Wednesday, October 31, 2012

A Carseland Local

I was in Calgary this weekend with my wife. She was attending a conference, and while she was there, I was railfanning! On Saturday morning I met up with Jeff Keddy and we ended up following the CP Brooks subdivision out of the city. We saw the Viterra Calgary East elevator near Indus, Alberta first.
The Viterra Calgary East grain elevator

We continued railway east and came to Carseland, Alberta next. I was here in October 2010. There is an Agrium facility as well as two grain elevators, a concrete Cargill elevator and a Richardson Pioneer elevator. We noticed a local freight working the Pioneer elevator, so we went to the nearest crossing and watched it.
CP 3102 in Carseland

The train had three GP-38s, CP 3102, CP 3068 and CP 3074. While we watched, they pulled back until the tail end was clear.
CP 3074 in Carseland

The conductor then rode the tail end as they pushed into the siding.
CP crewman in Carseland

As they were pushing back, a freight appeared from the west, heading toward Calgary. We were not sure if our local was going to block the view of this freight or not, so I backed away from the tracks to get a long-distance view of the train.
CP 8566 in Carseland

The local was not quite clear of the crossing, so this was the best I could capture for the meet.
CP 3102 and CP 8566 in Carseland

I was surprised to see a mid-train engine, CP 9514, on this train. It's not often that I see DPU engines on non-container trains. I saw 9514 back in July 2009.
CP 9514 in Carseland

After the freight passed, they dropped one cut of cars and then pushed back until the whole train was there.
CP 3102 at the grain elevator

At this point we decided to continue on the Brooks subdivision... another post.

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