My Railfan Five, Take Two

Back in the fall of 2014, Eric Gagnon challenged several railfan bloggers to share their Railfan Five, a selection of five of our images from our own “railfan journey”. Mine is here. Recently, Eric and Chris Mears and I decided to do the challenge again, and I believe Michael from The Beachburg Sub is in … Read more

Third Time’s the Charm?

“I drove for miles and miles and wound up at your door I’ve had you so many times but somehow, I want more”– “She Will Be Loved”, Maroon 5 In my continuing search for the maroon, I went out on January 12th along the CP mainline west of Winnipeg. I’m looking for the newly rebuilt … Read more

Is RailPictures.NET For Me? (Guest Post)

This is a guest post by David McCormack. You can find his work on Flickr, Instagram, and of course RailPictures.net. Thirteen years ago, when I started taking rail pictures, I searched online for the best place to share these images. RailPictures.net was the first site that came up. After a string of rejections of my … Read more

Day and Night

I was doing a lot of errands on January 19th, driving people everywhere, so I had some opportunity to be trackside after dropping people off. Snow Train First up was CN 2973 East, storming east into Winnipeg through the blowing snow at noon. This train was on the north track of the CN Rivers sub, … Read more

Akaso EK7000 4K Sports Camera Review

For a few years, I’ve been using my “old” Canon T1i as my go-to video camera when I’m in the field. The quality is good, but the T1i doesn’t do 4K video and its on/off switch is balky. I wanted something better. Enter the Akaso EK7000. This tiny camera is a powerhouse, with 4K video … Read more

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

I have climbed the highest mountainsI have run through the fields…But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for– U2 I’m still searching for CP’s newly refurbished locomotives in the “maroon” and “military” schemes, commonly known as “heritage” paint schemes. These reconditioned SD90s, now designated as SD70ACu locomotives, are roaming the rails, but not in … Read more

Flashback: Last VIA Budd Train For a While

This is a repost. The original post was written in May 2006. I thought I’d freshen it up and resurface it for those who weren’t following this blog almost 14 years ago (gulp). Hope you like it! My comments and additions will be in italics. David Morris, Peter Gough, Ken McDonald and I decided to … Read more

Book Review: My Life With Trains

I’ll be honest – I didn’t know who Jim McClellan was. Now I feel like I know who he was, and I’m sorry that he’s gone. I saw a recommendation somewhere (TRAINS magazine? Amazon? not sure) for this autobiography, My Life With Trains, so I asked for it for my birthday. I really enjoyed reading … Read more

Art? Or a Tragedy?

This summer, there was a call for artists at the tourism site in St. Thomas, Ontario. That in itself isn’t unusual, but the call was for artists to paint on existing railway boxcars. There was a bit of a hue and cry from railfans about this, including me. It was explained that these were outside … Read more

Searching for the Maroon

Canadian Pacific Railway has been sending its old EMD SD90MAC away for rebuilding to Progress Rail in the USA. These SD90MACs were unreliable when delivered to CP (and Union Pacific) and were stored for years, many here in Winnipeg. Progress has been remanufacturing them into “SD70ACU” units; Norfolk Southern purchased some from UP for the … Read more