July 9

My kids and I were out on Saturday, July 9 to get out of the house, and of course see some trains. First we went to mile 10 of the CN Rivers subdivision to shoot the Canadian. I mentioned that I saw the Loto Quebec unit leading already.

However, a CN freight ran ahead of VIA 1, with two SD75 units as power, CN 5640 and CN 5667.


After seeing the Canadian, we headed up north to see what was going on with CP. We went to see the units at the CP shops and hit a few balls in the field.

There were quite a few units outside the shops, including several SD90 units. Those are in the 91xx series. CP 9138 seems to be having some major work done.


Old friends CP 3028 / 1128 rolled in from the main yard area. Another Winnipeg resident, CP 5756, was shunting under the Arlington Street bridge.


There were several units in the short-lived CP Rail System "dual flag" livery. The blue has faded out of CP 5936's American flag.


If you really want to see all the units I saw, they are here.

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!

Recent VIA Trains

I wanted to post the last four Canadians I've seen, since I haven't mentioned them before the last VIA 1 I posted from June 16. Some were hum-drum, some were a bit more interesting.

For the first three I shot the Monday, Thursday and Saturday trains in sequence. I started with VIA 1 at mile 10 of the CN Rivers subdivision on July 4. It had VIA 6458 and VIA 6429 on the head end, with a normal summer consist.


Next, I saw VIA 1 at Kenaston Boulevard (maybe mile 6?) on July 7. This one had VIA 6410 and non-refurbished VIA 6424.


This one was interesting because it had VIA 4121 deadheading behind the engines. VIA 4121 is a coach destined for the Skeena.


For the Saturday train, I got them back at mile 10. This had the Loto Quebec unit, VIA 6414, leading two other engines, 6453 and 6452, on July 9.


I took a break after that and did not shoot the Monday Canadian, but I did get out on July 14 for the Thursday train. I drove up to St. James Junction, stepped out of my car, and there it was, ready to be shot. Perfect timing.


I got a wave from a diner in the Acadian.


Is that enough stainless steel for one post? ;)

More on New NB Southern Power

The second pair of Helm leased units, HLCX 913 and 917, were seen at Bayview Junction in Ontario.. yesterday?



Meanwhile, HLCX 911 was spotted in McAdam and Harvey. Danny McCracken shot HLCX 911 as part of the eastbound freight that featured NBSR 9802, 911, 008, 2318, and recently arrived 2612 from the St. Stephen subdivision. They left at 16:20.





Brian Barchard caught the same train rolling through Harvey Station. I see the depot has been repainted since I last saw it!

Death on the Tracks

Rick McColl, a track maintenance engineer with CN, was struck and killed by VIA #51 near Guildwood station in Pickering, Ontario yesterday at 1:10 PM. The accident happened next to highway 401 between Liverpool Road and Whites Road.

It appears that Mr. McColl and his coworker believed they had a 15-20 minute window to perform maintenance on the track. When VIA 51 rapidly approached, Mr. McColl ran south and his coworker ran north.

Passengers waited for nearly two hours before being bussed to their destination. Service resumed on the line around 5 PM.

The temptation is to speculate on whose fault it is, but I won't do that. An investigation will turn that up soon enough.

The incident was widely covered in local media. The most depressing report is this, from CTV News, featuring passengers complaining about the delay. C'mon, a man has died, have some patience!

Mr. McColl had 32 years with CN, and was 53. My condolences to his family and friends.

Another Prairie Dog Video

After messing up train numbers in my last couple of videos, I'm happy to say that this is INDEED the Prairie Dog Central #3. No confusion here!


Speaking of the Prairie Dog, here's a unique view of the train by PrairieDog1882.


Apparently a lot of people like to record trains this way. I like my camera too much to do that!

Busy Day

I was trackside a couple of times on July 7 and had a lot of luck catching trains. There were no really unique engines but there were a lot of trains.

I was just east of Diamond at 8 AM and soon enough CN 111 rolled out of the sun with CN 2285 leading and CN 8906 trailing, and CN 2334 in the middle of the train, on the south track.

I was shooting directly into the sun here, so I had to do some significant editing to get a usable photo.

Pardon the incorrect caption at the beginning of the video.

I played with panning shots as the containers rolled by. The trick is to set a shutter speed slow enough to show motion but not too slow that it blurs the target. Here I used 1/10 second.

Here are some good tips on panning shots.

Soon after they passed, I heard them talking to CN 304 so I swung the cameras around to get the eastbound 304. It was led by SD75I CN 5607 and ES44DC CN 2241, on the north track.

The morning sun is much nicer on eastbounds! This train had quite a few CN 197xxx hopper cars, often used to carry gypsum out east.


Soon after that, CN 347 rolled past on the south track with CN 5683 and CN 5763.



Again, sorry for the caption mixup.

So that was three trains within an hour. I left trackside for a while, but I was back by the Rivers subdivision at noon to catch the Canadian... and more...

What is it With Trucks and Amtrak Trains?

On Monday a trash truck plowed through a crossing and hit the Amtrak Downeaster in North Berwick, Maine (Story) Unfortunately the driver was killed, but noone on the train was seriously injured.

