A Heck of a Morning

I went out early on Sunday, March 18th (2018) to see some trains and grain elevators. I really wanted to photograph a grain elevator at sunrise. It turned out that it was overcast so there really wasn't a sunrise. No worries - the trains still move and the elevators are still there!

I decided to head toward Gregg and Harte on the CN Rivers subdivision. I was considering an overhead shot from the overpass by the Harte grain elevator. I headed out around 6:15 AM, before the sun came up.

Bloom

I drove past Portage la Prairie to Bloom, by the new G3 elevator. I saw there was a train in the 134-car loop track. I pulled off the highway to take a few photos when I noticed a green signal facing west, and a headlight in the distance to the east. I set up my tripod to capture the action.

The sun was still below the horizon, so it was long-exposure time! A 2.5 second exposure captured the gate coming down, the train in the loop track, and the green-over-red signal.

Dropping the gate

21 seconds later, here's the train smearing through the scene. See anything unusual about the signal?

Smeeeeeaarrr

Both the green and red are lit in the top signal! The long exposure captured both the green signal at the start of the photo and the red that came on after the locomotives passed the signal. By the way, the train had CN 2428 and CN 2153 leading, not that you can tell from the photo!

Once the train passed, I spent a few minutes photographing the train and elevator. The train was periodically inching forward to line up the next hatch under the spout. That must be a boring job!

CN 5730 and CN 5667 loading grain at Bloom

Gregg

The ex Manitoba Pool grain elevator at Gregg

I arrived at the Gregg grain elevator after an hour of driving. The ex Manitoba Pool grain elevator looked pretty much the same as when I saw it in May 2014. The equipment off to the side has changed - upgrades, I guess!

I took some photos of the elevator, then wandered around Gregg, photographing the nearby Kerfoot Church, the old school and an old barn. You can see those photos in my guest post on Everybody Has To Be Somewhere - a great blog.

No trains were around, so I headed west along the grid roads toward Harte.

As I drove along, I encountered a north-south railway track.

Petrel Junction

Looking toward Petrel Junction

This was the first road crossing of the CN Carberry subdivision, which branches off from the Rivers subdivision at Petrel Junction. In the photo above, you can see the Rivers sub left-right across the horizon.

The Carberry subdivision runs from here south through its namesake town, Carberry. South of the town, it takes a hard right to head west past CFB Shilo into Brandon where it meets the Cromer subdivision. This branch line serves the McCain plant in Carberry, the extensive Canexus plant in Brandon, and the spur at CFB Shilo.

Petrel

There's a little two track "yard" at Petrel just south of the road I was on. It's a pretty lonely place.

I kept driving west, and as I approached Harte, I saw an eastbound train! I found a north-south road and beat it up to a crossing to capture the approaching intermodal train.

Leaser

Long train on the lonely prairie

There's something about seeing such a big, long train on the open prairie. Even a ten-thousand foot long train looks pretty small when there's nothing around but a few gravel roads, the occasional house, and a whole lot of emptiness.

Anyway. CN 3028 was the power on the head end of this train. I assumed there would be another locomotive farther back in the train to provide a little more motive power. I know CN is pretty stingy with locomotives, but it's a lot to ask one locomotive to pull a train like this!

Note the Harte grain elevator at the far left of the photo above.

My trusty vehicle, Railfan Two

My little 2014 Honda Civic has been on a lot of these grid roads. I bought it in February 2014. Later that summer, I said to my wife, only half-jokingly, that more than half of the first 5,000 km on the car was spent on gravel roads.

Soon the mid-train locomotive came into view. I was quite excited to see that it was not a normal CN locomotive.

Not a CN locomotive!

This was one of the recent batch of locomotives leased by CN. This one is CREX 1501, an ES44AC owned by Citicorp Railmark Inc. (Citirail). It's pretty new!

CREX 1501 rolling through the crossing

Harte

Harte grain elevator

After the train passed, I continued on to Harte. There is an ex Manitoba Pool grain elevator here, and a few houses just south of the tracks.

