Continuing our story, Ian and Bill crossed into Manitoba and made their way to Winnipeg. All photos by Ian Walker. See part 1 here or part 2 here.
The lead photo is CN’s impressive Uno trestle, unfortunately sans trains.
They spent some time in one of Canada’s rail “hot spots”, Portage la Prairie, where the CN and CP main lines run parallel to each other.
Portage la Prairie
The above is a Canadian Pacific oil train heading toward the CP Minnedosa subdivision. They were standing in the shadow of the Tupper Street bridge in Portage la Prairie.
In the photo below, Ian and Bill were standing on Pacific Avenue – which runs between the CN and CP main lines – near 8th Street NW. You can see the Tupper Street bridge in the distance.
Winnipeg
Ian and Bill took a photo of the VIA Rail maintenance centre in the Fort Rouge area of Winnipeg. You may recall that I took a tour of VIA Rail’s Winnipeg Maintenance Centre back in 2011.
They also photographed one of the four automated rail inspection portals around Winnipeg. This is the one on the south end of Pembina Avenue. You can see the Perimeter Highway overpass behind it.
CP’s Yard in Winnipeg
They spent some time around the Canadian Pacific yards in downtown Winnipeg. Viewing the yard from the Arlington Street bridge is often fruitful. Here they caught a passenger car in the midst of being shipped… for future GO Transit service?
Diamond
They went to CN’s Diamond just west of Winnipeg for some sunset action. First up was an eastbound doublestack train with ex CREX leaser CN 3945 leading and CN 3123 mid-train.
An hour later, another eastbound stack train came rolling past.
CN 2605, 5744 and 2225 powered this train in the fading light.
Those are beautiful photographs of my former provinces and the trains that run on the rails. It was a good spring and summer for pictures out on the Praries.