Morning Trains

I spent some time in the morning of July 27 near Diamond, just west of Winnipeg. I've been there a lot recently because I like the area. It's wide open so there is little to get between my lens and the train. Also, there is not much car traffic out there. Finally, the train crews have to call the signals approaching Diamond so I hear them on the scanner well before I see them.

The first train I saw was CN 112, with CN 8911 on the head end and CN 8814 pushing on the rear. The top photo shows them passing the east-facing signals just east of the CN-CP diamond.



Right after the train passed, I ran up to the private crossing to shoot CN 8814 going away. Note the lit red marker lights.



About half an hour later, train CN 782 came along. This featured two Dash-8 units, CN 2429 and CN 2432. For this one, I shot from the north side of the tracks for a different perspective. Since it was cloudy, the sun was not an issue.


After about another half an hour, a westbound train came, CN 111 featuring CN 8904 and CN 8856 on the head end and IC 2715 as a DPU engine.


About an hour later, I headed east on Wilkes Avenue but stumbled across this westbound freight train. Three Dash-9 engines were the power: CN 2650, CN 2503 and CN 2671.


But wait... there's more! I also shot an eastbound freight just west of St. James Junction. This one had ex-BC Rail Dash-8 BCOL 4643 leading, with SD75I CN 5792 trailing.


Five trains in just over 2 hours was good enough for me!

SVGX 8625 Update

On Tuesday I received a very nice email from Mark McDowell, the Operation Manager for Savage Transportation Management in El Segundo, California. He sent me the above photo showing SVGX 8625, the former SOO 4203, in its new paint.

Here's what it looked like in late 2009, here in Winnipeg.


SVGX 8625 has received a LOT more than new paint. It is now a Tier 2 N-ViroMotive locomotive. The Tier 2 designation means it meets the US Environmental Protection Agency's Tier 2 standard for engine emissions. The N-ViroMotive designation means it is now a genset unit with multiple diesel engines.

You can see from the two photos that the whole rear hood has changed. There are now two (or three?) exhaust stacks for the genset units. Even the horn has moved.

The unit is on its way to a refinery in El Segundo. Hopefully I will be able to share a few more photos after it arrives. Thanks, Mark, for sharing this photo!

Photo Sharing Websites

As you probably have noticed, I host my photos on my own web site, under my gallery. I use the Gallery software and it works pretty well.

In the past I submitted to Railpictures.net but I stopped a few years ago. Their screeners were getting too picky for my tastes and it was not worth my time to resubmit over and over with minute changes in the pictures. Not my thing. I visited them a few days ago and I see their ads are getting more and more spammy. I had a popup that had no choice but to click OK... so I used Task Manager to kill the browser. I asked Railpictures to delete my account and my photos, and they have done so.

There's another photo sharing site, Railpictures.ca, that does not seem to be affiliated with the .net version. I may have posted about that before. I heard that an Arizona Eastern E8 (AZER 6070) is in Canada and in fact there are two pictures of it on Railpictures.ca. I'd embed a small photo linking to their site, but their terms do not allow that.

Of course there is Flickr, now owned by Yahoo!. It does a decent job and I would recommend it to most people who want to throw some photos on the web.

RRPictureArchives is another good one. I like how well organized for searching it is.

What do you use for your photos?

Shuttlewagon Redux

Hey, remember that Shuttlewagon I saw at the Balgonie elevator? I was looking through some recent photos I took in Winnipeg and I realized I saw one here too.

On July 12 I photographed a Shuttlewagon with three flatcars on the MOW* stub siding around mile 10.6 on the CN Rivers subdivision. This particular unit is owned by Falcon Shuttle Rail in North Transcona (Winnipeg).



This particular unit is a SWX525Be, built in 2004. It features a tractive effort rating of 34,500 lbs. For comparison, a stock GP9 has a starting tractive effort of about 40,000 lbs.

Swingmaster CN 434-60 was at the other end of the three flatcars. More photos

* MOW = Maintenance Of Way

HLCX Units in McAdam

My friend Jody Robinson sent me these photos of three of NB Southern's four leased units working the yard in McAdam, New Brunswick. HLCX 906, 911 and 917 were on the eastbound freight with NBSR 2610 on Tuesday and stopped in McAdam to do some switching.

