Freight In The Rain

I decided to go see what was happening on the CN mainline aka the Rivers subdivision. Mostly I was looking for VIA's Hudson Bay but I would take what I could get!

We pulled off the Perimeter Highway onto Wilkes Avenue just after noon. I headed east into the city, and very quickly saw a set of headlights coming my way. I took the next left and parked on the side of the road, and knocked the tripod together as quickly as I could. The freight was upon us at 12:10.




The train had CN 5601, IC 2460 and CN 2519, plus a LOT of containers.

After that, I decided to head west on Wilkes until I neared Diamond, where the CP line crosses the CN Rivers subdivision. We parked on the road to Headingley and broke out lunch. It was actually not that long before another westbound freight came along at 12:38. CN 8836 and 8849 provided the motive power.




Those SD70M-2s have a different sounding horn!


So it was 12:40 and still no Hudson Bay... wonder where it was? To be continued...

August 17 at Chaplin, Saskatchewan

I heard trains running all night long while I was trying to sleep. I'm not complaining... I laid awake between 6 and 7 AM listening to a steady parade of trains going by, before I dragged my butt out of bed and got dressed. I went trackside shortly after 7 AM expecting to see more trains, yet nothing came. I resolved to stick it out, and at 08:13 I was rewarded with an eastbound coal unit train with CEFX 1032 and CP 9515 pulling and CP 9774 pushing 123 cars.


Later, I heard a train slowing to a stop. It turned out to be westbound CP 5987? and 5717 holding the main for a meet at 10:43. Shortly thereafter, they were overtaken by a westbound container train with CP 9564 leading and CP 8538 mid-train. The train had 19 autoracks and 39 platforms. As you can see, I was on the "bad side" of the light.


Afterward, I heard one of the crews saying there was someone on the elevator track taking pictures. :)

While we were out riding horses, an eastbound came into town and met the local working the salt mine. The local had a pair of GP38s as far as I could see.

At 15:46 I shot an eastbound container train with Olympic unit CP 8872 on the head end with CP 9565?, and CP 8846 pushing.



For my final train at Chaplin, I saw a westbound grain train at 16:38 with CP 8836 and CP 8518 pulling precisely 100 cars. This was one of my favourites from Chaplin.