Railroad! To start off the 2025 TBZ railfanning season, here’s a compilation from April 13, 2025, featuring both 306 and 382 out and about with their two trains. This time, we start at Turnaround Hill before ending the video at the Lion Parking Deck. It was not too busy, but as the railroad was training a new driver on this day, both trains were out and about. Therefore, it was a pretty good day to railfan!

For the 2025 season, a major change is being made to the blue train, in which the handicap coach is being reconfigured to hold only one wheelchair instead of two, therefore matching the configuration of the red handicap coach. Considering how there was (almost) never an instance where two wheelchairs were on the blue train, it made sense to make this change in order to remove wasted space. In addition, the original locks didn’t support most modern wheelchairs, including electric wheelchairs. New locks identical to the ones found on the red wheelchair coach are being installed during the conversion, which now makes both trains fully accessible for all. At the time of this posting, phase one, which includes the installation of the new wheelchair space and locks, is now complete. Phase two will be the new benches, which are still awaiting delivery. I will continue to document this conversion as the season moves forward. As far as mechanical logistics go, 199 is currently getting some motor work performed (which is close to being finished), while 306 and 382 are still using their swapped whistles that came as a result of the multi-chime whistle fail from last year's Holiday Lights Spectacular. It’s currently unknown whether or not those two locomotives will switch back to their own whistles in the future; I just hope this swap doesn’t become permanent!

Sorry for the general lack of uploads. I have been very busy at my full-time work, and the entire month of April has seen almost every weekend with rain, which affected the train. With the nicer weather slowly coming back, I’ll be sure to attempt to make more videos down the line. Also, in addition to the Holiday Lights Spectacular, I have plans to work on Halloween this year, which I will confirm with all of you by September. More to come soon. Until then, enjoy this video!

The second and last clips feature my buddy Nathan at the throttle. Subscribe to him here:    / @trainspottersforlife9182