The Greater Winnipeg Railfanning Adventure (Guest Post)

Local railfan Taylor Woolston provided this narrative of a recent railfan adventure he had in the greater Winnipeg area... via bicycle!


Railfanning can sometimes be boring, with a lack of good or interesting power, and sometimes a lack of trains in general. Hoping that my luck might change for the better, I went railfanning on Monday, May 30th 2016. OH BOY. In my opinion, this was one of my best railfanning days ever from an overall point of view (Not just because of 1 train). Let's start from the beginning.

Every second school day, I switch between half days and full days. Today was a half day and I hadn't railfanned for awhile, so I decided to bring my railfanning equipment to school and go out right after school at lunch. I decided to head northeast, into the St Boniface area of Winnipeg.

I checked out the Greater Winnipeg Water District (GWWD) rail yard along Dawson Road, and noticed that the gate for the road into the yard by Messier Street was open. With that, I thought there might be a possibility of seeing the GWWD operating. They have 2 MLW RS23's, and seeing them operate is always a treat, but they aren't easy to catch.

After checking out the yard, I continued on and ended up going to an area where the GWWD crosses CN's "X Tracks", which takes trains in and out of CN's big and busy Symington Yard with 3 tracks to work with. The GWWD crossing creates a triple diamond across CN's tracks. There is a hill that parallels CN's tracks, which is where I set up.

After waiting for a while, CN 347 showed up and crawled out of the yard on track X3 and stopped short of the diamonds. Their power was CN 8921 (SD70M-2) and 2408 (C40-8M).

Shortly after, a GP38-Slug-Slug-GP38 set pulled across the diamond with a string of cars and stopped, then pushed hard back into Symington and disappeared.


After waiting for a while, a CN van (no, not like a caboose) came up to the head end and dropped off the conductor. Shortly after, CN 347 took off heading west.

After they passed, I waited for a while with nothing going on. Suddenly, I got word that the Central Manitoba Railway (CEMR) wanted to enter Symington. I decided, with almost no chance of seeing the GWWD, to ride up to Dugald Road, where an overpass crosses over the CN X tracks, to make absolutely sure that no other trains block my view of CEMR, and to get a different perspective.

I packed up, rode up to the nearby street, Lagimodiere Blvd, and went towards the overpass. However as I crossed the GWWD, I saw something that made me slam on the brakes..... TRAIN! A GWWD train returning from the Deacon Water Treatment Plant!

I turned around and went back to the triple diamond and set up faster than a cheetah on steroids! (are there railfan cheetahs? - Ed)


Unsurprisingly, they had to stop before crossing over CN. I decided to go back onto the hill and set up there.

As I was doing so, I heard something - the unmistakable sound of a GP9RM working hard. At first I thought it was the CEMR train, but it turns out it was a CN local bringing some cars into Symington. CN 281 (Yard Slug) and 7214 (GP9RM) led the freight into the yard.


Just a few minutes after the local cleared, the GWWD got their signal crawled across the diamond towards their yard with 3 tanks in tow. The unit they were using today was #202.


The last time I saw this operation, I learned that they drop off the tanks from Deacon onto their interchange track with CN, and pick up ones that CN has left for them. Knowing this, and the fact that they don't exactly go very fast through here, I decided to wait a few minutes for CEMR to hopefully arrive.

Sure enough, a few minutes later the CEMR train rolled into Symington with CEMR 4002 and 4000 (a pair of GP9RM's) in charge.


After the CEMR roared past, I started what should have been an easy chase of the GWWD, but my rear tire picked the perfect time to burst on me, meaning I was now stuck on foot, rolling my bike around. I zigzagged through a couple of side streets before getting to where the GWWD crosses Dugald Road, with a couple minutes to spare.

After having dropped off the tanks from Deacon and picking up the tanks from CN, they now had 5 tanks with them, and brought them towards the yard. In order to get the tanks into the yard correctly, they have to stop short of the yard, and use a siding to run the locomotive to the other side of the cars.


Without even fully retracting the tripod, I ran with the bike as quickly as possible to where the GWWD crosses Dawson Road and Messier Street. The Dawson Road crossing is incredibly shallow, with the rails being in the road for almost 54 metres (176.5'). Compare that to the Messier Street crossing, where the rails are in the road for only 15 metres (50').

By the time I got to the crossings, covered in sweat as it was a hot day, they had coupled the locomotive to the other side, and the conductor was walking up towards the road to manually activate the crossing, protect it and ride the tanks into the yard.


As the conductor rode across, he asked me how I was doing, and I gave him a big thumbs up! Once they dropped the tanks in the yard, the conductor deactivated the crossing, and they ran the unit back to the engine house, ending another hard day of work.


Once I was done worrying about the GWWD, I now had to worry about getting home. I was around 5 km (3.1 miles) away from home, and was on foot with a bike in bad order, and that's just the direct distance. I have a cellphone, so I could have called my dad to get the car bike rack out and give me a lift, but I decided to brave it out and go home on foot.

As I crossed the nearby CP Emerson Subdivision, I saw a northbound freight coming, and it was not far away at all! I had just a minute or two for setting up a shot. It wasn't very good, but oh well.

It was a fairly standard freight with nothing special on it.... until the end that is. On the end, there was a HERZOG tie train attached. The head-end of it was HZGX 187.


Once it very slowly crawled past, I made my way home after a great day of railfanning, even with the epic tire failure.


