Saturday, April 18, 2015

September 27, 2014 - Part 1

I'm going back into last year's photos for this one. I'm surprised I never posted this before, actually.

I awoke early on Saturday, September 27, 2014. I wanted to go photograph the sunrise at the grain elevator at Meadows just outside Winnipeg before heading to the model train show. I was hoping to catch a train by the elevator as well. As it happened, I got everything I wanted, and more!

When I arrived at the elevator, the sun hadn't broken over the horizon yet. I decided to start on the north side of the elevator, a side I hadn't photographed much.

The first thing I noticed was the incredible number of swarming, biting insects. You would think that after all of the elevators I've shot, I'd remember to bring bug spray... but no. I soldiered on, taking photos while batting flies away.

The sun came up.

I had to take a selfie, of course.

The bugs were pretty bad, but I was determined to continue, as the sunrise was just beautiful.
(you can buy this print)

At 07:55 the first train of the day came along, an eastbound led by CP 9628 and trailed by CP 8641.

The video will show how many bugs there were...


I took off in pursuit of the train, but I noticed very quickly that they were slowing down. They took the siding at Meadows (which is east of the actual town) to wait for a pair of westbound trains.

First up was CP 8551 West.
Since shooting into the sun strips most of the colour out of a photo anyway, why not process it as black and white?

The meet:

Here's the video:


CP 8551 West had CP 8932 behind it and CP 9804 DPU in the middle of the train.

The second westbound train was powered by CEFX 1032... just the one unit.

Here's the meet:

And the video...


Once 1032 passed on by, CP 9628 got the green light and throttled up.

By now I was out of time and so I headed for the train show. It was well organized and well attended. I had a good time walking around chatting with friends and looking over the tables. I scored a nice Bowser CP M630 for my tiny fleet.


After the show, I headed toward home. I had a bit of time left before I had to be home, so I drove alongside the CN Rivers subdivision. There I saw three trains, including a very interesting container train! More to come...

Read part 2

No comments: