Four Days in April, Part 2

CN 2315 meeting CN 2666

In a span of about a week in April, I made a point of getting out and photographing trains. I ended up shooting trains on April 14, 16, 17, 18 and 19, and I am going to share each outing in a separate post.

Monday, April 16th

I had an hour or so to spend railfanning on Monday afternoon, so I went over to the southeast corner of Winnipeg next to the Tinkertown Family Fun Park. CN calls this "Navin" and it's the end of the CN Sprague subdivision, which runs from Rainy River, Ontario through the United States and through Manitoba to Winnipeg.

As I approached the area, I noticed a train was coming into Winnipeg from the east. I drove to Navin to catch it coming into the CN yard.

The track has a few little curves as it comes into Winnipeg, so I elected to photograph it approaching one of those bends as it passed under the Perimeter Highway.

Leading lines

This was taken with my 70-200mm lens (what I call my "long" lens due to its reach) and I cropped it in a bit. I decided to process it this way, because I felt the high contrast of the image was well suited for black and white. I liked the leading lines of the rails.

After I took the shot, I stepped across the tracks (at the crossing) to photograph it from the "sun" side. That was one reason why I shot it from such a distance - I wanted to allow enough time for me to cross safely, before the lights started flashing and the gates started coming down. I like to take good photographs but I like living a lot more!

CN 2315 and a black snake

Still using the "long" lens, I took several photographs as it approached the crossing. I'm not sure which one I like better.

WEST - Perimeter Highway

Note the snow on the nose of CN 2315! It was a lovely day in Winnipeg. We've been fortunate that the majority of snow missed us; Ontario was suffering through some snow while we had blue skies and no snow. This train would have come from Ontario and I guess it didn't linger in sidings long enough to melt the snow.

I scooted down closer to the yard to shoot them again, because I wanted a better shot of that third unit, a leaser.

When I got to the south end of Symington Yard, CN 2666 was waiting to leave.

CN 2666 and company waiting to leave

CN 2666 East was on the closest track to me, and CN 2315 West went by on the farthest track. The two middle tracks are pullback tracks for the hump yard.

Here's that lease locomotive - GECX 9473.

GECX 9473, an ex Union Pacific locomotive

The outgoing train, CN 2666 East, had CN 2202 in second position. It must have been a bit toasty in that locomotive at one point!

Mmmmm... toasty

I returned to that area in the evening, and took this iPhone shot of one of the humpyard sets.

Puff puff

The set was sitting there, and GTW 5943 was periodically revving up and letting out a little puff of smoke. Odd.

That was April 16! Stay tuned for April 17 with some sunset photos.

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