Railfan Stories

My friend Jason Paul Sailer was in Winnipeg recently, and we made plans to go railfanning together, again! I picked him up at 5 PM and off we went.

In June 2024 I traveled along almost all of the Last Mountain Railway, from Lumsden north to Davidson. Here are my photos and observations.

CPKC has a large presence in the Regina area because it is on their main line. CN’s presence is much more limited, and Regina is connected to CN’s network via a branch line from Melville to Regina named the CN Quappelle subdivision, which runs through the Qu’Appelle Valley.

After I crossed the border into Saskatchewan, I passed through Langenburg and Churchbridge. Melville was on my mind, but before that, I went to Bredenbury.

Recently I had to travel to the Regina, Saskatchewan area for work. I elected to drive from Winnipeg using my own car, rather than fly there and then rent a car. This gave me some flexibility on the route and how long I took to get there, so I used that to do a little exploring.

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!

On April 26, 2024 a very rare train left Calgary, Alberta to make history.

Many railway customers only have one connection to “the outside world”. This is called a “captive shipper” and it basically means the customer has to deal with one particular railway to ship via rail, like it or not. Obviously the shipper would prefer to have options, and in some cases they have connections to more than one railway.

Every now and then, I like to stop by the Weston shops at the Canadian Pacific Kansas City shops in central Winnipeg and “take inventory”.

In mid March, I felt the urge to do a little railfanning before getting some groceries. After a bit of searching, I found an eastbound train on the Sprague subdivision.