Catch of the Day?

I was in Calgary with my wife this past weekend. She was attending a conference, so while she was there, I went railfanning. I went over to check out the Ogden shops and Alyth Yard. There was nothing truly special at Ogden. Alyth had quite a few units around, including one of the units from the Royal Canadian Pacific. CP 4106 looked a bit out of place surrounded by more modern units.

I stopped to watch some shunting at the north end of Alyth, where two sets of engines were both pushing back into the yard at the same time.

I resolved to go find the CN yard in Calgary. As luck would have it, it is not far away from Ogden Road. There I found two CN remote control GP9s (7077 and 7078) working the yard. Too bad the sun was on the wrong side.

All well and good. Shortly after I arrived, the crew from the GP9s stopped to observe a 3-unit consist coming in. Now THIS was an interesting consist.

OK, fine, CN 5756 is a standard old SD75I. In fact, I saw it just about one year earlier as the lead unit on CN 120 in Aulac, NB. But look at the second unit!

That's one of the ex-UP Dash 8-40C units that CN bought recently. This was the first that I've seen.

But wait, there's more!

Brand new ES44DC CN 2343 was the trailing unit. Ooh, shiny!

They parked and were refueled by a tanker truck for a few hours. The truck left but the units sat, so there was no opportunity for me to get on the sun side to get better shots. Ah well - it was great just to see one of the "new" ex-UP units.

There was one more special unit to be seen on Saturday, though...