This follows the truck slamming into the California Zephyr late last month in which the truck driver, the train's conductor and four others on the train were killed.

What a strange, and tragic, coincidence. Is this some kind of weird terrorist plot or something? Let's hope there aren't any more grade crossing accidents for a while.

Fire at NB Southern Yard

There is/was a tie fire at the NB Southern Railway yard in Saint John this morning. There was a pile of about 20,000 ties that caught fire Sunday night. Workers were able to move 15,000 away but the rest were still burning Monday morning.

Fortunately there were no injuries reported.

CBC news

Short History of the Newfoundland Railway

I stumbled across a nice little article entitled The Life and Death of the Newfoundland Railway by Ed Roberts, editor of the Compass.

Read the article

Canada Day and the Prairie Dog Central - 2

This is the latter part of my story about chasing the Prairie Dog Central on Canada Day. Here's part 1.

This time, I'll just let the pictures and video tell the tale.

Makeshift Tripod

When I was getting ready to record the Canadian on June 11, I realized that I had forgotten to bring my tripod with me. I wanted to shoot stills and video, and you can't do that with just two hands... so what to do?



No worries! Just use the van as a tripod, with a bit of paper to level it!



What have you used to hold your video camera when you haven't had a tripod?

Canada Day and the Prairie Dog Central - 1

The kids and I went out in the morning of July 1 in search of trains. What else do you do on a holiday? ;)

There was nothing happening on CN. As I approached Inkster Boulevard and the CP main line a little after 11 AM, I thought, "hey, I bet the Prairie Dog is doing an excursion." A quick glance at their home base on Inkster showed many cars but no steam engine, so off we went toward Grosse Isle.

It was not long before I could see the residual smoke in the air, and soon we saw the plume from #3. We caught up with the train just before they entered Grosse Isle and I took a few shots and then a video.




Soon they came to a halt to offload the passengers, with the Canadian and Manitoban flags on display.


The train was definitely full, and there was quite a crowd enjoying the various entertainments in Grosse Isle. The town puts on a good show. There were tractor rides, singers, a petting zoo, and various merchants selling food and trinkets. My kids enjoyed everything and it looks like everyone else did too.

While everyone was enjoying the festivities, the crew was hard at work turning the engine on the wye just north of town. Only the engine is turned, so the engine would be followed by the caboose and then the passenger cars for the return trip.


The crew posed for a picture on the head end.


They left at 13:30 and made smoke for Inkster Junction.


We gave chase... to be continued.

Two "New" Units For NBSR

Two of the Helm leased units (HLCX 906 and 911) have arrived in Saint John. They came via CN to Moncton and were brought to Saint John on CN 406 yesterday, July 7. Matt aka saintjohnrailfan shot them behind the two CN units on 406.


Dave Dineen shot them this morning at the Island Yard in Saint John. He wrote a blog post about them. Click on the image to see more photos by Dave.


Presumably these units will be repainted ASAP into NB Southern colours. I'm glad they were caught before they wear the corporate green and yellow. Who knows - maybe they won't be repainted?

Load Shift

I was heading home on Tuesday, June 28 when I noticed a train heading east on the Rivers subdivision. I was not able to photograph the head end, but it was CN 840 on the north track. They stopped short of Waverley Street.

I waited for 311 but I heard that someone doing an rollby inspection of the train reported that something was amiss with the tenth car. They stopped to do an inspection and determined that it was a load shift and carried on.

I saw them cross Kenaston Boulevard with lone unit CN 2634 working hard to bring the train back up to speed, and the conductor gave a nice wave as they passed by.


After the engine was a beat up old CN gondola, then two flatcars with an odd dimensional load.



This is probably why CN 840 had to stop. There are rules for how two trains can meet/pass when one train has a dimensional load. I found some rules in these CP GOIs. It depends on the width of the load. In many cases one train has to stop and the other may pass by at a slow speed such as 10 MPH, and I think that's what happened here.

After these two flat cars were three bulkhead flat cars full of pipe, another gondola, then two flatcars with these giant pieces of steel.


Here's the offending car, ICG 295420, with a shifted load of pipe.


You can see the load did shift to the rear, and whomever was inspecting the train was concerned about the pipes getting loose and puncturing the tank car behind it. The conductor checked it out and was satisfied that there was no danger of that, so they carried on.

This is why trackside inspections are done!

More Winnipeg Grain Elevators

I shot a few more Winnipeg grain elevators in June. The first was this elevator just south of the CP yards.

I didn't see any identification on it. It has CN and Government of Canada grain hoppers at it.

On to the Paterson elevator up by the Prairie Dog Central. This elevator can be served by both CN and CP.

The CN side is known as "CN Lilyfield" on the remaining fragment of the CN Oak Point subdivision.

The CP side is served off the CP Carberry subdivision.


This satellite view, courtesy of Google Maps, shows the interesting track arrangement at the Paterson elevator.


There is a big loop track serving the elevator itself, and both CN and CP can feed into the loop.

