Diesel To New Canaan. On Thursday, August 24, 2023, MTA Metro-North Railroad operated a diesel test train on the New Canaan Branch Line from Stamford, Connecticut to New Canaan, Connecticut. This line has been out of service with bus shuttles replacing trains all summer while Metro-North upgrades infrastructure on the line, which will also increase speeds as much as 20 mph in some sections. The line is planned to return to rail service on Saturday, September 2, 2023. This line is exclusively served by Kawasaki M8s electric MU cars, so the presence of a "mini-bomb" (3 car) diesel train was highly unusual. BL20GHM 126 is one of 12 Brookville locomotives that CDOT and Metro-North purchased for branch line and work service. Note that because the line is out of service, the crossing gates are not active, thus railroad personnel were out to protect all of the crossings. BL20GHM 126 sits on the "main" track at the New Canaan station, the first of three tracks that it would cover during this test.
