Railfanning The Brooks Subdivision

I was in the Calgary area again late last week. In the early evening I was southeast of Calgary, heading back in, and I saw a few trains on Canadian Pacific Railway's Brooks subdivision on my way.

The first train was a local switching an industry at Carseland. Three GP38s were shunting cars. They were a bit of an odd triplet, with modern block lettered CP 3078 leading, CP 3131 with the beaver emblem in the middle, and CP 3074 complete with multimark trailing.




I noticed a CP train stopped on the mainline, near the Viterra elevator in Carseland. I figured they were meeting another train, until I got closer and realized there was no crew in the train. CP 8715 and CP 8561 were just short of a rural crossing.

Looking down the track, I could see the end of the train was still on the mainline while the head end was well into the siding. I guess they couldn't fit the train in the siding without blocking a crossing, so they fouled the main.

I headed toward Calgary, but it wasn't long before I decided to head off the road to Dalemead. This place appears in the CP timetable so I figured there must be a siding there. After about 4 km of gravel road, I arrived at the tiny community of Dalemead. There is indeed a siding there, as well as some stored freight cars. Looking toward Calgary, I saw the signals were lit red.

Now, CP generally uses approach lit signals, meaning they only show lights if there is a train near them. The red lights told me that A) there was nothing going toward Calgary (I knew that anyway because of the train fouling the main at Carseland), and B) there was a train approaching from Calgary. I waited and sure enough a general freight rolled slowly into view with CP 9826 and CP 9504.


After that, it was clear sailing into Calgary. But that was not the end of my railfanning that evening. Oh no, not at all...