The shots above and below are from the (rare) overpass over the tracks. I am not sure why a middle-of-nowhere place like Harte warrants an overpass where other, more major roads like highway 5 have a grade crossing over the same railway line. It's a mystery.

Guess which track is the main line and which is the siding.

There was no sign of any more trains, and my time was running out, so I headed up to nearby Oberon to visit my favourite grain elevator before starting my trip back to Winnipeg.

I did see this neat old brick house in Harte itself. It looks like it is occupied and well maintained.

Oberon

The Oberon grain elevator

Whenever I'm in the area, I always try to see Oberon. It's my favourite grain elevator in Manitoba.

I carried on down highway 5, and saw a train sitting down by the Gregg elevator... so, back to Gregg.

Gregg, Again

Cooling their heels in the siding at Gregg

CN 8830 West was sitting in the siding. "Death star" IC 1007 was the trailing unit. I like those black Illinois Central locomotives.

IC 1007 in the siding in Gregg

After about 15 minutes, another westbound train came rolling along on the main track. CN 5712 West rolled on past, pulling another couple of miles of containers, while the crew of 8830 were on the ground, giving it a careful rollby inspection.

Side by each

I didn't hang around to watch 8830 leave... time was running out for me.

I headed south on highway 5 to the Trans-Canada Highway, then east toward Winnipeg.

The CP line along the Trans-Canada is usually a disappointment... it sure was when I headed west earlier in the morning, but on the way back, it produced one train.

Near Austin

A really bad photo of CP 9772 West

Unfortunately, they were coming out of the mid-morning sun and I was on the wrong side of the tracks. I pulled over and grabbed a few shots, expecting them to be pretty awful. Look at that sky!

CP 9772 was the lead unit, with UP 7889 in second position and CP 8792 well back in the train. The going away shot was just as bad.

Oh well.

As I approached Winnipeg, I left the highway to travel along the road paralleling the CN main line from about mile 18 to mile 10 of the CN Rivers subdivision. One last chance to get more trains... and CN didn't disappoint.

Another Leaser

Wrapping around the curve

The Rivers sub is pretty straight, but there is a curve around mile 16 that is a favourite for railfans. I caught up to this eastbound and shot it coming around the bend. Cowl unit CN 2421 was leading, but what was that behind it?

GECX 9144 up close and personal

It was GECX 9144, an ex CSX Dash-8. Another leaser... and a lot older than the first one I saw that morning. It was originally built for Conrail as CR 6244 in June 1994. It became CSX 7379 and recently joined the GE rental fleet.

The train was plodding along, so I was able to get ahead of it for a few more shots... and a video.

Clearly ex CSX

Here's the video of the train pounding the diamond at CN Diamond.

That was the end of my railfanning... a great morning of trains and grain elevators.

Speaking of trains and grain elevators, Eric Gagnon's two new books are well under way. Follow their progress at https://trainsandgrains.blogspot.ca/

CN 1501, Finally

RDC CN 1501

Like other railways, CN inspects its track and roadbed regularly. It does this with a combination of manual and automatic methods, such as visual inspection by foremen and inspection vehicles like Sperry rail vehicles and CN's TEST train. One vehicle I was aware of, but had never seen, was CN 1501, an RDC (Rail Diesel Car) converted to a Self-Propelled Track Geometry Car.

CN 1501 was originally a CN RDC-1, labelled D-108, built in 1958 for passenger service. As an RDC-1 it had coach seats only. All RDCs, except for the RDC-5/9, have two diesel engines driving the wheels, so they are self-propelled and have operator controls at each end.

D-108 was renumbered to CN 6108 in March 1969, then became VIA 6108 in March 1978. I'm not sure when CN acquired it from VIA but it was rebuilt into a rail test vehicle and was in service as CN 15016 in 2010. I heard it was fairly quickly renumbered to CN 1501 when it was realized that CN's dispatching software only accepted four digits for a locomotive number.

