July 2

Here's a few photos from July 2. This was a holiday here so after hanging around the house for a while, I loaded the kids up and went out to shoot trains. I headed toward CN's Symington Yard but was distracted by CN 103 rolling into the yard from the CN Sprague subdivision. I shot them just north of the Perimeter near Tinkertown. I didn't have much time to set up and I wanted to try a pan shot. This is the best of them.


Continuing on, I passed the yard and headed up to Transcona. CN 114 was rolling through on the main line, passing CN 112 that was sitting in the siding being refueled. 112 had CN 8899 on the head end.

You can see the grain facility on the left and the Fort Garry hotel in the far distance.

Here's CN 114 passing CN 112.

I really wish I have a better telephoto lens! To be fair, this is shot from a bit over half a kilometre away...

I took another shot as they drew closer.


I decided to chase the train. We headed east along the Dugald Road and were able to get ahead of it. I debated with myself whether I would try a grain elevator shot in Dugald but when I saw a nice field of canola, I knew I wanted to shoot the train with the canola in the foreground. Here it is.


I heard that CN 112 was getting ready to roll, so I took a few photos of it but did not wait around. I wanted to see some CP action. I headed north. All was quiet on CP so I had a quick look at the CEMR yard. I saw that CP 1532 and CP 1594 were parked in the CP North Transcona yard, and CEMR had engine 4000 in front of their shops... but more interesting was CCGX 4010 as viewed through their fence.


I'm no expert but I kinda think this is the end of CCGX 4010.


I last saw her in action just about two years ago:


I returned to the Day Street crossing of CP and saw headlights in the distance to the east. I parked and waited for the train.. and waited.. and waited. It was approaching but taking its sweet old time getting there. Finally it revealed itself to be CP 8761.


That was it for the day. I guess that was enough!

Busy Day, Part Two

I mentioned that on July 7 I saw three trains in the morning, and more at noon. Now is the time to talk about the noon trains!

I mentioned the Canadian I saw with VIA 4121 already. That was 12:10.

I waited around a bit next to Kenaston Boulevard and was rewarded with CN 314 at 12:24, with engines CN 2242 and CN 2636.


It was not too long before the next train came along, CN 198 with CN 8899 and CN 8844.


That was great, but it was time to move. I had a notion that CN 532 should be ready to head south on the Letellier, so I drove down Chevrier Boulevard to see where they were. As I approached the crossing, the flashing lights came on, so I stopped right there and jumped out to take this shot of the train as it headed south. CN 532 had the single unit CN 2432 on her.


All told, I saw seven trains on the 7th. Not bad!