CP's TEC train in New Brunswick, July 29, 2008. Photo by David Morris.
The CP TEC (Track Evaluation C?) train will be running over the Great Sandhills Railway in Saskatchewan tomorrow (Tuesday September 15). It should leave Swift Current between 07:00 and 07:30 and proceed to Leader by mid afternoon, then on to Burstall to tie up for the night.
The Great Sandhills Railway operates on the former Burstall and Empress subdivisions.
5 comments:
Cool post. I know CP abandoned the line in the 90's, but any idea why? I would think they'd want to avoid the heavy grades (1.3%) in Medicine Hat. Any knowledge on whether there were any grades on the GSR or Empress-Bassano line of 1% or more?
Err, I meant the Leader-Bassano line; i.e. the portion that's abandoned today. Did either that or the GSR line have 1%+ grades?
Hi Jim, I don't really know what the grades on the Empress and Bassano lines were. My understanding is that there wasn't much agriculture on the Bassano sub as the land is very dry. In my 1938 ETT the Empress sub ran between Swift Current and Empress, and the Bassano sub ran between Empress and Bassano.
That makes sense, but I am under the impression that the stretch of the Brooks Sub between Redcliff (Medicine Hat) and Brooks is similarly dry. While the Leader-Bassano line certainly wouldn't make sense from a local standpoint, I would have thought it would have made better sense for mainline/through traffic, as it was also around 9 miles shorter than via Medicine Hat, and Medicine Hat has those 1.3% grades going into and out of it from either direction. That's why I was wondering; maybe that route had worse grades or something on top of the fact that there was no local traffic. I'll let you know if I find out anything; that's been a relatively (in my opinion surprisingly so) under-discussed topic on any railroad forums I've looked through, and none of the old timetables I've checked out have info on that either.
You would need a track profile chart to be sure. I haven't seen any CP ones but I am sure they exist somewhere.
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