Alyth Yard Revisited

I mentioned I went out railfanning again on October 28. I first went to the north end of Canadian Pacific's Alyth Yard and parked near the Blackfoot Trail overpass. I walked up the overpass, taking inventory of the engines I could see.

Alyth Yard is not very accessible to railfans. The south end is really not accessible at all, and the north end can only be viewed from the Blackfoot Trail overpass or on the ground a bit further north. The overpass gives you a height advantage but there is no walkway on the south side of the overpass and is definitely not pedestrian friendly. The walkway on the north side is wide and easy to stand on, although the vibration from the cars and trucks zooming by would preclude any decent video on a tripod.

You can see from the map that you have a (distant) view of the MacLeod, Laggan and Red Deer subdivisions from the north side of the overpass, and an obstructed view of Alyth Yard and the shops.

How obstructed? Well, here are two examples.


Not magazine quality, that's for sure! Note the different number boards on CP 8601.



Hey, what is CP 1601 doing coupled up to that CP 4106 / 1900 / 4107 set we saw on Saturday?

There are some engines stored on the north side of the overpass too.


After I was done "taking inventory", I started walking back to my car. I glanced left and noticed a train rolling along the end of the CP Red Deer subdivision, so I sprinted back to the overpass to catch them entering the yard. Thankfully they had to stop to line some switches so I was able to get there ahead of them.

Note the big yellow apparatus in the background. I believe that is an icicle breaker car that is used in the Rockies to knock icicles down. The idea is to knock them down before they fall on their own and damage freight.

CP 8854 picked its way across the yard, crossing pretty much every track. The conductor was walking ahead of the train, relining every yard switch to line them for the diverging path. It looked like all he does is flip a switch and the switch points are moved by a motor. Note the yellow lights indicating that the switch is lined for the diverging path.


That was fun... so I started walking for my car again and another train came rolling out. CP 9616 West was heading for the Laggan subdivision but had to wait for the Red Deer train to get out of the way. I managed to grab this shot of the head end of the Rockies-bound train with the Calgary skyline.


I walked back to my car and this time no more trains came! I headed over to the remnants of Ogden Yard to see what was going on there...

A Busy CN Day

August 16 was a busy day of CN watching for me. I started in the morning by driving to Wilkes Avenue by the Perimeter Highway, a little before 8 AM. An east-facing container train was parked on the north track on top of the hotbox detector at mile 10. I went to the head end and saw CN 8910 was the sole power there. This turned out to be CN train #112.

Incidentally, this is my first HDR photo. I took three shots at different exposures and used FDRTools Basic to blend them together. I'll talk more about HDR at another time.

As I was taking shots of 8910, I saw a headlight to the west. After a few minutes, one of the crew from 8910 dismounted to do a rollby inspection. Dual SD75I engines CN 5795 and CN 5688 at the head of train #404 rolled by on the south track. I didn't get a really good shot of the actual passing move but here's train #404. Remember that engine number CN 5795.


Satisfied, I started walking back to my car. As I walked across the tracks at the Charleswood Road crossing, I saw another headlight to the west. I trotted back and took a position to record this new train. I forgot to record this train #. I think it was a 7xx series train. It had SD75I CN 5705 and Dash-8 CN 2407 for power.


That was all that I could see for the time being. I heard of some kind of "traffic tie-up" around Fort Rouge but I wasn't going to go investigate. I headed east on Wilkes, only to find the CEMR train sitting at the end of their track at Carman Junction.

They clearly weren't going anywhere, so I grabbed a few shots and continued on.

I saw one more train! CN #115 was waiting just east of Shaftesbury Boulevard. CN 8811 and CN 8005 started rolling after a few minutes, so I shot them as they passed.

I heard CN #112 finally getting permission to continue on at this point, so 115 and 112 probably met somewhere near Carman Junction.

That was it for the morning... four CN and one CEMR trains in an hour. Not bad.

But wait! There's more! If you keep reading...

On my way home, I headed out via Wilkes and saw CN #301 heading out. It had a single engine for power... the same CN 5795 that came into Winnipeg on train #404. I first shot the train at Carman Junction. Note the signals behind the engine.


I chased west and shot video train 301 a few km east of Diamond. Check the video out... especially the end of the train!


Yes, that is the Herzog multipurpose machine HZGX 185 that I saw back in February.

I think this must be approaching some kind of record for largest # of cars pulled by a single engine on a road freight... 134 cars plus the Herzog set.

Railfanning in Winnipeg

I spent the morning of October 11 railfanning, mostly camped out on the CN mainline through Winnipeg.

I arrived at 08:25 and there was a headlight in the distance, an eastbound manifest freight led by CN 2597 and CN 5762 (85 cars)

I like how I caught the reflection. It was intentional, even

Right after that freight passed, a CN work crew arrived and started working on a crossover switch. It was obvious to me that nothing would be coming for a while, so I went downtown to the CP yard. I saw a little MOW crane pushing a gondola and pulling a flatcar through the yard, and a couple of CP GP9s were working the yard at 09:49 (1587 and 1503):


These were the units I saw in the yard: CP 9302, CP 9103, CP 5398, LLPX 1502, CP 5773, CP 6010, CP 5626, CP 5687, CP 5826, CEFX 1020.


Back to CN. The work crew said they had to clear out for 11 AM, so I was hoping it was the Canadian coming through. It wasn't. 11:05 : CN 5795, CN 5274 (102 cars)

2005/10/11 11:27 : CN 5665, CN 5538. I was trying to video them threading through the diversion created by the overpass construction on highway 90.


I heard a horn blowing, which was unusual because CN doesn't blow its horn in this area. It turned out to be a northbound CP freight on the La Riviere sub crossing the diamond. 11:36 : CP 1128, CP 3028 (30 cars)


2005/10/11 11:59 : CN 5343

This train had a meet with a westbound at 12:00 : CN 5756, CN 2443, CN 1440 (113 cars)

Love those GMD1's!


Finally, one more westbound with a CP unit trailing. 12:13 : CN 5649, CP 6035 (88 cars)


Not a bad morning! Here's a video showing the trains going through the shoo-fly track.

Just One More Thing

Here are some books about Winnipeg on Amazon.