Return to Tranquille

Previous posts: A Tranquille Afternoon, A Rocky Mountaineer evening, and Into the Mountains, Briefly.

On May 12th I went to the excellent Kelly's Kaboose shop after work. This model train / antique store is located in downtown Kamloops, BC. They have a great selection of model train equipment, lots of railway paperwork (my favourite!) and lots of other interesting items like signs, photos, and other railway memorabilia. I highly recommend the store. I walked away with a selection of BC railway timetables to fill out my collection.

When I stepped out of the store, I saw a Rocky Mountaineer bus unloading passengers at a nearby hotel. I hadn't really intended on seeing the Rocky this evening but hey, since I was only a couple of blocks away...

They were parked with the locomotives under the Red Bridge again. All of the passengers were gone and the staff were packing things up prior to the train heading over to the shops. A worker was walking along the train disconnecting the power lines between cars. He told me it was to speed up the switching they were going to do in the shop area once the train got over there.

In good time they pushed back and I shot the train passing the station.

Hey, if you want to do me a favour, go vote for your favourite Rocky Mountaineer photos at moments.rockymountaineer.com - mine are here and here and here and here.

I did a quick jaunt over to the Mission Flats Road area and found CP 3074 waiting at CP Benledi near the Domtar plant.

By the way - there's a nude beach in the area. ;) On a previous visit I was driving past the Domtar plant when I saw two quite naked people walking back to their cars from the park area. Not something you see in Winnipeg!

It was time to head back to Tranquille again. Passing the airport I spied a westbound freight headed by CN 8868. I quickly bagged it before continuing on.

I easily beat them to Tranquille, where they rounded the bend before the crossing.

While I was watching the train, a water bomber flew overhead, so I had to grab that too.

This is a Convair CV580 water tanker, owned by Conair Aerial Firefighting.

As the train rolled by, I noticed a CP eastbound potash train across the water.

Apologies for the photo quality - it was 2.5 km away and hazy in the heat. Lightroom CC's dehaze feature helped a bit.

Notice that the CP train is going through a little tunnel. Here's a Google satellite view of the short tunnel, which is about 80m long.

As the westbound CN train rolled by, and the eastbound CP train rolled by, a third train entered the scene - CN 5652 East, with BCOL 4616 trailing.

Here you are - three trains in one photo.

The CP freight had a pusher on the rear.

Speaking of DPUs, CN 8868 West had a mid-train DPU, CN 2200.

After all of that excitement, I was done for the night.

For my last second-last post from this Kamloops visit, I will visit the Rocky Mountaineer one more time, plus show some downtown Kamloops CP action. Read on!

Into the Mountains.. Briefly

CP passing Kamloops Lake

After a Tranquille afternoon and a Rocky Mountaineer evening, I decided to head west after work on Monday. After a discussion on the BC Railfans Facebook group, I had settled on Ashcroft as a destination. It has both CN and CP together in the Fraser River valley.

I headed west on the Trans-Canada Highway. It was still hot in the late afternoon - about 28C - and I had the AC on full in my little Nissan Versa Note rental. I passed the lookout at Tobiano, and as I descended toward Savona I noted a CP container train below me, also headed west. I grabbed the photo above.

As Savona came into view, I saw a nice curve that would be great for the head end of the train. I jumped out of the car as the train came around the curve.

It would have been better if I had time to get a little closer, but I'm happy with the result. CP 9362 was leading.

I tried to get the train on the other side of Savona, but I didn't know the area and missed the fact that the track crossed under the TCH to head down the Fraser valley. I ended up at the Steelhead Provincial Park, wondering where the rails were.

However, I did spot this.

The Canadian Trackside Guide says the near car was a crane idler car (originally Canadian Northern colonist car 7222 built in 1920) and the caboose was Pointe-St Charles CN 79440. There is a reversed "Gift Shop" sign on the idler car indicating this used to be a business. The prominent NO TRESPASSING sign deterred me from investigating further.

Savona is also where the CN and CP lines come together to go into the Fraser River valley.

I kept going on the TCH for a few kilometres but it became very apparent that the little Versa was not suited for the mountains. It was not possible to maintain 100 km/hr going up the steep grades, and given the hot temperature I was concerned about overheating the car. I turned around and headed back to Kamloops.

After supper, I headed back downtown to catch this day's iteration of the Rocky Mountaineer. This Rocky was coming from the west so it would be coming over the South Thompson River bridge to the station. I resolved to try to photograph it end-on as it crossed the river. A pair of helpful gentlemen on horses (shout-out to the Kamloops Mounted Patrol) suggested I stand on the steps of the Interior Savings Centre to get the right angle. They were right!

Here's the shot I was looking for.

I would have liked more light on the nose, but you take what you can get!

This angle was pretty good too:

You can see the NREX unit in second position.

Here are the two Kamloops Mounted Patrol gentlemen on their way to greet the passengers. I think it's great they do this. It must add to the experience.

There are lots of little touches around the area.

I decided to try a little HDR photo of RMRX 8014 under the Red Bridge.

I processed this with the new HDR functionality of Lightroom 6 (reason 6 why you need Lightroom?). I think it turned out OK. I like the glint from the rails. I'd like to see more detail in the shadows and there's a couple of glitches, but it's not bad for a first try.

It was clear they were going to be there for a while, so I moseyed over to the pedestrian bridge over the CP main line and photographed CP 3074 sitting there with the local caboose collection.

CP has a building on the south side of the tracks for their crews. I noticed this rack set up to hold the FRED/EOT devices. Pretty nice!

I decided to get the Rocky Mountaineer crossing the South Thompson River again, but from a different angle. Kamloops has a great park by the river and there is a walkway that juts out into the river a bit. From there I waited for the train to roll across the bridge... backwards, this time.

That was fun! I went back to the CP line to get a ground level photo of CP 3074 over the fence.

Thanks for reading!

In my next post, I'll write about another day of Rocky Mountaineer photos and return to Tranquille for more CN action. Read on!

A Carseland Local

I was in Calgary this weekend with my wife. She was attending a conference, and while she was there, I was railfanning! On Saturday morning I met up with Jeff Keddy and we ended up following the CP Brooks subdivision out of the city. We saw the Viterra Calgary East elevator near Indus, Alberta first.


We continued railway east and came to Carseland, Alberta next. I was here in October 2010. There is an Agrium facility as well as two grain elevators, a concrete Cargill elevator and a Richardson Pioneer elevator. We noticed a local freight working the Pioneer elevator, so we went to the nearest crossing and watched it.


The train had three GP-38s, CP 3102, CP 3068 and CP 3074. While we watched, they pulled back until the tail end was clear.


The conductor then rode the tail end as they pushed into the siding.


As they were pushing back, a freight appeared from the west, heading toward Calgary. We were not sure if our local was going to block the view of this freight or not, so I backed away from the tracks to get a long-distance view of the train.


The local was not quite clear of the crossing, so this was the best I could capture for the meet.


I was surprised to see a mid-train engine, CP 9514, on this train. It's not often that I see DPU engines on non-container trains. I saw 9514 back in July 2009.


After the freight passed, they dropped one cut of cars and then pushed back until the whole train was there.


At this point we decided to continue on the Brooks subdivision... another post.