The irony is that BNSF Manitoba is actually the railway serving the elevator at present. See the BNSF page on the Paterson elevator. BNSF sends cars from North Dakota using CN via the CN Letellier sub, then uses either CN or CP to take them to this elevator. There was a big debate before the Canadian Transportation Agency about the "interswitching" used by BNSF to serve the elevator, with CN challenging the ability of BNSF to use interswitching rates. CN lost the argument.

Ridiculous

Gregory Grice, a 16 year old railfan, was detained by police in White Plains, NY early in June. Apparently someone called the police and reported him "kneeling with a device". He was actually taking pictures of trains at a public crossing. Four? police agencies responded.

He was questioned at the scene and then taken to a MTA police department building, where he was detained and finally released. He accidentally recorded most of the ordeal and a segment can be heard below.


He was eventually charged with a variant of trespassing and he has a summons to appear in court.

The response seems extreme for a kid near the tracks!

Pixiq story

Maine Northern Leased Units En Route

The four Helm GP38-3 leased units are on the way. All four traveled through Ontario via CN, in two batches. It appears HLCX 906 and 911 went through Ontario on July 3rd, so they should be showing up in New Brunswick very soon. HLCX 913 and 917 were last report in St. Louis waiting for paperwork.

Thanks to Kevin Burkholder, Doug Renshaw, David Othen and Dave Dineen for the information.

New Brunswick Railways

If you haven't visited the New Brunswick Railways site yet, head over there now. I'll wait.

Seriously, the site is a great advertisement for New Brunswick's many railway attractions and a good resource for those looking to learn more about NB's railway history.

You can click on the interactive map to go to a specific "trail" such as the Upper Saint John River track, featuring Bristol, Edmundston and of course McAdam among others.

Check it out!... en Francais!

Disclaimer: I was involved in this project back when I still lived in New Brunswick. That's my photo of the Salmon River viaduct on the bottom of every page. :)

CPR Moving Its Winnipeg Headquarters

The Winnipeg Free Press is reporting that the Canadian Pacific Railway is moving its headquarters out of the downtown to a location in the Fort Garry Industrial Park.

They were in the Air Canada building downtown as well as 150 Henry Avenue in the north end. It looks like they are moving into the building formerly occupied by a large call centre.

This move affects their customer service division, their IT workers as well as some CP Police. Train operations are of course unaffected.

This is right around the corner from my office. Too bad they won't have trains there. If they still had the Manitoba Sugar spur, they could have watched their own trains roll by!

Happy Birthday, USA!

Happy Independence Day to my readers in the USA!

June 11

My son and I were out railfanning on the morning of June 11. I decided that I wanted to go shoot some CP trains for a change. We headed up to Rosser and then headed west. I thought I might want to head to Marquette, as I have never been there, but as I approached the elevator at Meadows I saw a headlight in the distance. I pulled over and waited on the elevator track for the train to come.


I hopped back in the car and we headed east to give chase. The train was making good time and it took a while to get ahead of it. As the train approached Rosser it slowed, so I was able to get ahead to grab a few shots just west of the elevator.


As you can see, the second unit was a SOO unit, CP/SOO 6021. 6021 is an SD60.


I leap-frogged them one more time and shot video as they passed the giant elevator at "CP Makwa"... or as one engineer called it, "Mak wa wa wa wa wa".


Right after they passed, CP 8752 West was ready to go.


They headed out with a solid container train. CP 8652 was mid-way through the train.



My son and I headed to the model train store after that, but I made sure to be at mile 10 of the CN Rivers subdivision to catch the outgoing Canadian. VIA 6453 led, with refurbished unit VIA 6411 trailing. You may remember that VIA 6411 used to be the Operation Lifesaver unit.




Not a bad morning of railfanning!

CP 2816 in Chaplin, Saskatchewan

Canadian Pacific Railway's famed steam engine, Empress CP 2816, headed up a passenger train from Moose Jaw to Calgary, with public rides available on segments along the way. CP is supporting the Children's Wish Foundation with its steam rides.

On June 11 the train went from Moose Jaw, SK to Chaplin, SK and paused there for 20 minutes before continuing west. I sent a "heads up" to my wife's relatives (who live in Chaplin) and one of them was kind enough to take a few photos of the train.

A number of people were waiting to board the train to take it to Swift Current.


Here's a quick view on board the train.


The crew gave the engine a quick lubrication during the stop.


I think it's great that CP does this.

Alas, there is a problem with CP 2816 that was reported today. It has a mechanical issue and will be laid up for some time. I just saw a message on the C-P-R mailing list that stated it was a crack in the rear driver axle. The heritage diesel fleet will step in to fulfill CP's commitments for a while. Let's hope 2816 can get back to work soon.

NB Southern Leased Power Update

Back in May I mentioned that the Eastern Maine Railway (NB Southern's American counterpart) would be leasing four Helm GP38-3 units. One of those units (HLCX 909) was deemed unsuitable and a different engine has been substituted.

According to this Surface Transportation Board filing, the four leased units are HLCX 906, HLCX 911, HLCX 913 and HLCX 917.

Expect at least two of them to be shipped at any time.

Canada Day

Happy Canada Day! I hope you spend it doing something you enjoy.

My wife is working for part of the day, so I will be spending it with my kids. We might even end up trackside for part of the day...