Much Better

After complaining about "blah" shots, I am going to follow up with a few much nicer shots. Monday noon, I went looking for the Canadian up on Wilkes Avenue. I decided to shoot from near the top of the overpass to get a little height and a change in angle. What do you think?

The Canadian was a few minutes late, but had a bonus of two cars dead heading behind VIA 6411 and VIA 6408... diner Imperial and Assiniboine Park.

I spun around for the "going away" shot and framed the Canadian under the overpass.


I turned around and there were headlights approaching on the south track. It turned out to be CN 101, led by single engine CN 2254.


One more engine was about 1/3 of the way back in the train, CN 2256.


That was all very exciting, but where are the good shots?

I headed toward home, and as I crossed the CP La Riviere subdivision on the Perimeter Highway, I saw a string of grain cars headed south. I took the exit and chased the train. It was easy to catch up to it, as I believe the speed limit is a mere 15 MPH here and the limit on the highway parallel to the tracks is 100 km/hr. I saw SD90 CP 9109 and SD40-2 CP 5764 were hauling just over a hundred grain cars.

I set up just south of the grain elevator in La Salle and waited for the train. The benefit of such a slow train is that you get to take a lot of shots as the train passes the elevator! This was my favourite.


Once the head end passed, I jumped into the car and got ahead of them for one more series of shots outside the town. The sun was dancing in and out of view but I was lucky to get a few with some sun on the engine.


I was very pleased with my CP shots. It was well worth the 15 minutes it took to chase and shoot the train!