Anyway, back on July 27 2016, I heard on RailsMBSK that 1501 was in Symington yard, ready to go east on the Sprague subdivision. Since I only live about 15 minutes away from Symington, and happened to have some time, I decided to run over and see if I could grab 1501 before it got away. It's been in Winnipeg before but I was always either out of town or unable to go see it.

When I was approaching the Sprague sub, I saw a freight train coming into Symington off the Sprague. I made a guess that 1501 had already left, so I headed east on the Trans-Canada Highway.

The highway parallels the Sprague sub for at least 25km so it's a good area to chase. I was hoping to overtake the RDC before Ste. Anne where the railway diverges from the highway.

As I approached the first siding, Lorette, I saw headlights from a westbound train. I pulled over to photograph CN 2874 and 2852 running elephant-style with a mixed manifest.

CN 2874 and 2852 near Winnipeg

After grabbing the head end shot, I hit the road again. As I approached Lorette, I saw this:

CN 1501 in the Lorette siding

Score!

CN 1501 was in the siding, crawling toward the west siding switch. I snapped a few photos as it passed.

RDC CN 1501

There was a hi-rail pickup truck pulled over on the highway shoulder, and the CN foreman gave me a wave as I walked past - thanks!

They pulled through the signals and out onto the mainline, blowing the horn for the Station Road crossing as they went.

Red-nosed CN 1501

CN 1501 tested more than 25,000 miles of track in 2013. It gets around! If you search online for photos of 1501, you'll see it everywhere on CN's system.

CN 1501, and partner rail car CN 15008 (not self propelled), both collect rail profile data at one foot intervals. The kind of data they collect is the gauge of the track (distance between the parallel rails), superelevation, curvature, alignment, surface, and wear data. Here's an example, taken from a CN presentation at a 2014 Heavy Haul Seminar (PDF).

Example rail profile data, from CN

The raw data is processed through Holland's Rangecam software to produce various reports. This can result in immediate slow orders being issued to CN for any serious defects, and reports are used in planning maintenance for coming weeks and months.

Rail defect cars are known for leaving a trail of slow orders behind them! It's good, because they are finding issues that can be corrected before a serious accident occurs.

After CN 1501 was on the main line, the RTC lined the switch for the main and 1501 took off. I took a little video with my phone. The engineer gave me a nice toot on the horn as they passed!


I chased them down to the other end of the Lorette siding and grabbed this iPhone shot of them passing the work crew at the east end of the siding.

CN 1501 approaching the signals at Lorette's east end

So, finally, I caught CN 1501. One more off my list!

CN 1501 departing

See also:

• CN TEST train blog posts
• CP TEC train blog posts
• Introduction to RDCs
• CN Safety Technology Toolkit (PDF)

CN 1501 in Winnipeg

Sharp-eyed Jeff Keddy caught CN 1501 in Winnipeg again, this past Saturday October 30.

You might remember that Jeff saw it here in February 2010.

A CN 1501 Chase

Track inspection car CN 1501 was in Winnipeg last week. You may remember that it visited the Maritimes last April. It laid over at the Fort Rouge yard on February 25, and headed west in the morning of February 26. Jeff Keddy gave chase and took some great photos.

Jeff shot it first near Fort Rouge yard. Here you can see the CN Subway sign to the right, and the VIA maintenance center in the background to the right.


Next he shot it at St. James Junction, going over the CN-CP diamond.


Jeff said that 1501 was only going 30 MPH so it was possible to keep up with it and get some shots on the way to Portage la Prairie. They stopped just west of Diamond to drop off a couple of employees.


Here's a closeup of the end of the car, showing the CN Engineering logo.


CN 1501 was running as train #489. Here it is just west of Elie, Manitoba.


Next, the elevator at Oakville, MB.


It stopped again in Portage la Prairie at the station to make a pickup.


Thanks to Jeff for sharing such great shots!