Busy Day

This past Thursday, December 1, I went out to shoot the Canadian as I often do. I stopped just west of Carman Junction on the CN main line.

Very soon CN 101 showed up, racing ahead of the Canadian. Often if I have time, I fire off a test shot to check the exposure before actually shooting the train. I tried to do that with 101 but the camera didn't work. I looked at it and the door to the SD card slot was open... and there was no card! I knew right away that I had left it in my computer at home. It's not like this was the first time this has happened.

Fortunately I was about 10 steps from my car, so I sprinted over and pulled one of my spare cards out of my camera bag and jammed it in the camera. I raced back and had just enough time to shoot 101. Whew.

CN 101 had CN 8902 on the head end.


CN 8890 was a DPU engine about 1/3 of the train back, and CN 8840 was pushing hard on the end. Three SD70M-2 engines on one train!


The Canadian came along shortly after that. It had 3 engines instead of the usual 2... 6456, 6442 and 6405, all rebuilds. It is getting rare to see an unrebuilt engine on the Canadian now.


I heard them say they had an "advance Clear to Stop" for Diamond. That meant they were probably going to meet a train at Diamond, so I gave chase. The road was a little slippery so I was driving well below the limit. I heard someone tell VIA that they were "good on the north" so that told me they had already met someone. Sure enough, there was a CN train heading east on the north track. A quick, safe U-turn later and I was chasing CN 5730 East. I got ahead of them twice, once at Charleswood Road to get the still below and then again to get the video below.


You can see it was kind of a gray day. The sun was teasing me when VIA was imminent, but by the time CN 5730 came by it was hiding again.


Later, I was heading home when I heard that CN 532 was leaving Winnipeg for its daily trip to Emerson. I saw it from the south Perimeter Highway, so I drove through St. Norbert to shoot it. I waited just south of St. Norbert... and waited... after a while I saw movement on the track, and it turned out to be two deer! This was the best of the photos I took.


The telephoto lens does exaggerate bumps in the track but there is quite a dip in the tracks here.

CN 532 came rumbling along and scared the deer away. I only took a few shots in the falling dark and this is my favourite. Mmmm, lens flare.


Truly a busy day!

CN Outside Winnipeg

Typically when I am in Winnipeg, I spend a morning on the CN mainline between highway 90 and highway 42 (aka Kenaston and Pembina). It's OK but I wanted something a little more "wide open" this time, so on August 24 I went west, young man, to the intersection of the Perimeter (the Trans-Canada Highway) and Wilkes Avenue (here).

I arrived there and had a quick look east and west, and an eastbound train was upon me almost before I knew it. CN 5768 and 5276 led a long container train with 144 platforms.


I did a bit of looking east, not finding any good locations, so I went west up Wilkes to highway 334 (Harris Road) near the diamond where CN and CP cross. Here I found some wide-open fields, perfect for what I was looking for. The only problem with this location is that the tracks run almost perfectly east-west, so for morning shots like I was taking the sun is problematic. Westbound trains are coming out of the sun, and eastbound trains get the sun on the nose and not much on the sides.

The next train I saw was eastbound unit train #772 at 09:02, with CN 5637 and 5763 leading 102 CN open-top cars.



Note the stylized P on the side of CN 196526.

Not long after that, another eastbound pounded the diamond at 09:17 with CN 2532 and 2536 pulling another unit train (106 cars), this time grain cars, I believe.



I moved up to the diamond itself after that train, looking for a different angle and wanting to incorporate some signals into my shots.

The next few trains were all westbounds. As one of the CN conductors said on the radio, "Looks like we got ourselves a CONVOY!"

--continued in part 2--

EDIT: Added train number.