It was an early morning, late September; a fine morning to be out by the rails.
The morning started with a ballast train bombing through Diamond at six AM, darkness enfolding all.
You’ll have to trust me that it was a ballast train.
For those who don’t know what a ballast train is, it carries the crushed rock that holds the railway ties in place. The train can dump the ballast in selected places along the line, where other machines will shape it and pack it in to maintain a good base for the railway ties and rails.
Further west, as the eastern sky began to brighten, I encountered the very same ballast train, slowing to a stop past Elie.
A stop? On CN’s double track transcon? Whyfor?
A few miles further west, another train stopped on the south track – this time a double stack container train, with CN 3987 on the point.
As I stood at this rural crossing, gazing at the colourful sky, I heard the call of an approaching train.
Facing west, I saw headlights passing the grain elevator in nearby Oakville… then soon, CN 3847 East passed by on the north track.
The situation was becoming clear. We had ourselves a traffic jam on the CN Rivers subdivision.
CN 3334 East
The Rivers subdivision is double tracked between Winnipeg and Portage la Prairie, four parallel ribbons of steel joining Manitoba’s largest and third-largest cities together in an iron embrace.
Four ribbons… except in one place.
At this spot, the four rails become two, squeezing over the narrow bridge spanning the Assiniboine River.
This is the choke point, called Nattress by CN, the place where trains must take turns, rather than whip past each other on parallel tracks at full speed. This morning, there were too many trains and not enough track.
On the west side of Oakville, I encountered another eastbound train, led by CN 3334. They split the signals at mile 43.3.
Another locomotive was on the tail end, passing the mileboard, 43 miles from downtown Winnipeg.
Yet another westbound train was waiting.
CN 2786 West
I saw the tail end of a west-facing train (above), so I tried to relocate to Nattress to get closer to the Assiniboine River crossing.
Unfortunately (?) for me, CN 2786 was already on the move and I was just able to catch the head end before they blocked the crossing to take their turn crossing the river.
Fine. Back to Oakville and its the grain elevator.
CN 3987 West on the Move
The sun was above the horizon now, lighting up the prairie with its golden light.
I set up just west of Oakville’s elevator to capture CN 3987 hauling its miles of double stack containers through the shadows and light.
I’ll never get tired of trains and grain elevators.
CN 5704 West
I lingered by the grain elevator, because I knew what was coming next – the ballast train.
The golden early morning sunlight was diffused by dust and smoke in the air. It was… gorgeous.
Watching trains approach on the prairie is always interesting. They seem to take forever to get close, then they appear to suddenly get a lot faster and rush by at high speed. There’s probably a word for this phenomenon.
I find it a little funny how railfans are getting excited about the SD75 locomotives like CN 5704 here leading trains. These locomotives were very common 10 and 20 years ago and nobody gave them a second thought. Now they are becoming rare, as CN is sending them to Progress Rail for conversion into SD75IACC locomotives – changing from DC to AC powered traction motors, among other changes.
Everything new and commonplace becomes old and rare.
Ballast trains are so interesting. People have put a lot of thought into how to get the ballast to the right place in the most efficient way.
CN 3889 West
After the traffic jam eased, I headed home. I potted another westbound train from a distance, led by “100 CN” locomotive #3889.
CN 2871 East
One more train, one more shot. This was from the overpass over the Rivers subdivision, in Winnipeg. I hadn’t tried this angle before. I’m not sure I like it, but it was worth a try.
Until the next time…
I think what you’re talking about when you see a train in the distance and the perception of its speed, as opposed to its speed up close, is somewhat similar to the parallax effect in astronomy. It’s defined as the change in an object’s position from two different viewpoints. These differing angles and our perception of an object’s size and movement can change relative to where it is. It’s a somewhat imperfect analogy. It’s like how the Moon looks bigger when viewed at different stages of the night sky. And, so I can give credit where credit is due, I learned about this phenomenon from a Rush song where they were brave enough to include parallax in their lyrics.
Rush were not afraid to go into the weeds with their lyrics!
So true