The past few days have been very sunny and warm. Apart from working in the garden, this is also good weather for spending some time along the tracks. Tuesday evening after work I rushed to Hoeselt. I didn’t expect much, but I found out that HSL Belgium’s 186 383 was scheduled for a train to Antwerp. After parking the car though, I saw that a train was already on its way! I had barely enough time to run to the spot, carrying all my gear, and set up. As it turned out, Mattias drove the first train that I would see that evening. The red Vectron, fluo Traxx and interesting yellow first car made it a very nice train to look at in the evening light. Soon after came two loose engines from Lineas heading for Genk, both in a special livery. Would they maybe bring some train to Aachen later in the evening?

After these shots I moved further to where Dieter and Daan were standing. We didn’t have to wait long before some more colorful trains passed us: Rurtalbahn with its Lok-Spitze Vectron, BLS Cargo with one of their Alpinist Vectrons, and the expected purple HSL 186 383. This was much more than what I had expected!

And the party wasn’t over yet! Lineas’ “No Time To Waste” loco was also underway with a train to Germany. Time was limited to get to the next spot. It was all the more stressful because I had never been there and still had to find the way. Thanks to the good intel from Eurorailer and Bram finding the way was easy. I did have to run again with all my gear, but the panic shot of 186 454 turned out fine. Was this the end? Not really: I got to see 4 more trains before the sun finally sank under the horizon. The traction of these trains was, well, colorful again. A “das ist grün” Vectron from DB, an Alpha Traxx with Medway logo, and the Rainbow Traxx from Lineas. Not mentioning the bland Railpool Traxx with a very cool Ambrogio train.

What an evening this was. So many trains, and so much variation. Was I glad that I pursued on the moment that I didn’t expect much of the evening anymore.