Saturday, October 08, 2011

Monday's Canadian and a Bonus

VIA 6439 in Winnipeg
These fall colours are about as good as they get in Winnipeg.

On Monday October 3 I went out to shoot the Canadian as it left Winnipeg. As it turned out, it was about 45 minutes late leaving so I had time to pick my spot.

I decided to shoot it just west of Shaftesbury Boulevard, where CN has been widening the crossing as part of our IKEA complex. I figured it would be going slow through the work area, giving me a better chance to shoot every car.

VIA's Canadian with fall colours



After shooting it there, I pursued it, hoping that it would get a stop signal at Diamond. It didn’t… so I took a pacing video as I chased the train. A tripod would have been nice… but the bumpy dirt road didn’t help.




The Canadian had VIA 6439 and VIA 6407 leading 19 cars, still a respectable length.

Just after Diamond, it met a stationary train led by CN 2510.

CN and the Canadian

I gave up there because there’s no way to catch the Canadian on that road! The CN freight started moving just after the Canadian passed.

CN 2510 and the Canadian

The freight was interesting... it had CN 2510, CN 2324, CN 5268 and CN 7218 for power.

I saw CN 2510 one other time, back in April 2005 in Saint John. I just saw CN 7218 shunting in Regina back in August.  The other two were new to me.

CN 2510 in Winnipeg

Since they were just starting up, it was easy to get ahead of them and shoot a video.



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