Railfan Stories

Stories about railfanning – trip reports and so forth. Any time I’m trackside and writing about it, it’ll be here.

The GWWD’s 44 Tonner on the Move

by

The Greater Winnipeg Water District (GWWD) railway is a pretty unique little railway. It was built to service the aqueduct supplying water from Shoal Lake to Winnipeg. The railway was completed in 1915 and has served the city since then. It used to carry passengers along the 102 mile route, but it has not done … Read more

Golden Slumbers

by

Golden slumbers fill your eyesSmiles await you when you rise – the Beatles Photographers talk about the quality of light. We talk about soft light, hard light, direct and indirect light. It’s not until you start making photographs seriously that you really notice the quality of light. I’m a huge fan of sunrise and sunsets because … Read more

The CP Business Train Comes to Town

by

I had a tip that Canadian Pacific was running its business train east through Winnipeg. The story was that it was headed to Montreal, where it would then head into the US to tour one of CP’s subsidiaries, the Delaware and Hudson. A “business train”, often called an “officer’s special”, is a passenger train owned … Read more

The Last Warm Day of 2018?

by

Octobers in Winnipeg can be pretty cold. Season temperatures are a high of 10C (50F) and low of -2C (30F). So when it’s warm, everyone gets out and enjoys it while it lasts, before the cold winter sets in. On October 18, it reached a high of 23.6C (74.5F). Time to get out of the … Read more

VIA Rail in a Three Way Meet

by

On August 7, I heard that the VIA Rail “Churchill” * train headed to Winnipeg had a 40th anniversary unit leading the train. With the current schedule, it would have come into Winnipeg at 13:45, during my working hours. After checking its forecast arrival time using the VIA Rail tracker site, I found it was … Read more

Railway Days 2018

by

Every year, the Winnipeg Railway Museum hosts Railway Days, with admission by donation. I dropped by on Sunday, September 16 to see Railway Days 2018 and what was new with the museum. The big news is the new locomotive simulator, “CN 9633”. CN 9633 This simulator (OSCAR-4) taught many engineers at the CN training centre … Read more