CN’s Symington Yard in Winnipeg is a major train yard in CN’s North American rail network. Symington features one of the few operating hump yards in Canada, as well as a vast storage and sorting yard, a running engine shop, an intermodal yard and a bulk transfer facility.
Symington sits in the southeast corner of Winnipeg, and is connected to the CN Redditt subdivision at the north end and the CN Sprague subdivision at the south end. The Central Manitoba Railway interchanges with CN here.
The hump yard is in almost constant use at Symington Yard. There are several sets of locomotives and slugs that continually push strings of cars over the hump to be sorted.
Symington Yard is named for Herbert James Symington, president of Trans-Canada Airlines from 1941 to 1947 and a director of Canadian National Railways starting in 1936.
Symington was built in 1962 and is CN’s largest rail classification yard.
Railfanning Symington
Most of Symington Yard is inaccessible to the public. CN Police monitor the area. Do not trespass.
There are several public locations where a portion of the yard can be viewed. At the south end, the Fermor Avenue overpass provides a good view of the hump yard activity. There is a walkway on the south side of the road; the north side is not recommended due to the lack of a sidewalk and the fast traffic passing by.
Plessis Road parallels much of the yard on the east side and provides a view of the hump area.
Long distance views of locomotives on the north end of the shop can be had from Lagimodiere Boulevard.
Symington’s connection to the Redditt subdivision is at Beach Junction, which can be viewed from the Dugald Road overpass and Lagimodiere Boulevard.
Eric Gagnon has a nice post on Symington Yard.
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I have a cousin visiting our City in July, 2022. He is definitely a train geek and would absolutely love to have a tour of any kind around Symington yards. Anything!
Is anything like this possible?
Hi June, unfortunately Symington is off limits and they do not give tours. Your cousin could view the hump end from Fermor Avenue easily enough. From the Dugald Avenue overpass you can see some traffic in and out of the north end of the yard, and Plessis Road gives a good view of the east side of the yard.