Passing a Half Century (Part 8) - Rocky Wraps it Up

For my 50th birthday, my wife and I drove through Alberta and British Columbia. You can start at the beginning here... or read the whole series as an eBook with extra content!

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The Rocky Mountaineer in Banff

I awoke early on day 6 of my 50th birthday trip to Alberta and British Columbia to go see the Rocky Mountaineer. You may recall I tried to see it the previous evening but got distracted by an unexpected Royal Canadian Pacific.

At 07:35, RMR 8012 and 8016 were idling in Banff at the head of about a dozen cars, facing west. The sun was about to crest the mountains, making the light a bit challenging for photography.

I shot a series of 3 bracketed photos to merge into an HDR photo to do the best I could with the light.

An Aside on HDR

What does all that mean? Well, the problem with photographing into the sun (like the lead photo) is that the sky is bright but the train is dark. You can set the camera's exposure so that the sky is properly exposed but then the train is just a dark mass. Alternately, you can set the exposure brighter so that the train is properly exposed, but the sky is too bright and becomes pure white. Neither is good.

When nothing is moving, you can shoot a "High Dynamic Range" photo by photographing the exact same scene with different exposure settings.

In the above trio of photos, you can see the sky is OK in the left one, a little dark in the middle one, and totally blown out in the right. The train is a dark blob in two of the photos and nicely exposed in the right one.

What HDR, or exposure blending, does is to merge these photos into one, taking the best of each photo. Here's the result - with some cropping and a bit of editing.

Signal and train in Banff, Alberta

There are specialized programs to do this HDR processing, or you can do what I do and use Adobe Lightroom's built-in HDR processing.

I've been doing a lot of HDR photography with static trains like this, or landscape photography.

Anyway.. back to the story.

Meetup in Banff

Before the Rocky Mountaineer could leave, it had to meet an eastbound CP freight train.

CP 8653 in Banff

I did a little pan of CP 8653 -  shutter speed of 1/20s at f/8.0 for those who are interested. A little grimy, a little grainy...

CEFX 1053 was the trailing unit.

The crew of the Rocky Mountaineer were out to give the train the rollby inspection.

Inspecting the train in Banff

This train had a mid-train locomotive, CP 8821. More panning! This time I used 1/10 second for the shutter speed. I usually photograph in manual so I am using the dial on my camera to spin shutter speed up and down as the train goes by, depending on what type of shot I want.

Pan of CP 8821 in Banff

Green Means Go

After the Canadian Pacific freight train passed, the Rocky Mountaineer got the green light to head west. I took a few more photos of the train then beat it west to try to catch it en route.

This would be better without those pylons

My intention was to get them at Muleshoe or thereabouts. I had photographed the Rocky there twice before and I like the spot very much.

Too Casual

Unfortunately, I screwed it up royally.

I was far too casual about getting to the spot on time. I got to the location in good time, but I ambled down toward the track like I had all the time in the world.. of course I did not have much time.

I heard the train coming while I was still walking toward the track, so I had to run while fiddling with camera settings and also keeping an eye out so I didn't trip and fall.

The result?

Awful

Nice mountain.. but the train is hiding behind a tree.

This one, two seconds later, is not too bad. It's definitely the best of the series I took.

The Rocky Mountaineer along the Bow River

The rest of the train was a surrealistic smear of bad pans.

S M E A R

I'm grateful that I got one half-decent photo out of the series.

After that hot mess, I went back to the hotel and met my wife for breakfast at the Ricky's All Day Grill attached to our hotel. Good food at decent prices.

After that, we did get to Lake Louise. We parked in the overflow parking and took the shuttle bus to the lake. We walked to the other end of the lake and it was such a lovely day for a walk.

Lake Louise

I can't get enough of Lake Louise.

That was really the end of my railfanning trip. For the rest of day 6, and the start of day 7, my plan was to not plan and follow my wife's lead. We wandered around Banff, visiting the Banff Springs and the waterfall behind it, and of course some shopping.

The Vermilion Lakes

We have been to Banff several times but we never made the drive to the Vermilion Lakes, so I suggested that we should see them. They are just outside Banff so it's an easy visit.

Mid-morning on day 7, we drove along the road beside the Trans-Canada for a while, parked and walked along one of the many paths.

It's quite lovely there and it's a peaceful retreat from the crowds in Banff.

As we were walking along, I heard the hum of an approaching train. A little telephoto work revealed CP 9706 crawling along the shores of the lakes.

CP 9706 along the Vermilion Lakes

The train looks pretty small compared to the mountains!

