Double Wrapped Math! 2 X 150 = VIA 1

Two Canada 150 wrapped locomotives on VIA 1

The railfan news network was alive with the news that VIA's Canadian leaving Toronto on May 11 (through Winnipeg on May 13) had two "Canada 150" wrapped locomotives on the head end. This was the first time two wrapped F40PH-2 locomotives were on the Canadian, and perhaps the first time two operated together at all.

You may remember that VIA 6454 was the first "Canada 150" wrapped locomotive to visit Winnipeg. The second was VIA 6437 on May 4th and VIA 6416 on May 11th. I was out of town on both of those days so I didn't have an opportunity to see them.

A bonus was that this VIA 1 was also carrying a Rocky Mountaineer car west to home base in Kamloops, BC. These cars get refurbished now and then and I have seen them pass through on VIA 1 before.

What's a "Wrap"?

A quick aside to define what railfans mean by a "wrapped" locomotive or car. Locomotives and rail cars are painted initially. They can be repainted with a new scheme, or in VIA Rail's case they are usually covered with a vinyl "wrap" instead. Think of it like a giant decal. As a commenter on one of my previous Canada 150 posts said,

"They're a lot of work. First a crew comes in to clean the cars. Then a crew does body work and then we jump on them for the wrap. It takes 4 highly experienced 3M installers most of the day to complete one. We also did the Glen Fraser car and another biz class car with similar graphics. VIA then inspects them thoroughly."

Theoretically the wrap can be removed after the promotion is over, but in reality the locomotive or rail car normally needs to be repainted.

The Setup

I knew the Winnipeg railfans would cover it well within the city, so I decided to head east of the city and catch it somewhere on the CN Redditt subdivision. Before I went to bed on Friday night (May 12), I checked VIA's train tracker site and they said it was running a little over 2 hours late. Even better!

May 13... Saturday morning dawned... cloudy. Does a day really dawn if it is cloudy? Let me know!

Anyway... I woke up at 6:30 AM, and after a quick shower and breakfast, I hit the road for points east. I passed through Dugald and saw a few maintenance vehicles in the grain elevator siding there, and carried on to Anola. The siding in Anola was full of rail maintenance vehicles and there were a few pickup trucks around as well. Clearly some maintenance was planned for the day!

Subset of CN Redditt subdivision

I had originally planned to go all the way to Elma (mile 196.8) to catch VIA, but after checking VIA's web site again I decided to stop short, as the last thing I wanted to do was to get behind the train and miss it.

I drove into a few crossings east of Anola but none of them had great sight lines. I wanted a good side shot of the train so I had to have a wide view. I eventually decided on the small community of Vivian, mile 221.3 of the Redditt subdivision. I had been there before as it has a hotbox detector and Wheel Impact Load Detector (WILD) that I photographed for my article in the Trackside Photographer.

I parked on Park Street (heh) and walked around to find the best angle. I arrived at around 08:20 and nothing happened for half an hour. I had my scanner with me but nothing was going on.

I tried setting up my Canon S3 as a video camera but the batteries were dead. So I put my phone on the tripod... a little jury-rigged...

Eventually I noticed that a signal was lit.... and saw a headlight to the west! That can't be VIA...

CN 112

I wasn't really set up for an eastbound train but I did my best to capture CN 112.

CN 112 through Vivian, Manitoba

CN 8805 was on the head end and CN 2968 was on the tail end.

CN 2968 on the tail end

Odd how CN 2968 was facing forward... and what a rusty container!

They called VIA 1 to find out where they were. It turned out that the Canadian was not far away, in the siding in Nourse at mile 217.3, 5 miles east of me. They came in loud and clear on the scanner.

13 minutes after CN 112 left, VIA 1 arrived.

Peek-a-boo!

The Canadian in Vivian

VIA 6402 led the way as the Canadian rolled through Vivian.

"Canada 150" VIA 6402 and VIA 6436 through Vivian, MB

Here's a side shot of the two. The "Canada 150" wraps have 3 cities on each side of the locomotive. There are some cities repeated among locomotives, as you will see, but each side lists different cities. VIA 6402 has Ottawa, Winnipeg and Montreal on the engineer's side and VIA 6436 has Vancouver, Ottawa and Moncton. Canada's capital city was well represented!

A full look at VIA 6436:

VIA 6436 in Vivian, MB

VIA 6441 was the third unit - three units on the Canadian is unusual - and the first car after 6441 was a Rocky Mountaineer car, RMRX 9525.

Rocky Mountaineer #9525

It was, of course, empty.