Here they are by the "shop" / building by the wye.


Obviously none of them have been repainted yet.

Thanks for the photos, Jody!

The Balgonie Grain Elevator

I shot the Viterra grain elevator in Balgonie, Saskatchewan, just outside Regina. Balgonie itself has a short stub track for maintenance vehicle. The Viterra elevator is just on the Regina side and is quite a big one.



The facility is surrounded by a field of golden yellow canola. This is the stuff that canola oil is made from. It's everywhere in Manitoba and Saskatchewan right now... that and the blue of flax.


There are five tracks at the facility. This was shot from a farm crossing.


With five tracks, you would figure it would have some kind of car moving device. It certainly does - a Shuttlewagon rail car mover.


These babies roll on rubber tires and can haul quite a bit. The smallest (the SWX315) has a drawbar pull of 27,000 lbs. and the largest (the SWX735) has a drawbar pull of 50,000 lbs. That's a lot. Keep in mind that the Shuttlewagon is obviously not going to go at a very high speed, and has limited stopping power. You would not want to try stopping a string of freight cars with this thing. They do have quite a lot of options including remote control, air conditioning, train brake gauges, and so forth.

The last traditional elevator Balgonie had appears to have been a Saskatchewan Pool elevator. Here's a Flickr photo from Pistol Dave from 1997.

This article features a shot of the same elevator from May 2001.

At one point there were about half a dozen elevators in Balgonie. You can see a photo of Elevator Row on the Town of Balgonie history page. Click through the slideshow of old pictures.

A CN Grab Bag

I had a backlog of CN photos I took in July, so here they are...

Here's CN 2304 leading a westbound train near Diamond just after noon on the 4th of July.


Two days later, I shot CN 5691 near the same location.


On the 13th, I shot CN 8959 at the head of a slow-moving westbound intermodal train. It had fellow SD70M-2 CN 8891 in the middle and a third SD70M-2 CN 8907 pushing on the rear.


Finally, on the 28th I shot CN 199 just west of St. James Junction, with CN 2321 leading and CN 2690 trailing. Here they are near the Junction, crossing over from the south to the north track.


Finally, here they are passing my location.

Railway Therapy

Global Winnipeg photo

There is a belief among some Indonesian people that lying on railway tracks helps "cure what ails ya". The theory is that electric current running through the rails cures your ailments.

You can imagine how dangerous this is.

The people who do it say they feel better afterward. The trains are not electric in the photos I have seen. There could be a small current running through the tracks for signaling purposes, though. Personally I believe this is a placebo effect.

The State article, Global photos

A Polarizer Comparison

I shot the Canadian today at noon. It had two unrefurbished units, now a rarity, with a dead-heading diner (Emerald).


I had the circular polarizer on my camera while I was shooting. Just for kicks, I decided to take it off and shoot the last few cars without it for comparison.

Here's the last car I shot with the polarizer ON, Bliss Manor.


Here is Elgin Manor without the polarizer.


Neither picture was processed in any way except to crop to size, and both were sharpened to the same degree.

You can see how the sky is darker with the polarizer, and some cloud detail is visible that is washed out without the polarizer.

What do you think? Is the difference significant enough?

More NB Southern Leased Units Arrive

The second pair of NB Southern leased units arrived in Saint John yesterday. HLCX 917 and HLCX 913 were nose to nose behind CN 5723 and CN 2280 on train 406 out of Moncton on Wednesday. CN #406 did some work in Sussex, and arrived in Saint John at 16:18.

HLCX 911 has been out on the main line a few times, and I believe it went to St. Stephen at least once, on July 21.

HLCX 906 has been working in Saint John but no one has spotted it on the main line yet, to my knowledge.

Hat tip to Wendell Lemon, DC, and Danny McCracken for the information.

Gary Lee has posted some videos of HLCX 911 in McAdam. Thanks for those, Gary!

Full of Hot Air

Here's something a little different for today... no trains, just a different method of transportation.