That was the last train I saw on the trip. We drove around a few other locations near Banff and then headed into Calgary to the airport for the flight home.

PINEY!

It's always fun to see little Piney, Manitoba on the Air Canada in-flight maps. I still remember the Piney train station.

Trip Statistics

• 6.5 days
• 2,259 km driven
• 27 trains photographed
• 1,612 photos kept
• uncounted memories made

Thanksgiving

I am so grateful to have been able to make a trip like this... I'm grateful that I could afford the time away from work and my kids, and the money to pay for gas and food and lodging.

Most of all I am grateful to have a wonderful wife who supported my idea. She's a great travel companion, on railfan and non-railfan trips, and I love her so much.

Read More

• Back to the start of this trip
• Banff in 2010
• Banff in 2015
• Banff in 2016

PS you can read this series as an eBook, with extra photos and content!

Passing a Half Century (Part 7) - Not the Rocky

For my 50th birthday, my wife and I drove through Alberta and British Columbia. You can start at the beginning here... or read the whole series as an eBook with extra content!

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Ah, Banff

Sure as that old whistle's blowin'

There's a tug upon my heart
Somewhere in that misty mornin' light
There's another brand new start

- Doobie Brothers, "Keep This Train A-Rollin'"

Day 5, Continued

When we left off, my wife and I were on day 5 of my 50th birthday railfan trip, heading to Banff, Alberta on highway 1A (also known as the Bow Valley Parkway), after chasing a train through the Spiral Tunnels to Lake Louise.

We drove into town and I stopped at the train station at about 4:30 PM to ask when the Rocky Mountaineer was coming in. The person behind the RM counter said they would be arriving around 7 PM. Great!

We checked into our hotel (the Elk + Avenue, a nice but rather expensive hotel). After a bit, we headed over to the station to see the Rocky.

Meet at Banff

At first I went to Banff East (at Compound Road) but nothing was around. I was listening to my scanner and heard chatter about a meet at the station, so we drove over to the station and parked there. My wife sat in the car while I went over to the crossing at Mt. Norquay Road to wait.

A guy driving a blue Alberta pickup showed up and started wandering all over the tracks, taking photos and being rather unsafe. I don't know if he was a railfan and I didn't speak with him.

A few minutes later, CP 8948 East showed up.

CP 8948 East

It was pulling a big ol' grain train.

CP 8948 and the Banff station

You can see some of the Rocky Mountaineer staff on the platform by the station.

This train had a shiny locomotive on it, freshly repainted CP 9835 with the new "golden beaver" logo.

Shiny CP 9835

CP 9835 and 8639 were the first two locomotives to receive the new, simplified beaver and came out of Relco's Albia, Iowa shops in July 2017.

It's so rare to see a clean locomotive on CP these days! 9835 really stood out.

After standing on the ballast, too close to the train, Mr. Unsafe took off.

The train wasn't going very fast, and the reason why became evident when the tail end passed me. Here's the other train!

CP 8622 at Banff with buses

CP 8622 was waiting on the main for the other train to clear. They took off to the west without delay.

Speaking of shiny, freshly repainted locomotives...

CP 8622 leaving Banff

Another new "golden beaver"!

I saw an interesting car in the train. It is lettered COER 354978 but I could see the KCS underneath the patch. Apparently there are a few of these kicking around.

COER 354978 in Banff

Here's a photo of the same car in August with the same graffiti. I found that photo on this thread featuring my friend Bill Brillinger!

Here's the video I took of CP 8622 West.

After the DPU - CP 8819 - passed by, all was quiet for about half an hour.

All quiet in Banff

Everyone was waiting for the Rocky Mountaineer to show up. I talked with a couple - from Tennessee, I think - who were going to ride the Rocky the next morning. They were really looking forward to the trip and were out to see their train come in.

Finally

Eventually, a headlight in the distance...

Ummm... what?

Wait... that's not the Rocky Mountaineer...

It was the Royal Canadian Pacific!

Anyone remember this show?

It was a very pleasant surprise!

CP 1401 and the Royal Canadian Pacific in Banff

I was delighted to see the RCP - and maybe a bit puzzled. Why was it here?

Oh well... don't ask questions, just take pictures!

They pulled up until the whole train was at the station, and stopped briefly.

Given the poor lighting (it was 7 PM and not very bright out) I took some 3 frame HDR photos and combined them.

A fine looking train

The conductor got out and uncoupled the power from the train. If you expand the photo above, you'll see him down at the junction of CP 4106 and CP 95.

