The Elgin, Joliet and Eastern was a railway operating on the periphery of Chicago, IL, and it was snapped up by CN in 2008, and fully absorbed into the Wisconsin Central on January 1, 2013.
After Canadian Pacific’s successful run of heritage locomotives, CN got in on the heritage action in late 2020. Canadian National Railway was formed by the merger of several predecessor railways (Canadian Northern, Grand Trunk Pacific, the Intercolonial, and so on), and more recently CN has grown by absorbing railways like the Wisconsin Central and BC Rail.
CN has five heritage locomotives – Illinois Central 3008, Wisconsin Central 3069, BC Rail 3115, Grand Trunk Western 8952, and Elgin, Joliet & Eastern 3023. Until last week, I’d seen 3115 and 8952 only.
Driving around Winnipeg, I stumbled across EJE 3023 at the head of a potash train on the outskirts of Symington Yard. It was facing east, ready to head out on the Sprague subdivision.
The ditch is still filled with water from the torrential rain we had on June 9. Winnipeg had up to 125mm of rain fall, but Stonewall got socked with twice that. Combine that with winds up to 100 km/hr and multiple tornado warnings, it was quite a storm. Fortunately our house was OK but many people had flooded basements.
After photographing the head end, I drove east down the Trans-Canada Highway to catch them “on the road”. I noticed that the west-facing signals at the Lorette siding were lit red-yellow-red aka “Clear to Stop”. This meant that EJE 3023 East would be entering the siding and stopping, for a meet, so I parked by the siding itself.
It was only a few minutes after EJE 3023 entered the siding when the westbound CN train came rocketing by. A pair of locomotives headed up a short string of grey covered hoppers.
As soon as the train went by, I hit the road. They were already getting the green “Clear” signal as I drove past the end of the siding. The RTC (rail traffic controller) was on the ball!
I wanted to get them “at speed” so I drove a few kilometres down the Trans-Canada Highway to another rural crossing. Just over 10 minutes after the meet, they passed by on their way to Rainy River, Ontario and beyond.
(All photos taken with my iPhone)