Go East, Old Man

When does one actually become “old”, anyway? I’m almost 56 and I don’t feel old. I guess I’m not “there” yet, although it’s quite a stretch to call me middle-aged.

Anyway.

Recently I chased an eastbound train along the CN Redditt subdivision. It wasn’t really my intention to chase a train. I was heading toward the Manitoba-Ontario border for some hiking and I chose to drive near the CN line to see if fate and the dispatcher in Edmonton would give me a train.

I saw the train rolling through Transcona Yard in eastern Winnipeg, looking like it had no intention of stopping, so I drove a few kilometres further east toward Dugald and set up. The rising sun was just breaking through a low fog / cloud bank.

The chase was on. There was no chance to get it at the Dugald grain elevator, so I tried for the crossing on the east side of Dugald. The gates were coming down as I approached; I pulled off the road and nabbed them approaching the crossing.

After waiting for the long string of containers to clear the crossing, I hit the road again. I wasn’t excited about shooting them at Anola, so my thoughts went to Vivian and the automated rail inspection portal there. The light would be great and I do love those portals.

The challenge was how to shoot this safely. There’s a lot of other rail inspection equipment between the crossing and the portal – a hotbox detector and a dragging equipment detector, along with their equipment boxes – so one has to stand fairly close to the rails to get a clear sight line.

After checking for road traffic, and rail traffic the other way*, I stood at the crossing and photographed them as they approached the portal, then stepped back away from the rails to capture them as they rolled past.

* as Operation Lifesaver says, trains can come at any time, from any direction, on any track.

The lead engine was a pretty beat up Dash-9, CN 2522. Maybe it will be remanufactured into a AC44C6M soon, like many of its brethren have been.

Back on the road, I thought that maybe, just maybe I could beat them to Hazel Creek. I photographed a train here recently and I really like the location.

I drew abreast of them at Nourse, and I was ahead of them before Ste. Rita, so I was pretty sure it would work out. I ended up having a whole 45 seconds or so to get ready.

I was running out of road at this point. The highway diverges from the track at Elma so I had one more photo opportunity. I wasn’t excited about Elma itself – it’s just straight open track, we have that near Winnipeg – so I decided on the east end of the Lewis siding. I’d been there before, but I hadn’t photographed a train there. Time to change that.

I had the same issue with track proximity as I did at Vivian. You can see some “foreground clutter” in the bottom left corner of the photo. There’s a big rack there for what looks like steel plates. My guess is that they are spare parts for the “thingie” visible at the bottom right of the image. It might be a dragging equipment detector, or it might just be something to protect the switch from dragging equipment.

I would have liked to photograph the train passing the signal, but then I would have been too close to the track when they rolled by me a few seconds later. Safety first!

That was a good chase, and a good start to what would turn out to be a great day of hiking and exploration. More later.