Six Miles

I often struggle with a title for “railfan” posts like this. What new clever title can you place on a “I saw these trains” type of post?

Normally I don’t write these posts all in one sitting. I’ll edit the photos and put them in sequence in a draft post, with the word “words” in between each photo to separate them, then leave it alone for a few days. By then, some kind of inspiration usually strikes and we’re off to the races.

I went out to see some trains in the morning of February 18, 2024. It was a lovely morning and I wanted to capture a few trains in the brilliant morning light, and maybe wait for VIA’s Churchill train as well.

The first train was perfect, rounding the bend at mile 16 of the CN Rivers subdivision with the sun on its nose.

I tried to make a long container train a little more interesting by panning a few cars as they went by. I had to change the aperture to f/22 to get a slow enough shutter speed to blur the foreground, and it didn’t blur much!

After a little wait, the next train up was a westbound. I caught them at mile 13 and the conductor gave me a nice wave as they rolled past.

This train was even more nondescript than the last, being a solid train of mostly gray covered hoppers.

I’m trying to avoid “wedgie” shots but I couldn’t resist this view of the train stretching on to infinity on the sunny winter prairie.

I relocated to mile 10 and found my friend Brian Schuff sitting there, waiting for VIA. We chatted about our upcoming trip to SuperTrain in Calgary, and I kept an eye on VIA’s tracker web site to see where the westbound train was.

First up was an eastbound container train… on the south track! We were very concerned that it was going to block our view of VIA on the north track, but what can you do? We crossed our fingers and took our shots.

As the tail end unit, CN 3054, cleared our view, VIA came into sight.

What a stroke of luck!

The Winnipeg-Churchill train was the usual consist, two locomotives, baggage car, two coaches, Skyline dome car, and Chateau sleeper (Viger).

That was a productive morning of railfanning, and I was glad to meet up with my friend. Good times.

Here’s a video of the last two trains:

Do you know why I named this post “Six Miles”?