In the morning of July 25 I saw a REMAX hot air balloon heading north in Winnipeg. I've seen those around before. They seem to use a field just south of Winnipeg as their base.

Later in the evening, I was outside with my kids when I spied a CTV balloon heading south.

This balloon is a Cameron Balloons A-300, built in 1998 with serial #4319, registered with "tail" number C-GDCQ.

As it crossed the Perimeter Highway, it appeared to get very close to a radio tower.


I don't think it was as close as it appeared to us. You know how a telephoto lens can distort relative distance!

It looked like there were about eight people in the basket... perhaps watching the tower with some concern?


Shortly after that one went by, another balloon with "tail" number C-GFEA drifted by. That one was also made by Cameron Balloons but is smaller, an A-180 built in 1990 with serial #2162. I didn't get any decent shots of that balloon.

Both balloons are A-type, billed as the "ultimate passenger balloon". The number after the dash is the bag volume in thousands of cubic feet. The CTV balloon holds 300,000 cubic feet of gas and can carry up to 6000 pounds (presumably including the basket and bag).

I've never been in a hot air balloon before. I think it would be a great experience.

Deer Me

I was out shooting trains on the morning of July 12.

First I saw the tail end of CN 304 heading toward St. James Junction. It had CN 2276 on the head end but I never actually saw it.

After a bit of waiting, CN 111 came rolling past Carman Junction on its way out of Winnipeg. I was shooting into the sun but I did my best. When cropping this photo of CN 2325, I noticed the deer on the left side of the photo!


I hope the deer made it away safely.

After about 20 minutes, CN 840 came rolling the other way. Since it was eastbound, the sun was nicely on the nose.


Here's the video.

First Circular Polarizer Photo

VIA 6420 leads VIA 6407 and the rest of VIA 693 (the Hudson Bay) out of Winnipeg, Manitoba.

This is my first shot with my new circular polarizer.

What does a polarizer do? Well... it's hard to explain and I don't totally understand it. Sunlight is unpolarized, meaning that the light waves vibrate in a variety of directions ("planes"). However, sunlight that reflects off a nonmetallic object is polarized. A polarizing filter only allows a certain "plane" of light through. Turning a circular polarizer adjusts what "plane" of light is allowed through to the camera, so reflections can be blocked.

The end effect is that contrast is higher (skies are darker, for example, as you can see above). Also, a polarizer can help cut through haze as much of the haze is reflected light.

There are some interesting images here showing the difference between non-filtered and filtered images.

PhysicsClassroom.com has a good tutorial on polarization of light.

I bought a Hoya PRO1 58mm polarizer. There are cheaper polarizers, such as this Hoya model. The differences include multi-coating (to reduce lens flare) and construction (plastic vs. metal frames). It's all in what you are looking for.

Another CP 9104 Sighting

I mentioned that I chased CP 9104 on the La Riviere subdivision on July 20. I saw 9104 arrive in Winnipeg a week before in the evening of Wednesday the 13th, on the CP Keewatin subdivision. The kids and I were driving around, looking for trains. We ended up finding CP 9104 approaching and then stopping. The engineer was clever and stopped the train such that the overpass of the Perimeter Highway shaded the cab.


We waited, and after a while CP 9104 started rolling. It turned out that CP 9150 was the second unit. It's interesting to note that in late 2009 CP 9150 (and maybe 9132 as well!) was stored in Winnipeg. How things have changed.

Here you can see that I was on the wrong side of the sun, and it was a bad choice of locations as the engines and cars entered the shade in the crossing! Ooops. My fault for shooting at 8:30 PM.

Infrared Photography

Has anyone reading this done any infrared photography? I've been enjoying the posts of Dave Beckerman on Google+. He does some amazing work in infrared. Check out the link above and page down through his photos. I am in awe.

He wrote a blog post about digital infrared photography that I recommend you read. Basically it involves putting the right filter on the front of your lens to filter out some or all of the visible light and letting only the infrared light through.

What's the big deal? Well, things look different in infrared. The colour is gone, leaving a kind of sepia image like this:


It can be processed into a black and white image, like this:


With more work, some colour can be put back into it.