Once the power was uncoupled, they pulled ahead through the crossing, then reversed along the siding waaaayy down to the east to the other siding switch.

Giving it the run-around

While they were doing that, I walked along the station platform and recorded the consist: CP 1401 / CP 4107 / CP 4106 / CP 95 / CP 77 "VAN HORNE" / CP 103 "MAJOR ROGERS" / "ROYAL WENTWORTH" / "CRAIGELLACHIE" / CP 74 "MOUNT STEPHEN".

I thought the view of CP 1401 coming up with the mountains in the background would look great.

So did this person.

Thanks for getting in the shot

Wouldn't this have been nice without the chimping photographer?

So close

No, I'm not bitter. ;)

There was quite a crowd on the end of MOUNT STEPHEN watching the proceedings. That's the bride on the left.

An audience for the couple.. er, coupling

I took video at a few points and combined them into this video.

Ninety Minutes

At this point I realized I had been out railfanning for ninety minutes. My wife, my ever loving, very patient wife, was a bit annoyed that I took so long. Very understandable! Now I know the limit. :)

So I didn't wait for the Rocky Mountaineer to eventually arrive. I figured we could catch it departing in the morning.

We wandered around Banff looking for a restaurant that didn't have a huge waiting list. It was tough! We finally found the Bear Street Tavern, a place that advertises "ridiculously good pizza". We had eaten there on a previous visit and it was just as good this time. Highly recommended.

Next Up

We spent day 6 in the Banff area, starting with a little chase of the Rocky Mountaineer before we finally got to Lake Louise. One more post in this series... READ ON!

PS you can read this series as an eBook, with extra photos and content!

Passing a Half Century (Part 6) - Through the Spiral Tunnel

For my 50th birthday, my wife and I drove through Alberta and British Columbia. You can start at the beginning here... or read the whole series as an eBook with extra content!

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Let me explain.

No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
- Inigo Montaya, "The Princess Bride"

Day 5 - Golden to Banff

We woke up at a reasonable hour (7:30 AM or so) to start our short drive from Golden, BC to Banff to continue my 50th birthday trip. It's a mere 139 km drive, only an hour and a half assuming no interruptions for construction or traffic... and we had the whole day to do it in!

Naturally I had factored in some train watching time, so I expected to take a lot longer than 1.5 hours to travel that distance.

We left Golden and headed east on the Trans-Canada. There's some pretty scenic country along that stretch of highway, and the CP main line flirts with both the highway and the Kicking Horse River. Unfortunately, there were no trains running when we drove past, and even if there were, the tremendous amount of road construction would have made it hard to pull over to get a shot.

Field

We arrived at Field. This little town is a division point between the CP Mountain subdivision to the west and the CP Laggan subdivision to the east.

Trains stop here for a crew change and it's not unusual to find a train or two stopped any time you drive by.

This time was no exception, with CP 9609 East stopped by the former telegraph building.

They were not parked in a very photogenic location, especially with the sun not really showing its bright face, so I tried a few different angles to try to get a better photograph of this grain train.

We ended up sitting here for about an hour... thank my patient wife, as usual.

Playing with image editing

It seemed obvious that they were waiting for a meet.

I don't know who Woody is, but he's all over this locomotive.

WOODY WOODY WOODY WOODY

It turned out that there was another eastbound grain train coming, and it stopped at the former station in Field. CP 9782 was at the head.

CP 9782 in Field, British Columbia

But CP 9609 wasn't waiting for that train... it was waiting for CP 8554 West.

The Meet

CP 8554 and 9650 in Field, BC

CP 8554 came rolling into Field. I patiently waited for CP 8554 to come out of the shadows and into the sunlight to get the shot. It's a pretty nice view here!

They rolled through the crossing and met CP 9609 and its crew, on the ground for the roll-by inspection.

CP 8554, meet CP 9609

That golden beaver on CP 8554 is looking pretty ragged!

Even the end unit, CP 9355, looked pretty good.

CP 9355 on the rear

We hit the road after CP 9355 passed by. I assumed CP 9609 East was going to head out right away so I wanted to get ahead of it.

The Spiral Tunnels

Arguably the most famous railway attraction in Canada, or least the Rocky Mountains, the two spiral tunnels replaced CPR's "Big Hill" and replaced the perilous 4.5% grade with a more manageable 2.2%. There's a viewpoint along the Trans-Canada Highway where you can view both portals of the Lower Spiral Tunnel.

We parked there and went to see if CP 9609 East had caught up to us. I could hear it, and by the time I fought my way through the crowds to get a view, I saw the DPU (CP 9653) far below.

