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!

Early April Railfanning

I've been trying to emerge from hibernation and get out to see some trains. Here's a few that I've seen so far in April 2015.

April 2

I went out before noon to the CN Rivers subdivision. I immediately saw a westbound container train, so I drove ahead of them to Charleswood Road to capture the first photo. There's a little parking lot there so it's easy to park without getting in anyone's way.

After CN 5751 and CN 5602 rolled by, I gave chase. I decided to try something a little different and went out to mile 16 of the Rivers sub. Here the track bends slightly to head west, so there is a chance for a head on shot without standing between the rails (a very bad idea).

I parked and found a place to hop across the water-logged ditch to wait for the train. Then it was just a matter of waiting.

I took this shot as the train approached, then moved farther away from the tracks and gave the customary wave as the train rolled on by.

It looks like the train was really close, but it wasn't. Here's how it looked in Lightroom before I started cropping and doing the editing.

You can see I cropped quite a bit out. My kingdom for a longer lens!

I started heading back east toward Winnipeg when I spotted another westbound train. I went back toward Diamond to get ahead of it. It was an oil train headed by shiny new CN 2971 and CN 2970, train U735 I'm told.

I thought that was going to be the end of it, but they were slowing for a signal at Diamond. I went to the road crossing just east of the diamond to take a few photos of the stopped train.

That was April 2nd.

April 3

We went out after supper on April 3rd. This time I went over to the east side of Winnipeg. I spotted a train heading into Winnipeg on the CN Sprague subdivision, so I went to Deacon's Corner to catch them at the crossing there.

You can see there was a bit of a flurry going on.

I spotted an interesting car in the consist so I went to Tinker Town to capture it. The head end was already by but the car in question came into view.

AEX 5126 was lettered for the Georgia and Clinchfield Railroad, part of the Family Lines System, which became the Seaboard System briefly before becoming CSX. The herald says "SCL/L&N Georgia Clinchfield West Point Route".

I also noted a few ex-Canadian grain hoppers that have been relettered. For example, NDYX 814405.

I normally don't pay a lot of attention to rolling stock but I did for this train.

Note that the above two photos were taken with my iPhone 6, mainly because I was too lazy to change lenses on my Canon and I wanted to see how the iPhone did. It took both a regular and an HDR version of each, probably noting the dynamic range of the image between the bright sky and the dark rolling stock. It did an OK job although there are parts of the sky that are still blown out, even in the HDR verison. In my editing, I basically brought the sky exposure down some, brightened the shadows, and added a bit of clarity... and of course cropped it.

I carried on around the Perimeter to Transcona, where I noted a westbound train parked in the CN yard there. It had CN 2606 and blue BCOL 4648 for power but did not appear to be going anywhere. I took a photo of each but they're nothing special.

I carried on to CEMR's shops on Day Street. There I spotted a few locomotives outside their shop, and I was glad to see CCGX 4202 there in the new Cando Rail Services scheme. This was the first time I'd seen it in person.

You can see that the flurries were still going on.

There was no action on CP so I headed back south on the Perimeter. I spied a westbound train coming in off the CN Redditt subdivision, so I got into position to photograph them coming off the bridge over the Floodway just east of the Perimeter Highway.

CN 2600 was followed by another blue BC Rail unit, BCOL 4653.

By this time the light was getting iffy, so we headed home.

April 4

We had an errand to run near Symington Yard, so I had a quick glance at Symington on the way by. There were quite a few CN engines there as well as a yellow Railserve locomotive (see this post for the only Railserve I've photographed). I continued up Lagimodiere and made my way to CEMR to try to get a better shot of 4202. Unfortunately there were no locomotives visible at all. I decided to follow the CEMR Pine Falls subdivision up to see if there was any action, and also because I'd never visited the first few miles of it. You may recall I saw the part of it from Selkirk to Pine Falls, now removed.

I drove up to the Imperial Oil facility, which had a lot of tank cars around, but it's not very approachable so I didn't take any photographs. I did spot a snowplow parked on a siding (Manlius, mile 10.2) just north of Imperial Oil.

That was CEMR 2, an ex CN plow built in September 1930. There were a few MOW cars coupled to it. Note the tank cars sitting on the main, a clear indication that this is being used for storage.

I decided to circle around Winnipeg via the Perimeter, so we headed west. After passing the Prairie Dog Central, I spotted a westbound CP train that turned out to be a rail train with CP 3085 as the sole power. I decided to shoot them at the Viterra elevator by the Perimeter Highway. They gave me a nice toot on the horn as they passed.

Heading down south, I spotted a Herzog machine dropping new ties off on the CN Rivers subdivision, so I had to capture that.

It was HZGX 206 and train at work. They were crawling west at a slow walking pace, while the operator was picking a bunch of ties up and dropping them on the north side of the tracks. I saw the south side already had ties placed.

I saw HZGX 185 back in early 2011 not far from this location.

I took a little video to show the operation of the crane:

That was the end of three days of railfanning. I hope you've enjoyed reading about them!

A Busy CN Day

August 16 was a busy day of CN watching for me. I started in the morning by driving to Wilkes Avenue by the Perimeter Highway, a little before 8 AM. An east-facing container train was parked on the north track on top of the hotbox detector at mile 10. I went to the head end and saw CN 8910 was the sole power there. This turned out to be CN train #112.

Incidentally, this is my first HDR photo. I took three shots at different exposures and used FDRTools Basic to blend them together. I'll talk more about HDR at another time.

As I was taking shots of 8910, I saw a headlight to the west. After a few minutes, one of the crew from 8910 dismounted to do a rollby inspection. Dual SD75I engines CN 5795 and CN 5688 at the head of train #404 rolled by on the south track. I didn't get a really good shot of the actual passing move but here's train #404. Remember that engine number CN 5795.


