Monday, March 07, 2011

Meet at Caron

I was browsing through my photo albums and stumbled across a series of photographs I took at Caron, Saskatchewan back in the late 1990s. If I had to guess, it was February 1999 but I could easily be wrong. My railway record-keeping was not very good back then.

Caron is a tiny town (population 120) west of Moose Jaw on the CP main line. It likely used to have the usual grain elevator(s) but now it has nothing but a siding. The nearby town of Caronport is more famous, as one site of the former British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.

I was driving by Caron on the Trans-Canada Highway when I noticed a westbound CP train stopped in the siding. I took the exit and went to investigate.

CP 9015 and 5583 were sitting at the head of an intermodal train in the siding. At that time, pretty much any locomotive was different to me, so I didn't really realize how different the "red barn" 9015 was.
CP 9015 at Caron SK

CP 5583 was a run-of-the-mill SD40-2.
CP 5583 in Caron SK

As I took these photos, I noticed a train coming from the west. In my inexperienced way I recorded the meet.
CEFX 106 meets a train in Caron SK

Leased unit CEFX 106 was the lead engine on this potash train. There was probably a mid-train unit or two, but apparently I did not record them.
CEFX 106 in Caron SK

This may have been the first train meet I ever recorded. I remember being pretty excited about it.

1 comment:

Tyler said...

5583 is actually a pretty interesting unit. It was built in 1985 when the original CP 5583, built in 1972, was wrecked. As such, it has spotting features characteristic of CP's later SD40-2s (102" nose, straight side sill, radiator and air intakes) but has a roadnumber that falls in the middle of the inital batches of SD40-2s delivered to CP.