Efficient Railfanning

The Canadian Pacific line north of Lake Superior is very scenic – possibly rivaling their lines through the Rocky Mountains. On our way home from Toronto in late August, I had the opportunity to do a tiny bit of railfanning on the long, long trip home.

Around Marathon, I spotted a westbound container train rolling along. Since we were also going west, there was an opportunity to get ahead of it and get a shot of it.

A week earlier, when we were driving east to Toronto, I spotted a very scenic bridge over the Little Pic River between Jackfish and Marathon. I kept that bridge in my mind and, as it happened, it was a convenient spot to pull off to grab a shot of this CP train.

The Neys Provincial Park is just east of the river and there is a scenic lookout that overlooks the bridge and area. I pulled into there and sprinted over toward the tracks to get the shot. It turned out that I didn’t need to run… but it wasn’t long before the train came along.

I had my telephoto lens on my camera and used my phone for the more wide-angle shots.

There were several people taking photos and one young fellow had a drone going.

It’s a significant bridge – at least four spans – and I imagine if you were closer it would be even more impressive.

Now it's the mid-train unit's turn — Now it’s the mid-train unit’s turn

It took several minutes for the train to thread its way through the curves north of Superior.

All in all, we were there for less than 15 minutes. That’s efficient railfanning!

The other train I photographed was even more efficient. We were driving toward Kenora, Ontario and I was keeping an eye on the adjacent CP main line.

I spotted a red locomotive ahead and quickly pulled off the highway onto the shoulder. I jumped out and used my phone to capture this eastbound TEC train led by CP 2241.