Satisfied, I started walking back to my car. As I walked across the tracks at the Charleswood Road crossing, I saw another headlight to the west. I trotted back and took a position to record this new train. I forgot to record this train #. I think it was a 7xx series train. It had SD75I CN 5705 and Dash-8 CN 2407 for power.


That was all that I could see for the time being. I heard of some kind of "traffic tie-up" around Fort Rouge but I wasn't going to go investigate. I headed east on Wilkes, only to find the CEMR train sitting at the end of their track at Carman Junction.

They clearly weren't going anywhere, so I grabbed a few shots and continued on.

I saw one more train! CN #115 was waiting just east of Shaftesbury Boulevard. CN 8811 and CN 8005 started rolling after a few minutes, so I shot them as they passed.

I heard CN #112 finally getting permission to continue on at this point, so 115 and 112 probably met somewhere near Carman Junction.

That was it for the morning... four CN and one CEMR trains in an hour. Not bad.

But wait! There's more! If you keep reading...

On my way home, I headed out via Wilkes and saw CN #301 heading out. It had a single engine for power... the same CN 5795 that came into Winnipeg on train #404. I first shot the train at Carman Junction. Note the signals behind the engine.


I chased west and shot video train 301 a few km east of Diamond. Check the video out... especially the end of the train!


Yes, that is the Herzog multipurpose machine HZGX 185 that I saw back in February.

I think this must be approaching some kind of record for largest # of cars pulled by a single engine on a road freight... 134 cars plus the Herzog set.

Herzog Ballast Trains in Saint John

I was in southern New Brunswick earlier this week on business. I arrived on the afternoon of Sunday June 19, so my thoughts turned to railfanning in one of my old haunts. Who am I kidding... when do my thoughts turn AWAY from railfanning?

I found a CN ballast train parked near Crosby's. CN 2512 and CN 5694 were the power on the head end of a string of Herzog ballast cars.


The Herzog cars were in New Brunswick back in July 2009 on the northern line.

What's special about the Herzog cars? The "PLUS" train basically automatically dumps ballast at up to 20 MPH at pre-programmed locations. It uses GPS to determine the location and drops the ballast as it goes. This eliminates the need for ground crew, making it safer and faster than traditional ballast cars.

CN has been getting ballast from NBSR in the past few weeks. Apparently it is being dumped on the CN Springhill subdivision. One load was dumped around Sackville, NB and another around Folly Lake, NS. There has been a lot of chatter about these trains on the excellent RailsNB mailing list.

CN seems to be providing the power and the Herzog cars. Dave Dineen shot a great video showing the train being loaded in NBSR's Dever Road yard, then rolling across the Reversing Falls bridge. The train was run as CN 439.

You can see that spacer (box)cars were used to separate the engines from the train, and there is a boxcar between every four loaded Herzog cars on the front part of the train. This is done to reduce loading on the bridge.

Saint John train watchers may remember that NBSR did a similar thing in 2005 when they were taking loaded gypsum cars across the Reversing Falls bridge while doing maintenance.

The empties seem to come back to Saint John on CN 406 with the two units on the head end. Here's a video from Gerald aka SD40dash2fan showing CN 406 around mile 71 coming into Saint John.


He has another one showing 406 rolling over the little CN bridge at the far end of Rothesay Avenue in Saint John.

PS - I saw the Herzog cars on CN 303 at Elie, Manitoba a while ago.

The Herzog Multipurpose Machine

Following my visit to Carman Junction on February 17, I was heading back along Sterling Lyon Boulevard when I saw a really different sight.

This is a Herzog Multi-Purpose Machine. This is a self-propelled track unit designed for general maintenance of way (MOW) work like tie pickup and drop-off, ditching, grading and so forth. The Komatsu crane on the top of the cars rolls back and forth, and has changeable "grabbers" for various tasks.

The unit was on the former Winnipeg Intermodal Terminal spur near where IKEA is being built.
The front end of the machine is HZGX 185, the power unit.

The unit is designed to be operated by one person. The operator in the crane cab can roll the entire train back and forth as required.

There are a few stencils on the train: "REAR END OF TRAIN MOVEMENT ONLY", "DO NOT HUMP", and "WARNING: REMOTE CONTROL EQUIPMENT".

I took one shot of the rear of the unit before heading out.

Herzog Cars

This morning I was approaching Elie, Manitoba from the west when I heard a chirp on the scanner from a nearby end-of-train (EOT) device. The EOT sends little data chirps to the engine, and vice versa, on occasion and you can pick that up on a scanner. Hearing that chirp means there is a train nearby.

I pulled off to cross the tracks near a little elevator just west of Elie. As I crossed the two tracks I saw a train far to the east. It turned out to be CN 303 just pulling out of Elie. There were some rather interesting cars behind CN 2301 and 8859!


You may recall I reported on a Herzog ballast train in the east back in July.

Herzog Ballast Train

The Herzog ballast train worked its way east on the CN (ex-CFMG) Mont-Joli subdivision to Campbellton this afternoon and evening, and is currently in Campbellton. Tomorrow (Thursday) it will work back west. It ran as train 906 today. It has two engines at each end, running in DPU mode as the first DPU train ever on the Mont-Joli subdivision.

Herzog calls it a PLUS train - Programmable Linear Unloading System. Basically the locations to dump ballast are preprogrammed, and the train uses GPS to determine its location and automatically dumps ballast at the correct locations. No ground personnel are required (unlike an ordinary ballast train) so it can operate 24 hours a day in any weather. Herzog operates the train itself, perhaps with a pilot from the host railroad.