You may recall that when VIA has carried the Rocky Mountaineer cars in the past, they had to put the car between the two locomotives due to the cabling used. I'm told there is new cabling so that VIA Rail can marshal the Rocky car(s) behind the locomotives and just pass the Head End Power (HEP) cabling through. It looks nicer too!

The going-away shot was not that impressive but I was there for the head end, not the tail!

Kootenay Park on the tail end of the VIA Rail Canadian

Here's the video of VIA 1 through Vivian with the two "Canada 150" locomotives. When you watch the video, note the two Skyline dome cars together.

Here's the complete consist:

• VIA 6402
• VIA 6436
• VIA 6441
• RMRX 9525
• VIA 8609
• VIA 8106
• VIA 8143
• VIA 8503
• VIA 8517
• VIA 8413 Louise
• VIA 8308 Bliss Manor
• VIA 8341 Thompson Manor
• VIA 8313 Cabot Manor
• VIA 8301 Abbot Manor
• VIA 8339 Sherwood Manor
• VIA 8316 Christie Manor
• VIA 8324 Dunsmuir Manor
• VIA 8327 Fraser Manor
• VIA 8224 Chateau Roberval
• VIA 8228 Chateau Vercheres
• VIA 8208 Chateau Dollier
• VIA 8212 Chateau Latour
• VIA 8219 Chateau Montcalm
• VIA 8509
• VIA 8414 Palliser
• VIA 8206 Chateau Denonville
• VIA 8227 Chateau Varennes
• VIA 8708 Kootenay Park

I've highlighted the Skyline domes and the two diner cars. Now if you were a poor soul in Dunsmuir Manor, you had to walk forward through six sleeping cars to get to diner Louise or back through six to get to Skyline 8509 and through that to get to diner Palliser. Talk about a long stroll to get a bite to eat!

I think it might have been better to stick one of the domes between the Manor and Chateau cars, but maybe there were good reasons to marshal the train as it was.

After VIA rolled through, I tossed everything in the van and took off west in chase.

A Quick Grab

Surprisingly, I overtook VIA very quickly. I had not expected to overtake it at all, really, but I thought I'd give it a shot. Since I overtook it well before Anola, I turned up a side road and quickly parked to grab the power rolling through.

Side on view of "Canada 150" locomotives near Anola, Manitoba

After shooting those, the chase was on again.

I zoomed through Anola - slowing down to 60 km/hr, grrr - and carried on toward Dugald. I was well ahead of them by this point so I decided to shoot them at the grain elevator in Dugald.

VIA 1 in Dugald

I wanted to get the other side of the train to get the other six cities. Since it was cloudy, light direction was not a concern! I parked by the baseball field and rushed over toward the track to grab the shot.

VIA 1, the "Canadian", through Dugald, Manitoba

There was no time to set up for video so I just dropped the tripod and shot some stills.

VIA 6402 in Dugald

VIA 6402 had Moncton, Saskatoon and Kitchener on the conductor's side, while VIA 6436 had Guelph, Winnipeg and Montreal on the left. Note that Winnipeg is on both engines, just on different sides.

VIA 6436 in Dugald

The going away shot was a little better here.

Kootenay Park in Dugald, Manitoba

(I like how Chrome wants to correct "Kootenay" to "Hootenanny")

Enough

At that point I gave up the chase, as I didn't think I would catch them again. I would have had to crawl along at 60 km/hr and risk getting stuck behind traffic, and they had a clear shot to Transcona and beyond and there was no way I would catch them again before they parked at the station downtown.

Instead I elected to go east outside Dugald and wait for the promised 4 westbound CN freights. That's for another post...

From Others

Jack Hykaway was near Nourse just east of me and recorded VIA 1 coming through.

He also included VIA 6416 (from a week ago) in the video. Thanks, Jack!

Ken Storey photographed the 12-hour late VIA 1 through part of BC. He has several photos in his excellent VIA Flickr album but to me this was the shot of the day.


You'll note that the locomotives are different from when I saw the train. VIA 6402 was dropped at Saskatoon, I believe, and 6441 came off at Jasper and was replaced by 6453. It's too bad the wrapped unit wasn't leading. The odd thing was that the Rocky Mountaineer car wasn't dropped at Kamloops but instead went all the way to Vancouver.

Further Reading

• VIA's Canada 150 Wrap Visits Winnipeg
• VIA Rail Canada 150 Wrap Sucks

January 3

I'm way behind in posting this, but better late than never, right? Right?

On January 3 I went to St. James Junction in Winnipeg to try to shoot the Hudson Bay, er, I mean VIA's "Winnipeg-Churchill train" VIA 693. What a dull name!

