Black Trailing

I happened to see a few trains recently with a black engine trailing, so I thought I'd post about them.

On April 11 I was out on the Sprague subdivision, southeast of Winnipeg, waiting near Lorette siding to see what might come along. Eventually a mixed freight came rambling along, CN 344 with CN 2260 leading.


The trailing engine was a Norfolk Southern engine, NS 8700, a GE C40-8. I'm told 8700 went to Melville on X401 and came back to Winnipeg on Q114 prior to this train.

I decided to head to the Dufresne grain elevator to shoot it there. I arrived well ahead of the train and got into position. After blowing for the crossing, CN 2260 led the charge past the elevator.


Here's the black trailing engine. I love the look of those Norfolk Southern engines.


344 was a general freight train with a lot of potash cars.

After that excitement, things were quiet for a while until CN 116 came along. This was an all Illinois Central train, with IC 2712 leading.


The black trailer in this case was Illinois Central 1036.


After realizing that both trains had trailing black engines, I decided to go back into my photo archives to see what other "trailing black" trains I've photographed. Surprisingly, there have been a lot. These Illinois Central SD70s have been fairly common around Winnipeg and they do not lead. I found close to a dozen trains with black IC trailers and I'll share a couple here.

This was another all-IC train back on November 29, 2011.


I took a grab shot of this westbound CN freight on October 17, 2013, with IC 1028 trailing.


I'm sharing this one even though it's a bit of a cheat (the black engine isn't trailing exactly), but because it's one of my favourite train photos. This was shot on Louis Riel Day in 2010 (blog entry).


PS hey, did anyone see the lunar eclipse a few days ago? I was crazy enough to get up in the middle of the night to take some photos.

That little dot above the "blood moon" is Mars.

Three Trains, One Lunch

Train observers know there is an ebb and flow to train traffic. Each railway and each location have their own daily rhythm, determined by when trains are scheduled to run and when they actually do run. Things are often busy on CN here in Winnipeg around noon... which is convenient for train watchers like me.

Yesterday (February 28) I heard there were a couple of westbound freights getting ready to roll in Winnipeg, CN 111 and CN 115. I went up to the CN Rivers sub just before noon to try to catch one or both, and of course VIA's Canadian.

I arrived at the CN main line and picked my spot, just east of Diamond. I parked the car and ate my lunch while keeping an eye out. CN 111 was the first to pass by, with CN 2220 and ex-BC Rail unit BCOL 4601 on the head end.

Nice to see some ex-BC Rail units are still in their old paint scheme.

CN 8844 was a DPU engine in the middle and CN 8886 was pushing on the end.


Shortly after that, I heard CN 314 was starting to move at Diamond just west of me. I worried that they would get in the way of the Canadian, whose horn I could hear to the east of me. Fortunately the Canadian came first, and they were on the south track anyway. They had two refurbished engines, VIA 6406 and 6452.

They slowed as they approached Diamond, waiting for the signal to change.

I hopped in the car to go shoot CN 314. The Canadian rolled out of sight and CN 314's two engines worked hard to bring the train up to speed.

Train 314 had IC 2712 and CN 2657 for power.

I then drove back east to get a shot at a crossing. I went for something a bit more "arty".

I knew CN 115 was coming soon, probably followed by "CN 525" aka the CEMR train to the Carman subdivision, but I was out of time.

As usual, the day's sightings are in the database.