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!

Thursday Noon Railfanning

I needed to do something I enjoyed Thursday, so what could be better than railfanning? I arrived at the St. James diamond at about 11:30 and found another railfan there, as well as a CN eastbound freight train waiting nearby. The railfan (never got his name) brought me up to date quickly: the eastbound had been there for half an hour, with crew. CN 115 was in Fort Rouge with his tail end sticking out onto the mainline, and VIA should be on time. We waited in our respective cars, as the temperature outside was -20C, or -32C with wind chill. On the plus side, it was sunny.

CN 115 ended up being the first train we saw, crossing over from the south to the north track just west of Waverley Street.

CN 5746 and CN 2440 provided the power. CN 5746 is an old friend from Saint John. I saw it there on five separate days over the years.

Pretty much right on the heels of CN 115 was VIA 1, the Canadian. They stopped just east of the diamond on signal indication, waiting for 115 to get out of the way. At the same time, the CN freight that had been sitting on the south track started to move. We were concerned that the freight on the south track would block our view of VIA on the north track, so we moved down closer to the Canadian to get our shots. Fortunately, VIA passed by us first.

It had a refurbished F40 on the head end, VIA 6431. I have seen VIA 6431 many times, on seven Oceans and even one Canadian, but this was the first time I've seen it since it was refurbished.

We were close to being skunked!

The eastbound turned out to be CN 784 with engines CN 2254 and CN 8851.

My railfan friend told me that CEMR should be right on VIA's heels on its way to the Carman subdivision. We waited, and sure enough CEMR came around the corner at Portage Junction, but stopped short of Waverley Street, on the north track. Why?

The answer came soon with the news that some train had passed through the mile 10 hotbox detector on the south track. Clearly this train was going to have to pass by before CEMR could cross over to the south track and get onto their subdivision. The train came into sight and was CN 314 with CN 2579 and the second Dash-8 of the day, CN 2405.

I was out of time by that point, so I hit the road. As I left, I noticed that CP was heading south on the La Riviere subdivision, so there would have been at least two more trains - CEMR and CP. Sometimes you just have to quit!