There were two other railfans there already, VanBilly and another gentleman whose name I never got. Nothing much was going on so we chatted for a bit. Soon the CEMR train came along, heading west toward their Carman subdivision. CEMR 4002 and CCGX 5232 were the power.


Here's VanBilly's video.


Soon after that, the BNSF transfer train came back from Fort Rouge. New-to-Winnipeg engine BNSF 2968 was on the point.


Here's VanBilly's video of the same train. I think you might see my shadow in the shot at one point.


Right after that, a CN freight came rolling east. I think it was CN 404 but I could be wrong. It had an interesting consist on the front end. CN 8892 was the lead unit, a fairly boring SD70M-2, very common these days.


There was a bit of an editorial comment on the frame of CN 8892...


The second unit was one of my favourites, an SD60, CN 5526, in "sergeant stripes".


The real catch was the third unit, an SD40, CN 6008, in CN North America livery!


I had to leave after that, so I never did see the Hudson Bay. I don't know why they were so late!

EDIT: Added VanBilly1's videos.

Avoiding the Skunk

I wanted to shoot the VIA Rail Canadian on Thursday, January 5. I decided to shoot it at Portage Junction to get a more-or-less head-on shot. I drove up there and parked in the loop at the end of Angus Street, then walked over to the new Southwest Rapid Transit Corridor. I heard locomotives and saw CN 404 roll by with CN 5677 and CN 2139 for power.

The unfortunate thing was there was a container train parked on the south track, blocking the shot. This meant that I would not be able to shoot the Canadian unless the container train moved.

I waited for a few minutes, and I heard some discussion between the RTC and the crew of CN 101 (the container train). It was decided that 101 would follow VIA 1, so they were going to stay. I decided to try for Waverley Street instead. As I was leaving, the Fort Garry switcher rolled up to Portage Junction to wait their turn to get out. It had slug CN 264 leading GP9 CN 7243. I understand the Fort Garry switcher had a 70xx series GP9 with a GMD1 earlier in the week!

I drove to the parking lot behind the Winnipeg Humane Society by the off-leash dog park. I jogged down the road to the tracks and arrived there maybe 30 seconds before the Canadian. The unfortunate part about it was that I couldn't shoot the whole train without getting too close to the tracks, so I had to satisfy myself with a shot like this.


After the Canadian passed, I walked back to my car and drove over to Waverley Street to get CN 101.Unfortunately a CN foreman was parked where I normally set up on the south side of the tracks, so I set my tripod up on the north side of the tracks instead. CN 101 rolled into view, I started recording, and... something blocked my shot.


The BNSF switcher rolled across my shot! I know one of the guys who works at BNSF and that was him shouting, "Hello Steve, happy new year!" as the caboose rolled by. At least I was able to get a video of BNSF 2968, by accident!

CN 101 had CN 2312 leading, with CN 8934 part way through the train and CN 8909 on the rear. CN 199 was working in Fort Rouge, but I didn't have time to wait for it.

After I posted this video on YouTube, user wheels069 commented that he shot the same train later on in Alberta!


Everyone sing, "It's a small world after all!"

BNSF Switcheroo

Long-time Winnipeg resident BNSF 2756 headed south to the USA for its yearly maintenance and checkup on  Wednesday. Green and white GP39V BNSF 2968 has replaced it. I have yet to see BNSF 2968 but I did catch BNSF 2756 on its way out, quite by accident.

I had stopped by Portage Junction Wednesday afternoon with the hope of seeing some action. I saw CN 5726 was in the Fort Rouge yard with another engine behind it, but I couldn't see the engine coupled onto 5726. The roofline looked a bit odd.

Soon after I arrived, CN 2450 led a westbound freight train through Portage Junction. I took a few shots of CN 2450, the sole power on the grain train. I don't know what happened to this side of the engine but it definitely stands out.


I shot CN 2450 one other time, November 20, 2010, and it had the same "mark" then, so it is not new.

As CN 2450's train rolled on past on the south track, an eastbound CN intermodal came up on the north track. I didn't catch the engine numbers but it was quite a long train. Once the last grain car went through the Junction, CN 5726 pulled out and began shunting. Much to my surprise, BNSF 2756 was the second unit!


These two were the power for train CN 532 to Emerson. BNSF 2756 was online and rumbling away as they put their train together.


I couldn't stay to watch CN 532 leave, but I was glad to get a few parting shots of 2756.

Later, I caught CP 1532 and CP 8205 working the Fort Whyte area with some covered gondolas.


Finally, I saw CN 8898 leading CN 2440 and an eastbound train near mile 10 of the CN Rivers subdivision.


BNSF 2756 has been the Winnipeg engine for almost a full year. It came in mid-January 2011.