CP 9653 - man in the middle

Less than a minute later, the lead locomotive popped out of the upper tunnel portal.

CP 9609 at the upper portal of the Lower Spiral Tunnel

The photo above is heavily cropped from a 200mm shot from quite a distance away. To right is the same viewpoint, at 85mm and uncropped.

I'm frankly impressed that it is as sharp as it is. Note the "1908" at the top of the portal. The Canon 70-200mm f/4 lens is a good one!

Soon the train looped over itself... not that you can really see it any more. The area is so overgrown that you can't even see the lower portal, and when trains leave the lower portal heading east, you can catch glimpses of the train through the thick tree growth but that's it.

Parks Canada is really dropping the ball here on maintaining this site. Like Morant's Curve, it's up to them to maintain the trees and cut them back where required. If this keeps up, in another decade there will be no point in stopping here as nothing will be visible.

Rant over.

The train looped over itself - trust me

We didn't wait for the train to finish going through... I wanted to try to catch it at Wapta Lake like I did the last time I was in the area.

Sadly there was a ton of road construction by the lake and there was no place to stop. The light wasn't great anyway, so we carried on.

We wanted to visit Moraine Lake after we caught this train, so we kept going to the Lake Louise exit. There were a lot of cars around, and there were people directing traffic at each 4-way stop. That was a first in my experience!

We went straight to the old Lake Louise station - now a restaurant - and I waited by the display cars for the train to come along.

Lake Louise

CP 9609 East at Lake Louise

CP 9609 came storming around the corner. She put on a lovely show and sounded great as the train rolled on by the station.

Nice wave from the engineer!

The wave

For those who care, I believe the train took a few minutes less than an hour to run the 20.4 miles from Field to Lake Louise.

Frustration

We left the chase off here and went to Lake Louise proper.

Or, I should say, we tried to go to Lake Louise.

There were so many people around that there was no place to park and they were turning everyone away.

Our alternate was nearby Moraine Lake, which was also full.

There was overflow parking with a shuttle bus, but it was already well after lunch time so we decided to give it up for the day and come back early the next day.

Apparently this was a great "fall foliage" day and everyone was out to try to see it one last time. It was a nice warm day, perhaps one of the last for the season. The free admittance to national parks as part of the Canada 150 celebrations probably helped, too.

Anyway, we headed down the Bow Valley Parkway aka Highway 1A aka the long way between Lake Louise and Banff. I wanted to see if there were any trains and my wife wanted to see wildlife.

We stopped briefly at Morant's Curve.

Morant's Curve

There were the usual collection of photographers there, but we didn't linger too long. I stayed for about 10 minutes, taking a few photos and chatting with a professional photographer there. He was hoping to catch a train and we talked angles and exposures and composition. Fun!

I really wanted to try a different location this time - Castle Mountain.

Castle Mountain

Castle Mountain, Banff National Park

There's a rest stop close to Castle Mountain that overlooks the Bow River and, more importantly to me, the CP Laggan subdivision. It's here and it even has a bathroom!

I parked here and then went to scout angles and set up while my wife waited in the car.

Panorama at Castle Mountain

You can see that it's pretty scenic! There's a nice curve to the west and a straight section to the east. A path leads across the top of the slope so you can get around pretty easily. I wouldn't say you can get very close to the track without clinging to the side of the hill and/or being too close to the tracks for safety.

After about 35 minutes, a train came along... from the west.

CP 8913 at Castle Mountain

I liked this spot!

After 8913 and 8608 rolled by with their train of containers and autoracks, all was quiet for another half an hour. Eventually I heard a train coming from the east and set up to record CP 8957 West, another intermodal train.

CP 8957 at Castle Mountain

The lighting was a bit challenging, since it was 3:30 PM in the mountains on a cloudy day.

The train looked pretty good going away, too.

Going away

This train had a DPU, CP 8747.

CP 8747 in the middle of a train

I was happy to bag both a westbound and an eastbound train at that location. I packed up and we continued down the 1A / Bow Valley Parkway to Banff.

Breaking Up

When I started this series, I intended to have a post for every day of our trip. I'm breaking that "rule" now as we saw several more trains in the evening. This post is long enough, and the trains we saw were special enough, that I'd prefer to put them in another post. Coming soon... thanks for your patience.

Up Next

The rest of day 5 was spent in Banff, trying to photograph the Rocky Mountaineer. That didn't happen, but only because something better came along!

READ ON

PS you can read this series as an eBook, with extra photos and content!