Sunday, June 20, 2010

My Night At Keith

CP 9804 and rainbow, Keith, AB
CP 9804 and rainbow at Keith yard, Alberta

Keith is a yard on the the Canadian Pacific Laggan subdivision. It is listed in the 2009 Canadian Trackside Guide as:
MileSTATIONSSiding
9.6KEITH8945
It is listed as a siding, although to my eye it looks like a yard. I guess the reason for that is so trains can proceed on the main line at track speed rather than "reduced" speed.

I spent a little over an hour at Keith around sunset. You can see all my sightings here.

When I first arrived, there were two trains sitting in the yard, apparently waiting to head west. The first was an intermodal train with CP 8755, CP 8715, CP 8886, and CP 8574. Three ES44ACs and an "old" AC4400CW trailing.

The crew came out and took positions on both sides of the main line to inspect a train. Soon enough CP 9738 East came rolling through.
CP 9738 at Keith, AB

After that, it was 8755's turn to head west. I moved down to a little parking lot and shot them from there. You can see the Bow River in the background.
CP 8755 at Keith, AB



A quick rain shower came through and I got pretty soaked before aborting the taping and running for the car.

The second parked train did not have a crew, so it was clearly not going anywhere soon. I saw that RCMP unit CP 9501 was the second unit.
CP 9501 with RCMP logo

I already talked about the cabooses I saw at Keith.

The "catch of the day" was the last train I saw there, CP 9804 West. I heard them rolling through and took position down at the parking lot again. Just as they were coming into view, the last rays of sunlight shone through the clouds and made a rainbow. The train had CP 9804 and 9703 on the head end, and CP 9713 mid-train.

There were no other trains imminent, and it was getting near to 10 PM, so I headed out. The rainbow really topped off the evening for me!

3 comments:

jddc.trains said...

Are you still in the Calgary Area? If so let me know. I can point you to a few other observational locations you may or may not know of.

Also if you're interested, I just heard about an hour ago that 2816 will be on display at "I" yard across from Fort Calgary on July 1st, and might be running to Banff and back on the 2nd.

Cheers,

Canadian Train Geek said...

I am not in Calgary at this time, but I may be back again in the near future. Any tips you have would be appreciated!

I plan to be in the Banff area in early August so it would be great to see 2816 if she's through there.

jddc.trains said...

I'll pin some of the locations into Google Earth into a kmz file and send it to you if that's ok. I will also keep my ears open on any news about 2816 and pass it your way.

Cheers,