A Morning in Portage la Prairie

I am normally a "lone wolf" railfan. I find my time to railfan when I can so it's difficult for me to arrange to meet up with anyone else to see trains, plus when I'm alone I get to decide where to go! So when Thomas Sajnovic messaged me to ask if I was available, I hesitated for a moment and decided "what the heck!" Tom was in town doing some training with CN and we arranged to go out on Sunday, May 3rd. I picked him up at 6 AM and we headed over to the CP yard to start.

The usual collection of old Geeps were by the shops.

CP 8231 and company in Winnipeg

CP 8231 and several other GP9s are for sale, "as is where is".

We stood and watched for a few minutes. I spotted a BNSF unit over by the now-closed Rugby Tower. I took this poor shot and then we hopped in the car to try to get a better angle. Of course, by the time we drove around, two CP locomotives had hooked onto it and were pushing it into the shop area as I tried to stop to photograph it. No picture for you!

BNSF 8235 in Winnipeg

We consoled ourselves with photographing a pair of switchers in the nice sunrise light.

Big stacks on those locomotives!

After that, we headed over to the Prairie Dog Central to get a couple of shots before proceeding to Portage la Prairie.

The PDC had all three of its diesels out.

The Prairie Dog Central fleet

BNSF 1685 is the last Burlington Northern Manitoba Limited locomotive (ex BNML 2). It was donated to the PDC in July 2010. The green loco is 4138 which has been with the PDC for quite a while. The new arrival is 5232, the striped locomotive on the right.

Ex CN, ex CCGX 5232

Long time readers of the blog will recognize this as ex CCGX 5232, which worked for the Central Manitoba Railway (CEMR) for several years. I first spotted 5232 in September 2009 when she was still lettered as ANY 5232, ex Athabasca Northern. I've written about 5232 many times.

A volunteer who was around at this early hour told me that 5232 was acquired to work on the PDC's car storage business. This six axle power will pull a lot more than the Geeps!

The volunteer - sorry, I can't recall his name - invited us to have a look at #3, the PDC's steam engine. It was still warm from a run the previous night.

Being in the shade, it was a little difficult to photograph. I did the best I could.

A couple of CP westbound trains rolled by while we were chatting. 

Once we were done at the PDC, we hit the road for Meadows and beyond. I had to pause briefly at Meadows to shoot yet another photo of the grain elevator...

Then we carried on to Marquette - no grain elevator there any more, of course - and on toward Portage la Prairie. While traveling the back roads near Poplar Point, I spotted this grain elevator at a (Mennonite?) colony.

I spotted this nice barn near there too.

Anyway, we finally made it to Portage la Prairie. Tom spotted a rail grinder moving on the CP tracks, so we made our way over there and found LIMX 3411 tying up.

Sadly LIMX 3411 derailmed in Portage the day after we saw it.

While admiring this magnificent piece of equipment, I spotted movement on the CP... and I spotted yellow UP engines! We sprinted for the tracks to capture UP 3556 and UP 3645 leading CP 9562 and a grain train.

While we were admiring that train, Tom spotted movement on the CN side, so over we went! This was CN 2679 leading an intermodal train east.

CN 8877 was about 3/4 of the train back, providing DPU power.

That's the best part of railfanning Portage - action on both tracks!

That train finished going past us at 09:02. We decided to go see the CP station. After we arrived there, we spotted a westbound train on the CN at 09:15. CN 2200 led 8838 and 8901 past the station.

The station is looking good! A big shout out to everyone working to restore the station.

I like the ex Manitoba Hydro locomotive.

I'm guessing it was nicknamed "Snoopy".

CP 3111 was the resident switcher in the CP yard.

After those three trains in Portage, there was a lull. We decided to head back to Winnipeg via the Trans-Canada, which meant there was a potential for CN action... and there was! To be continued...

Other Portage la Prairie posts

Portage - Hit and Miss

I certainly had a mixed day Sunday when visiting Portage.

