More CP Heritage Locomotives

There have been a few more CP “heritage” locomotives visiting Winnipeg over the past few months. Here are the ones that I’ve seen…

CP 7013

I was fortunate to catch maroon and gold CP 7013 by the shops in Winnipeg on May 8th. This unit has the “Canadian Pacific” in “script” lettering. Half of the maroon and gold fleet have “block” lettering and half have the script.

What was interesting about this unit was that it was being pushed around by an old SD40-2, CP 6031.

The unit was soon pushed out of view, and that was the end of my enjoyment of that unit! I’m glad I caught it when I did.

CP 7017

I was driving around in the evening of March 7, looking for trains, when I spotted a southbound oil train on the Emerson subdivision. I set up to record it, expecting the usual GE stuff on both ends. The head end had shiny CP 8138 – a rebuild of CP 9671 – and the engineer gave a nice wave as they passed.

The tail end had the real prize. Block lettered CP 7017 was pushing on the rear. It looked really nice in the falling dark!

You may remember CP 7017 as one of the three heritage locomotives in Winnipeg on one day – from the post The Maroon and the Military.

CP 7019

An early morning visit to the CP shops area on June 27 yielded a view of CP 7019, all alone on a track near the shops.

Given the time of morning (7:30 AM) and the angle of the sun, there weren’t a lot of angles available. The side facing me was in shadow so the nose shot was the best I could come up with.

CP 6644

I heard that CP 6644 was the second locomotive on train CP 421 coming into Winnipeg from Toronto. 6644 “wears the camouflage colours applied to Royal Canadian Air Force “Spitfire” fighter planes flown at the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on June 6, 1944″ as CP says.

It would have been better if it was leading, but you take what you can get! I headed up to the CP yard on July 3 and quickly found it at the east end of the yard. It was behind CP 9736 and ahead of CP 8079 and 8078.

As I took photos, they started to move west (toward the shops). They had cars in tow so I thought maybe they were going to continue west out of Winnipeg with another train, so I decided to relocate.

I went to the McPhillips Athletic Field overlooking the shops area. There I waited… and waited. I was in contact with a few railfan friends and we were discussing where it was and what other trains were around.

They eventually came creeping through the yard, and I saw them just after they passed under the Arlington Street bridge. That’s when an intermodal train came rolling through to block them!

The intermodal train slowly rolled past… then backed up. I guess they were joining the head end with more cars to make a long train with a locomotive in the middle.

That locomotive that ended up being in the middle was an ex Olympic unit, CP 8876. This locomotive and several others were painted for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, as CP was a major sponsor of the Games. I believe 8876 is the only one that still has the white stripe. The Olympic symbol itself was removed right after the Games.

You can just see 6644 on the right side of the photo.

I’m glad I was able to get an unobstructed view of the locomotive earlier! I think this is a very sharp looking locomotive.

CP 7026

OK, so this one isn’t a “heritage” locomotive, but it is one of the SD70ACu locomotives. I caught it on April 11 as I was returning from a grain elevator expedition. I spotted it as the second unit on an eastbound intermodal train just south of the highway 16 – highway 1 intersection west of Portage la Prairie.

It was blind luck, really. I was heading south on highway 16, intending to head east on highway 1 toward home, but I decided to carry on just south to check the CP main line. I spotted a headlight to the west, so I parked on the shoulder and jumped out to get the shot. I didn’t have time to get on the “sun” side of the tracks but it was still early enough in the morning to have light on the nose.

As the train passed, I saw CP 7026 was the second unit, so I decided I had to try to get it on the other side. I drove back to the Trans Canada and was able to get to the overpass by the Richardson milling plant and park on the shoulder. As it turned out, I didn’t really need to hurry too much but I’ve been caught by being too casual about getting into position!

The sun was doing a little dance with the clouds, so I had to time the shot right to get the train in sunlight.

30 seconds later, the sun was gone!

CP 7037

This is also not a “heritage” unit but it’s an SD70ACu. This was a lucky break. I was heading east on the Perimeter Highway around Winnipeg, approaching the CP Emerson subdivision highway crossing, when the lights started flashing. I pulled well off the road onto the shoulder and parked, and hopped out with my camera to record the train. It had grubby CP 8917 leading but this shiny refurbished locomotive was mid train and well lit by the evening sun.

Earlier in the train was this CP grain hopper, which clearly had an OOPS and was on its way for repairs or scrapping.

Just One More Thing

My new book Three Days in February is out for the Kindle app – viewable on mobile devices and PCs. It’s selling pretty well, so thanks for buying it, dear readers!

You can read more about the book here.

I’ve started sorting through photographs for the next one…