If you like the effects of some HDR, you'd probably like infrared.

Here's a nice post about beginner IR filters.

I'm still considering it. First I want to play with my new circular polarizer filter.

PS - if you want to try Google+, I have invitations. Just email me at steve@theboykos.com and I'll send you an invite. This is me.

A Meet At Speed

Early in the morning I was parked west of Diamond (itself west of Winnipeg), just past the bend in the track (map) around mile 16.9. I had my laptop out, doing some editing, with an ear to the scanner for traffic. After a while I heard CN 111 calling the signals as they approached Diamond from the east. I hopped out of the car, crossed the tracks, and set up the video camera and waited for them. As I waited, I heard CN 304 call a clear signal approaching Diamond!

Soon CN 111 came around the bend.


Looking westward, CN 304 was visible hurtling toward the meet on the south track.


Closer... closer... I wasn't sure which would reach me first but I was hoping it was CN 304 on the south track, so 111 wouldn't obscure the head end.


With a series of honks, CN 304 hurtled by me and met 111 just to my left / east.


CN 111 blew by me going west, and I watched the trains zoom past each other in front of me.


After a bit, DPU CN 8015 roared by on CN 111.


Soon CN 304 was receding in the distance while CN 111's containers were still rattling by. Within a few minutes, 111 was also fading into the distance.

Here's the video of the meet.


I hope you enjoyed my little narrative. I really enjoyed photographing and taping this meet!

Train Flash Mob

This is cool!


In contrast, this train-based rendition of our anthem is a bit depressing. C'mon, it's an anthem - celebrate it!

A Short Branchline Chase

On Wednesday (July 20) I headed to work extra early to get a good start on the day. I also wanted to have a few minutes to railfan on the way to work. It was warm and very humid when I got into my car and headed out. I turned on the air conditioning to try to get rid of the mugginess.

As I approached the crossing of the CP La Riviere subdivision over the Perimeter Highway (map) I saw a southbound CP train just about to enter the crossing. Quickly I decided to chase it. I headed down route 330 a short distance and hopped out of my car to take a shot.

Suddenly the lens fogged over.

A little physics at work... cold lens meets warm, humid air - instant condensation! I frantically wiped the lens on my shirt and took shots. Wipe, focus, shoot. Wipe, focus, shoot. Fortunately the train was moving quite slowly.


The train had SD90 CP 9104 leading and fellow SD90 CP 9132 trailing. Big power for a small branch line!

After taking some shots, and waving to the crew, I headed south on route 330 to the next crossing. The same routine of wiping, focusing and shooting took place.


I squeezed one more sequence in before they were approaching La Salle.

In this shot you can see a crew member looking out of CP 9132. I don't know if this train normally operates with a 3 man crew, or if the guy was dead-heading on the train.

I probably could have squeezed one more location in before La Salle but I wanted to ensure I got the elevator shot, so I carried on and set up south of the elevator for the big finish.

CP 9104's lights came into view at the end of the straight section. As they slowly approached 1st Avenue, a few cars crossed in front of them. This truck was the last vehicle to cross... and cut it a little too close, in my opinion.


Anyway, here's the money shot.

Yes, they had the nose door open the whole trip. By this time the lens had warmed up so there was no need to wipe condensation off. Whew!

I relocated just north of the elevator to take this shot. I punched up the saturation in the picture to make the Saskatchewan grain car pop.


It was fun to do an actual chase again... even if it was only 9 km!

Running Light

Just a quickie for tonight. In the morning of July 20 I caught these two units running light west on the CN Rivers subdivision. These two were heading out to Elie to pick up their train. I have no idea why it was out there. My guess is that an eastbound train needed some power and they were given the engines off this train. I believe these two engines were operating as train 853.

The lead engine was one of the now-ubiquitous SD70M-2 engines, CN 8870. The trailing engine was one of my current favourites, Dash-8 CN 2418.


I've seen CN 2418 twice before, at a meet at St. James Junction in November 2009, and in Saint John in January 2002. I just saw CN 8870 last month.