Thanks for the great guest post, Taylor! He also recorded video of many of these trains:


I encourage you visit Taylor's YouTube channel and subscribe!

ES44ACs on the Sprague

It was a beautiful afternoon on Sunday, March 8th, so I bundled the kids in the car and we headed out to see some trains. I decided to visit the CN Sprague subdivision because, well, that's where I've been going recently. When I reached the intersection of highway 1 with the Perimeter Highway (here), I saw there were two freight trains waiting to leave Symington Yard, and one was already rolling out onto the Sprague. Time for a chase!

I decided to shoot the train coming off the bridge over the Floodway. This necessitated getting my feet a bit wet, as I had to trudge through some wet calf-high snow to get a decent angle. I think this is really more of a summer shot location, but what the heck. This was 3:48 PM.

I had a feeling they were going to meet a train at the Lorette siding (mile 138.2). I don't know why I felt that way - just a "railfan hunch" I guess. Sure enough, there was a train waiting there, headed by shiny new ES44AC locomotives CN 2910 and CN 2944.

The crew dismounted to give the oncoming train a rollby inspection. The engineer was quite friendly and commented that there was a lot of traffic due to the northern Ontario derailment near Gogama. He also said the new ES44ACs pull very well.

Very soon the train was on us and I captured the meet.

This sure beat sitting at home!

It wasn't long before CN 2910 throttled up and headed into Winnipeg. Hopefully they managed to park the train before they ran out of hours!

Once they pulled out, we headed south toward Dufresne (mile 130.9), because I wanted to include the grain elevator in some photos. CN 8912 East was still trucking along but I was able to catch up to it, especially when it slowed down approaching Dufresne. I thought they were going into the siding for another meet. I was able to get ahead of them enough to get the grain elevator in a shot.

For the record it was CN 8921 / CN 2322 / CN 2666 / CN 2182 with no DPU.

Notice their headlights were out. As CN 8921 rolled slowly by, I saw a train entering the siding at the far end. Soon I could see CN 2832 coming up the siding - my second meet of the afternoon.

Clearly this was set up as a rolling meet as neither train stopped, with 2832 crawling along until 8921 East had cleared the west end of the siding.

The RTC was on the ball, lining the switch for 2832 to get on its way without any delay. Fortunately they were going slow enough that I could get on the highway side of the crossing well before the lights came on. Here they are just leaving the siding.

As I sped back toward Winnipeg, I noticed them coming around the bend and decided to stop and take a photo or two. The Prairies have this neat feature where there are connecting roads between the two sides of the 4-lane highway every mile or so, unlike the Maritimes, so it's easy to turn around.

One more turn and I was back on my way toward Winnipeg. I decided to stop at Lorette and catch them passing by. Sadly - for them - they took the siding at Lorette too!

Their meet was soon upon them as CN 3032 blasted by. Meet #3 for me!

This train had CN 3032 and CN 2906, with CN 2824 as DPU power in the middle - lots of ES44ACs this afternoon.

By this time it was 5:05 PM so it was time to get the kids home and make some supper. CN 2832 was still in the siding so I figured they were going to meet another train. After driving for a few kilometres, I saw another eastbound coming so I pulled over to grab one last train.

CN 5685 broke up the ES44AC streak, and CN 2580 was trailing power on this train, composed mostly of autoracks.

A few tank cars and one loaded lumber car... the end.

Not bad... five trains in less than 90 minutes.

Running extra - the day before this (Saturday), I was driving home through a blizzard when I spotted a CN train rolling on the Rivers sub. I pulled off the highway to photograph it but noticed VIA's Hudson Bay (er, VIA 692) rolling the other way and decided to shoot that instead. I only had my iPhone with me but the old saying goes, "the best camera is the one you have with you." Here it is.

The RTC Gods Were Smiling

Coming back to "near present" for a minute, this is what I saw on Thursday. I went out at noon to shoot the Canadian under bright sunny skies. I started at St. James Junction but I moved over to the pumping station (?) by Kenaston Boulevard to get a more wide open view of the Canadian. St. James Junction is great but it has a lot of wires and poles around that detract from the shot.

In due time I saw the headlights of the Canadian in the east as they passed through Portage Junction on the north track.. and to the west I saw headlights of a freight train... on the south track. I was quite concerned that the freight train would get to me first and block my view of the VIA Rail train. As the two trains approached it was clear that the freight would get to me first. Sigh.

CN 2330 was leading train 116.


Nice wave from the bearded engineer! As the train passed, it slowed down more and more. I was watching between containers for the Canadian to pass by on the north track... but it never did.

CN 8921 was the sole DPU engine on the train.


Eventually CN 116 came to a dead stop. After a few minutes of waiting, 116 started up again and continued east. I think there was a foreman's permit that had to be terminated. Finally, 116 was clear and in the distance I saw that VIA 1 had stopped short of St. James Junction.

As I watched, they crossed over from the north to the south track and slowly rolled past me. After a nice wave from the second engineer, VIA 6404 rolled past on the point of 22 cars.


There was a deadhead baggage car on the train right behind the second engine. Lots of people were waving as they rolled past. Appropriately, Assiniboine Park was the trailing car, given that the real Assiniboine Park is only a few kilometres from where I took the photo.


Saying a silent prayer to the RTC gods (hi Janice) for not skunking me, I started to head out, only to find a CP local heading north on the La Riviere sub. A quick stop yielded this shot of the short train.

Not a bad lunch time!