I set out from Winnipeg around 7:30 AM and headed west on the Trans-Canada Highway. CN was quiet and there was nothing to hear or see on the way. I reached Portage and went in to see the downtown. The signal lights were all showing red, indicating no traffic on CN nor CP, so I took some photographs for my model train layout. I was particularly interested in the West Tower area where the CP Carberry, CN Rivers, and CN Gladstone subdivisions meet. I was amused to see that some pigeons were warming themselves on the switch heaters on the CN Rivers sub.

Finally I heard some discussions on the CN RTC channel that seemed to indicate that a train was switching at Bloom, west of Portage. I headed out of Portage that way, only to encounter CN train 304 heading east into Portage. Drat! I knew I wasn't able to catch up to it inside Portage, so I drove around the city intending to catch it on the other side as it left East Tower. However, there is no place to exit the highway on that side, so I kept on driving.. and driving.. until I reached Newton. CN calls this Nattress, mile 50.4. I set up at the crossing of highway 331, and I didn't have to wait long until CN 304 blew through.

CN 8922 was leading and ex-UP unit CN 2100 was trailing.

I should have turned the video camera a bit to the left.

After they passed, I drove back into Portage. I decided to go shoot the grain elevator at CP Tucker just east of Portage. While there, I heard CP 8877 West tell the RTC that they set off the WILD* and had to set off a car. Since I could hear them, they were nearby... but where? My handy dandy Trackside Guide told me that the WILD is at mile 44.8, east of Portage, so they were coming my way! I set up and waited only a few minutes before their headlight came in view.




I figured I could easily beat them to the other side of Portage, so I drove around Portage (again) and turned south on highway 305 to the CP crossing. They soon came into view.


They pulled up to the switch, and the conductor dismounted to get things ready to set off the bad order car. As there were already cars in the siding, they had to get them ready to move so they could shove them back. Of course, the derail and the switch had to be taken care of too.


The train pulled ahead over the crossing.


I believe the bad car was about the 65th car, so they would have had to pull until that car was next to the conductor. He would then cut off the rest of the train and leave it there, then the train would pull ahead until they were clear of the switch. The conductor would line the switch for the siding (having taken care of the derail already and released the handbrakes on the cars already in the siding), then the train would shove into the siding until the bad car was fully in the siding. Then, cut off the bad car, pull ahead, reline the switch, and join the train back together again.

That solved the mystery of what was just west of Simplot - a siding.

Anyway, I didn't stick around for that operation. I went across the highway to CN Bloom and took some photos there, while CN 314 was still switching. I noticed that the tail end of 314's consist had this car.


Then I headed north on highway 16 to see the elevator near Macdonald. I took a quick peek in the town of Macdonald itself, and found a little MOW** train there. It had a gondola, CP caboose 420991, and some kind of MOW contraption that looked like it would be used to help lay welded rail.


Time was running short for me, so I zipped up to the elevator north of Macdonald. It's a Pioneer elevator at "Dundonald". The leased GP15 was there and I snapped a bunch of pictures.

On my way back down highway 16, I saw CN 302 was passing 314 at Bloom, so I set up for video and took some more shots.


I was out of time, so I wasn't able to shoot the Simplot facility. Next time.

I headed toward Winnipeg, gradually getting ahead of CN 302 as they had to stop at Nattress for CN 115 to go by. I saw 302 a bit behind me as I approached Elie, and suddenly I noticed VIA's Hudson Bay coming the other way. A track speed meet! I pulled over to the side of the road and took a series of photos as they passed each other. Fantastic.

As I crossed over the CN mainline at Wilkes Avenue, I saw the lights of CN 302 in the far distance.

But...

You'll notice I haven't included any pictures of the elevator, the GP15, CN 302, or the meet at Elie. Unfortunately, sometime at Macdonald, I bumped the selector wheel on my camera and changed it from Tv (Shutter speed priority) to Av (aperture priority). This meant that all my photos were tremendously overexposed and ended up pure white. Imagine my disappointment when I looked at them at home!

Moral of the story: LOOK at the photos you've just taken. I reallly dislike chimping, but I guess there has to be a happy medium between looking at every shot and doing what I did. Sigh.

Enjoy the shots I did get! :)

* WILD = Wheel Impact Load Detector. It measures the force that the wheels put on the rails, and is basically looking for flat or damaged wheels.
** MOW = Maintenance Of Way.