Jackpot

As I mentioned in my previous post, after a bit of early evening railfanning outside Calgary, I was not done with my train chasing for the night.

After a quick stop at my hotel, I decided to go see the Ogden Shops in Calgary. The directions are easy - go to the Ogden Road and you'll see them. I saw the shops, and shortly thereafter I saw CP 1601 and CP 1648 running light toward them.

Both of these units are GP9s. 1601 wears the short lived CP Rail System livery while 1648 sports faded CP Action Red with the multimark.

I saw a boatload of units at the Ogden Shops. You can view the day's sightings for a complete list of what I saw. It's not the easiest place to shoot without trespassing. I didn't get many decent shots because of this, but I did see a few interesting units, such as CP 1000. This unit was built as an SW1200 for the Milwaukee Road, before being acquired by CP's SOO lines and eventually being turned into a slug in 1996. It still has its cab (unusual for a slug) and sports a very simple lettering scheme.

Note the lack of exhaust stacks (slug=no engine).

That was all very exciting, but I decided I wanted to see the famous Alyth yard while I was here too. A short drive brought me to the Blackfoot Trail, which goes over the north end of the yard. I found a place to park and started to walk toward the overpass when I saw... classic passenger cars... on CP... this could mean only one thing.

The Royal Canadian Pacific was in town!

I sprinted toward the overpass while uncasing my camera and ripping the lens cap off.

They headed out just as I reached the top of the overpass, so I shot this video of their departure with my Canon T1i.

After they left, I took inventory of the yard. CP 9808 and 8871 were running light.
CP 6065 and 6614 were working hard shunting the yard. CP 9808 and 8871 ran past them to couple onto their train.

There were lots and lots of engines on the south side of the overpass. Unfortunately there is no walkway on that side, but I was able to take inventory of most of the units there. As I said, you can view the day's sightings to get a complete list.

That was a special moment for me to see the Royal Canadian Pacific train. I'm glad I was lucky enough to catch it.