On The Bridge

I was out near Symington looking at a new office Thursday around noon when I spotted a train about to leave the yard. CN 346 was backing onto her DPU engine in preparation to head down the Sprague subdivision. When I was done my inspection, I got ahead of it at Tinker Town and shot the lead unit, Dash-9 CN 2656. The engines were running flat out pulling the train up to speed.

I sped on ahead, wanting to shoot the train crossing the bridge over the Floodway. It took a few minutes for the train to get there.

After a few minutes, the DPU unit (CN 8822) rolled on by.

Even though the weather was cloudy, it was nice to see the train.

You might remember I shot train 346 on the Floodway before, albeit from a different angle and in a different season.

We Got Ourselves A Convoy

As I said in my previous post, a CN employee saw the lineup coming out of Winnipeg and said, "We got ourselves a CONVOY!"

The first westbound across the diamond was train #105 with CN 2220 and 2656 and a solid intermodal train at 09:51. In this photo the engines have passed the signals protecting the diamond.


Next up was CN 5683 and 2441 with a 162 car merchandise train at 10:08. This photo shows the engines have already passed the diamond and are by the west-facing signals.



My time was up at this point, so I packed everything up and took a few shots of CN Diamond before heading back to the Perimeter. I decided to have "one more look" trackside before going, and to my surprise there was another westbound. Westbound CN train #199 with 5714 and 5242 rolled under the TCH at 10:31 with another solid intermodal train. I don't know the car count because I ran out of tape after the first 50 or so platforms, but they said they had 10,053 feet.

The conductor told the RTC they had a student conductor on board, and sure enough, here he or she is, between the two regular crew members:


I got the "clear signal" to head home so that was the end of the CONVOY for me. Six trains in two hours - not bad at all!