GTW and YAM

I was driving on the Perimeter Highway over the CN Letellier subdivision in Winnipeg when I spied CN 533 coming home. It was really the most remarkable coincidence, as there is only a short stretch of track visible to the south, and there was the head end of 533 rolling along, with two engines including a grey one leading!

I exited at Waverley Street and headed up to Bison Drive, intending to get well ahead of the train to photograph this mysterious grey engine. They were going a lot faster than I thought, as the gates were coming down at the crossing as I approached it. I ended up stopping and clawing for my camera as the train approached. Good thing I keep the camera on the passenger seat. (Doesn't everyone?)

Here's the grey engine.


This engine is former Grand Trunk and Western (GTW) 5948, an SD40-3 now owned by Alstom and lettered GCFX 5948. It was apparently originally built for the Kansas City Southern railway.

The above shot was through the windshield, and I rolled my window down to take the "going away" photo below. You can see where the large white "CN" on the side has been painted over.


On my return from my errand, I noticed that there was a CN freight train parked just west of Diamond outside Winnipeg. The train had IC 2703 on the point and was apparently waiting for a westbound freight before heading into Winnipeg. I set up my video camera to point at 2703 for the meet... and then they rolled ahead a few hundred feet! Maybe they were shy.


In good time the westbound train arrived. It was led by a Dash-9.


The crew of 2703 were on the ground to inspect the train.


Not bad for Yet Another Meet!


Here's the video.

Oh yes, after 2703 started rolling, I headed out to get another shot of it. First, a pacing shot.


They were not going especially fast yet. I decided to nab them on the other side of Diamond and call it a day. Here's that shot.


You can see they were crossing over to the south track here.

August 1

On August 1 I had some good luck catching trains. I headed out to work earlier than usual in the morning so I could see if any trains came by. I went out to Diamond and parked. The first train came along at 7:23 AM, CN 302.


Nice light on the nose of this eastbound train.
The engineer gave me a nice two-finger wave as he passed by.


CN 302 was met by CN 403, which came by my location 20 minutes later. I shot them coming through the signals at Diamond. As you can see, it is challenging to shoot a westbound train early in the morning!


Note the interesting cargo on one of the flatcars. Progressive Waste Solutions owns BFI and a couple of other waste disposal companies.



The video works better than the still photo, I think.


Here's my video camera, duly recording the train going by. My scanner is on the ground under the tripod.


On my way along Wilkes Avenue, I saw CCGX 5232 and CEMR 4001 parked with a short train at the end of the Carman subdivision. I'm pretty sure that train sat there idling for a whole day before it finally carried on to CEMR's yard.

Later in the day, I went home via Wilkes Avenue and I managed to catch CN 314 at Hall Road just west of the Perimeter Highway, pretty much exactly where I shot the previous train.




I knew CN 314 was being followed by CN 114, so I went a bit west to Diamond to get 114. I was surprised to see how much "junk" was on the head end of this supposedly intermodal train.



You can see I was pretty near the CP tracks crossing CN at Diamond. I didn't have time to record the entire train but I captured the "gist" of it.

What a fun day!

Railfanning in Winnipeg

I spent the morning of October 11 railfanning, mostly camped out on the CN mainline through Winnipeg.

I arrived at 08:25 and there was a headlight in the distance, an eastbound manifest freight led by CN 2597 and CN 5762 (85 cars)

I like how I caught the reflection. It was intentional, even

Right after that freight passed, a CN work crew arrived and started working on a crossover switch. It was obvious to me that nothing would be coming for a while, so I went downtown to the CP yard. I saw a little MOW crane pushing a gondola and pulling a flatcar through the yard, and a couple of CP GP9s were working the yard at 09:49 (1587 and 1503):


These were the units I saw in the yard: CP 9302, CP 9103, CP 5398, LLPX 1502, CP 5773, CP 6010, CP 5626, CP 5687, CP 5826, CEFX 1020.


Back to CN. The work crew said they had to clear out for 11 AM, so I was hoping it was the Canadian coming through. It wasn't. 11:05 : CN 5795, CN 5274 (102 cars)

2005/10/11 11:27 : CN 5665, CN 5538. I was trying to video them threading through the diversion created by the overpass construction on highway 90.


I heard a horn blowing, which was unusual because CN doesn't blow its horn in this area. It turned out to be a northbound CP freight on the La Riviere sub crossing the diamond. 11:36 : CP 1128, CP 3028 (30 cars)


2005/10/11 11:59 : CN 5343

This train had a meet with a westbound at 12:00 : CN 5756, CN 2443, CN 1440 (113 cars)

Love those GMD1's!


Finally, one more westbound with a CP unit trailing. 12:13 : CN 5649, CP 6035 (88 cars)


Not a bad morning! Here's a video showing the trains going through the shoo-fly track.

Just One More Thing

Here are some books about Winnipeg on Amazon.