A Golden Pair

I haven’t been railfanning a lot since we returned from Banff. I think it’s a combination of my renewed interest in bicycling and a general lack of interest in the trains around here after seeing some great mountain scenery.

It’s not something to feel guilty about. Railfanning is a hobby and it shouldn’t feel like work. If I’m not feeling it, why spend the time driving around looking for trains?

I’m sure the feeling will pass. It has before.

Regardless, I was inspired on the evening of July 24 (2021) to head west. My friend Tyler Kowalski posted a fantastic image of an eastbound CN freight train (CN Q186) crossing the trestle at Uno, MB with a rare cowl unit leading.

That is just spectacular. Tyler is making some great photos – follow him on Instagram!

I decided I would try to catch it coming into Winnipeg.

My friends thought it might come in before dark, and since VIA 692 was coming as well, I knew I’d catch at least one train.

The Waiting

I drove west along the CN Rivers subdivision from the Perimeter Highway. I was looking for a canola field to use as a background, because I love the look of those bright yellow fields in a photo, especially from a drone.

I did find one canola field but it wasn’t particularly photogenic – this summer has been very dry and it’s been hard on farmers – so I carried on west to a rural crossing at mile 21.8. I’d been here before with my friend Jim Burnside. I like the location because it has west facing signals you can see to give you an idea of oncoming trains.

When I arrived just before 7 PM, the south signal was showing red and the north signal was showing yellow. These west facing signals are advance signals for the mile 17.8 dual head signals, and the next signals are at Diamond at mile 14.4.

I believe the yellow “R” plate means these are Restricting signals and not absolute signals, so it means that a red signal doesn’t mean “stop” but instead “proceed at restricted speed”.

Regardless, a red signal and a yellow signal don’t indicate that any train is coming. Normally the RTC has one track lined up for westbounds and the other for eastbounds, so one of the two is yellow and the other is red when there are no trains around.

That’s a long winded way of saying that I was in for a bit of a wait. It was HOT outside (30C) and the sun was beating down, so I alternated walking to the crossing to check the signals with sheltering in my car with the windows open. I didn’t want to leave my car idling as it’s a waste of gas and not so good for the environment. Railfanning via car isn’t great for the environment, either, something I’ve been thinking about more these days.

My friend Brad Hein showed up after a while and set his tripods up. We chatted – from a social distance – while watching anxiously for trains.

A Miss – CP 6644

He told me that he saw CP 6644 trailing behind two CP ECO locomotives, running light engine on the CP Glenboro subdivision. CP 6644 is the “D Day” “veteran” locomotive that CP had repainted. You may recall I saw it a while ago – but I’d love to see it again.

The Glenboro sub is the track that crosses CN at Diamond (7 miles east of my position) and exists to serve grain elevators at Starbuck, Fannystelle, Elm Creek and Rathwell. I kicked myself a bit for not setting up at Diamond – I would have seen those 3 locomotives roll right past me.

Brad’s sharp eyes picked out the red locomotives on the horizon to the south of us, 8 kilometres away, as the trio of CP locomotives rolled west toward Starbuck.

Back to CN

Eventually, the south track’s signal changed from red to yellow, and eventually to green. A train was coming!

We got our equipment ready and Brad spotted a headlight in the distance. I waited until the train was clearly visible and then launched my drone and sent it eastward a few hundred metres. I had my ground video camera facing east away from the sunset, and I planned to use the drone to pan the train as it went by.

The train turned out to be a freight train with CN 3867 leading, passing us a couple of minutes before 9 PM.

CN 3867 East

I didn’t notice the BC Rail locomotive trailing until I was panning the train with the drone. BCOL 4609 has a hand painted engine number on the rear.

Here’s the view from the drone.

I took a few shots as the train went by. I like that sunset shine on the side of the hoppers.

Here’s the video:

Brad pointed out a headlight in the distance to the west – another eastbound train, on the north track.

This turned out to be VIA 692.

I made a last minute decision to switch lenses on my camera from the “wide” 17-55mm to the 70-200mm “long” lens. This meant I had to sprint across the crossing to my car to swap lenses, then run back to the “sun” side of the crossing for the shot.

I was a little concerned that I would get trapped on the wrong side of the crossing, but it turned out that I had more than enough time to do this before VIA got too close to the crossing. It’s really hard to judge how fast a train is approaching until it’s near the crossing.

VIA 692

It was worth the sprinting to get this shot. Love that stainless steel in the golden sunset light.

There’s always a temptation to boost the saturation on sunrise and sunset photos. You have to be careful not to overdo it, because it will look quite fake. The photo above is how it looked to me at the time, so I’m happy with that.

The Churchill train is a short train, so it was by us in a flash. The video below is only 52 seconds long – and it shows the train twice!

With two eastbounds rolling toward Winnipeg on separate tracks, it was clear there weren’t going to be any westbound trains for a while, and the west-facing signals were both showing red.

In Search of 6644

Brad and I decided to head to Starbuck on the faint hope that the CP light engines stopped at the Pioneer grain elevator there to do work.

Nope!

I chose to drive 12 more kilometres west to see if CP stopped at the Fannystelle grain elevator.

Nope!

I didn’t feel like driving another 18 km west to Elm Creek to see if they stopped at the Cargill elevator. They could have carried on all the way to Rathwell, a further 41 km. The light was almost gone, anyway.

On my way back toward Winnipeg, I paused to photograph the Starbuck grain elevator. Say what you will about concrete grain terminals, they look pretty good at sunrise and sunset.

As I approached Fannystelle, I decided to turn north at the town and rejoin the CN main line, then follow it east to Winnipeg. As I was driving north, I saw an eastbound freight train silhouetted against the faint remnants of the sunset.

CN in the Dark

I turned right / east and started to overtake the train. As I passed the head end, I saw that the lead unit was CN 2436 – this was the train I had been waiting for!

By Diamond I was far enough ahead to pull off and jump out and photograph them. It was so dark by this time (10:13) that I elected to use a low shutter speed and get them blurring past the east facing signals.

As soon as I photographed the head end, I hopped back in my car and zoomed ahead again. At the Hall Road crossing, I chose to bump the ISO way up to 3200 and pan at 1/15s to get this grainy photo of CN 2436 rolling through the crossing.

So in the end, I did capture the train I came out for… just a few hours later than I thought I would.

Just One More Thing

I just finished War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi. This is a science fiction novel about a civil war in future Nigeria, in a world devastated by nuclear war. The “War Girls” are a ragtag group of girls fighting for New Biafra, which has separated from Nigeria. The author describes it as “Gundam in Nigeria”, which seems accurate to me as it features mechs fighting, but I’d also add a strong cyberpunk aspect.

My Amazon links are affiliate links, meaning I earn a small commission if you buy anything after clicking on them, at no additional cost to you.

The writing is a bit choppy in places – I think the author is aiming for the young adult market – but the concept is great and the story moves along with a lot of great action sequences. I think it would make a great movie.

I was drawn to it because it was on the “75 New and Upcoming Sci-Fi and Fantasy From African Authors” list on Goodreads. You can follow me on Goodreads if you like.

Get War Girls on Amazon