Bonus Train

Monday, August 6th 2018 was a holiday here in Manitoba. It's called a "Civic Holiday" here, other provinces call it "Family Day" and it's not even a holiday in some provinces. Anyway, I had the day off.

I went out to catch VIA's "Canadian" leaving Winnipeg. It turned out that the first train I saw was CN 8906 West - see above. I elected to catch it at Carman Junction at the curve, to get the head on view above.

The train had CN 8906 / CN 5694 / CN 8823 on the head end.

Westward ho!

After the train passed, I went west to Diamond to set up for VIA. I caught up with some of the train so I amused myself by taking a few shots of the old wooden "Diamond" sign.

Diamond signs are forever, apparently

I hope nobody steals this sign.

VIA 1

VIA Rail Canadian heading west

I got what I came for - VIA 6455 leading the "Canadian" with two other units and 20 cars.

"Glacier Park" was on the tail end.

Prairie Streamliner

Central Manitoba Railway

4002 and 4004 parked on the Carman subdivision

Two Central Manitoba Railway GP9s, 4002 and 4004, were parked on the Carman subdivision.

I noticed this shiny new equipment box in the gap between the main line and the track to the CEMR Carman subdivision.

CN actually owns the first little bit of the track - from the Rivers sub across Wilkes Avenue - before it becomes the CEMR Carman sub.

I didn't see anything happening after that on the CN Rivers subdivision, so I headed for home.

As I drove around the Perimeter Highway, I spotted a southbound CN train on the Letellier subdivision. That would have been CN 532, heading down to the Canada-US border at Emerson to interchange with BNSF.

Bonus train!

CN 532

The dark side of CN 532

I gave chase as best I could. It was hard to catch up to the train through St. Norbert, given the 50 and 60 km/hr speed limits, but eventually I got ahead of them south of the town to get the shot above.

I was on the "dark side" of the train and I wasn't super happy about that. Fortunately, they weren't going very fast, so after they passed by, I gave chase again... this time, at 100 km/hr!

Near Ste. Agathe, I was far enough ahead of them that I felt I could leave the highway and drive the 2 km or so to the track for another round of photos. As it happened, I had enough time to get both my cameras out... one with the 70-200mm "long" lens and the other with the wide angle.

First the long lens. There was a combine working a field nearby, so I included that in the photo. You can see a bit of heat haze, so the shot isn't as sharp as I would like, but I like what's in it!

CN 5693 and a combine

A few seconds later, I took another photo as the train approached.

Storming south

The right of way looks very clean and well maintained, doesn't it?

I love that 70-200mm lens.

I "dropped" that camera and picked up my older T1i with the wide angle lens to capture the train as it went by.

Going wide

The train had a friendly crew who both gave me waves as they went by. Thanks!

One going away shot, with the Viterra elevator at Ste. Agathe just to the left of the train, and the G3 SD40-2 locomotive at far left, on the loop track of the G3 elevator at Glenlea / Saint Adolphe.

Heading south

Here's the video showing all three trains, with a "clickbait" title just for fun.


You might want to read Busy Day - same play, VIA 1 then CN 532, back in 2012!

PS - Important News

It's the end of an era.

This was the last full post that I will write on blog.traingeek.ca.

I've been on the Blogger platform for many years, since my first post in July 2005. After 13 years and 3 months, it's time to move on.

From now on, I'll be writing on my main site - www.traingeek.ca - and the posts will appear there on the home page.

I like the WordPress platform a lot more for writing. I've been thinking about this for a long time, more than a year, and now I'm making the change.

I hope you'll follow me there.

All of my old posts will remain where they are. I am not interested in moving them over!

By the way, there will be one more post, a placeholder to direct visitors to my main site.

https://www.traingeek.ca/wp/

Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th was... interesting.

I went out to the CN Symington area in the afternoon to see what was going on. CN 8896 was putting train 346 together.


It seemed clear that CN 346 was going to have a DPU engine. This appears to be fairly normal for 346. Out of the eight CN 346s I've seen, four have been DPU.

CN 8961 and blue BCOL 4646 were in the intermodal area of the yard... surrounded by poles, so no photos.

I heard CN 190 was ready to leave Transcona yard, so I headed up there. On the way I thought I would try to catch it crossing the Floodway. You may remember I got a blah shot at Dugald because I couldn't get to the Floodway in time. In this case CN 190 was just starting, so I hoped I could get there before they got up to speed.

I drove down Dugald Road, crossed the Floodway, and then made a quick U-turn at Deacon Road to get on the right side of the road. I drove up to the Floodway again and parked off the road, then hiked across toward the bridge. I heard CN 190 blowing for the first crossing (Ravenhurst Street) so I was on time.

I fired off a few shots with my long lens as they crossed the Perimeter and then changed lenses "on the fly" to my wide angle lens.


I was pleased with the light and the sky... isn't it purty?


The engineer gave me a nice wave as CN 8906 and CN 5737 pulled past me.


I watched the train roll by, then headed back to Symington. I could see that CN 346 was ready to roll out.

As I watched, CN 2341 brought a train off the Sprague subdivision by itself. I did some heavy editing to the backlit photo to bring you this:


I noted one of the humpyard sets was CN 7530 / CN 517 / CN 501 / CN 7511.

I took off southward to shoot CN 346 "on the road". I wanted to get them at speed, so I went a few miles south to a crossing at mile 139.86 on the Sprague subdivision. That's about 5.3 miles from Navin at the end of Symington Yard, and a mile or so short of Lorette siding.


As I said, CN 346 had CN 8896 on the head end. The second engine was CN 2221 and the DPU engine was CN 2203.

After they rolled by, Friday the 13th struck and my car wouldn't start! I've had that problem once or twice before. After sitting there cursing for about 5 minutes, I did get it to start and off I went. Hopefully that won't happen again anytime soon!