The life of a railroader is often spent waiting.
Waiting for the call to go to work. Waiting for your train to be ready. Waiting for clearance to depart.
Sometimes, more time is spent waiting for other trains than they spend in motion!
Such seemed to be the case one day when the CPKC train led by KCS 4672 was trying to head west out of Winnipeg.
After dropping some grain cars off at the Paterson grain terminal, KCS 4672 West left the city, only to get stuck in the siding at Meadows.
The ditch at left normally holds just a trickle of water, but the heavy rains had left it looking like a small river.
The local red winged blackbirds were unimpressed by the train, and continued to serenade each other from atop signals and crossing posts.
Eventually their chirping was interrupted by a distant horn.
The Meet
From the west came a long doublestack container train, led by CP 8107.
The crew of KCS 4672 West were on the ground to do the rollby inspection. The conductor was at the crossing watching UP 3021 pass by.
This crew did not want to be photographed. I did my best to keep them very tiny and anonymous.
Since the CP-KCS merger, the Kansas City Southern locomotives are almost as common as CP-flagged locomotives around here. KCS 4692 was on the eastbound train’s tail end… a common place for KCS locomotives.
Speaking of KCS locomotives on the tail end, here’s the big butt of another KCS locomotive pushing on the rear of the westbound train as it left the Meadows siding.
On to Marquette and beyond…
Another Meet?!
The westbound train slowed as it approached Marquette, and ended up taking the siding. Another eastbound train, led by CP 7054, was holding the main waiting for it.
The meet was pretty smooth; I don’t think the westbound train stopped at all this time. Maybe that was the dispatcher’s way of making up for them having to wait at Meadows.
I said my goodbyes to both trains, the westbound finally on its way, and the eastbound heading toward Winnipeg. I had a date with CN several kilometres south of here.
Just One More Thing
This contraption was being readied for action at Rosser when I passed through earlier in the morning. Railfans fondly call these “yellow bananas” for obvious reasons.
These homemade maintenance of way units consist of a remanufactured GP38AC locomotive (former CP 30xx), several well cars formerly used for containers, and a control cab on a flatcar. These were rebuilt by Relco (now Wabtec) in 2018 and there are at least 3 sets around. The well cars are modified with rails so an excavator can roll along the train.
CN had something similar back in 2011, although not quite so purpose-built.
This was a series of flatcars with rails on top, pulled by Western Star truck CN074056 / CN 433-29. It was dropping new ties off and picking old ones up.
I didn’t see any external power source for the crane, so there must be some kind of generator in the box behind the cab. It looks like there was a smoke stack there.
Great article Steve