Slides From Alberta

Here are some slides I purchased recently, all featuring trains in Alberta. Unfortunately I don’t know who was the photographer for any of them.

The lead slide shows a westbound CN train rolling through Drumheller, Alberta in 1993, led by CN 2454 and another cowl unit (CN 53xx?). Clearly it was a dreary rainy day. The train features a few trailers-on-flat-cars (TOFC), some tank cars and a hopper, and a couple of single stack container cars.

Sadly this portion of the CN Drumheller subdivision only continued in operation until 2008. Track removal started in 2014. I was lucky that we visited the Drumheller area in 2013 so I was able to see the (very overgrown) track still in place.

Speaking of the Drumheller area…

This stretch of track along the river is a few miles west of Drumheller. The “Nacmine” sign indicates one mile to the station, which wasn’t actually in the employee timetable in 1981 when this slide was made.

Since the river is on the left, we must be facing east, and the sun barely lighting the hills in the famous badlands indicates that it was near sunset. I think the photo was taken here.

Let’s go about an hour’s drive north and a little east, to Stettler, in May 1976…

Finding this location was easy. The building that was Co-Op Fertilizer in 1976 is still there – although Google Maps says it is Stettler Building Supplies Ltd. now.

This is the 49th Avenue crossing of the tracks, just northeast of what is now the Alberta Prairie Railway. Note the train in the distance, switching, with some cars on the main line.

Moving west from Stettler, 20-30 km to Alix, Alberta, in 1971:

I was quite surprised to discover that not only is this diamond crossing still in place, it looks like the equipment box and the speeder shed are both still there as well! Check out this image on Flickr from 2016 showing the same scene, from almost the same vantage point on the highway 12 overpass.

The speeder shed might have still been in use in 1971 when this slide was taken. Today it looks pretty derelict.

Here’s the Google Street View from October 2014. You can’t really see it through the birch tree but there’s a prefabricated diamond crossing sitting on the ground, waiting to be installed.

Alix is on the CN Three Hills Subdivision, and the CP track that is crossing left-right in the image is the CP Lacombe Subdivision.

Finally, let’s go west, young man, and go back in time to July 1957 (!). This is near Hinton, AB on the CN Edson subdivision.

Hinton is notorious for the 1986 Hinton disaster, where CN 413 ran a stop signal and crashed into the Super Continental. 23 people were killed and 82 injured.

This slide is in poor condition after 66 years, but I can see that this passenger train was being hauled by two diesel locomotives… pretty new at the time!

It was either the Continental or the Super Continental. I’m sure someone with far more knowledge of the trains of the day could identify which one it was by the presence of the head-end cars – baggage, express and probably Railway Post Office cars.