My Night At Keith

CP 9804 and rainbow at Keith yard, Alberta

Keith is a yard on the the Canadian Pacific Laggan subdivision. It is listed in the 2009 Canadian Trackside Guide as:

Mile	STATIONS	Siding
9.6	KEITH	8945

It is listed as a siding, although to my eye it looks like a yard. I guess the reason for that is so trains can proceed on the main line at track speed rather than "reduced" speed.

I spent a little over an hour at Keith around sunset. You can see all my sightings here.

When I first arrived, there were two trains sitting in the yard, apparently waiting to head west. The first was an intermodal train with CP 8755, CP 8715, CP 8886, and CP 8574. Three ES44ACs and an "old" AC4400CW trailing.

The crew came out and took positions on both sides of the main line to inspect a train. Soon enough CP 9738 East came rolling through.


After that, it was 8755's turn to head west. I moved down to a little parking lot and shot them from there. You can see the Bow River in the background.




A quick rain shower came through and I got pretty soaked before aborting the taping and running for the car.

The second parked train did not have a crew, so it was clearly not going anywhere soon. I saw that RCMP unit CP 9501 was the second unit.


I already talked about the cabooses I saw at Keith.

The "catch of the day" was the last train I saw there, CP 9804 West. I heard them rolling through and took position down at the parking lot again. Just as they were coming into view, the last rays of sunlight shone through the clouds and made a rainbow. The train had CP 9804 and 9703 on the head end, and CP 9713 mid-train.

There were no other trains imminent, and it was getting near to 10 PM, so I headed out. The rainbow really topped off the evening for me!