Turkeys, Trains and Pools

An “ordinary” outing turned into a wild feast of trains, turkeys, and fallen flags.

I felt the urge to go see trains on March 30, so I headed west along the CN Rivers subdivision and ended up seeing a lot of trains… and a few other things.

CN 3859 East at Elie

First up was an eastbound stack train at Elie. I drove past Elie and saw the train approaching, across the wide open prairie, so I executed a little U-turn and slid into this spot just east of the Elie grain elevator.

It was still pretty cold on March 30, enough to keep the water frozen.

I continued westward after this train, ending up at Nattress, just east of the Assiniboine River crossing.

Talking Turkey

There were a couple of railfans there already – or maybe CN employees? – checking the rails and crossing equipment out. They were real turkeys. Such fowl language!

Nattress

At Nattress, the two-track CN Rivers subdivision narrows to one track to cross the Assiniboine River. I don’t know why this has never been replaced by a two track bridge. I guess there are reasons…

Speaking of reasons, the two reasons why I like going to the east side of the river at Nattress are:

1. The automated inspection portal (see above), and
2. The broad curve coming off the bridge (see below).

CN 3307 East

A few slakes of snow were falling when CN 3307 East came around the bend. This train had only autoracks in tow, quite a few in fact, and the train was powered by 3307 and 5787 on the head end, with CN 3851 mid-train.

I started to make my way back to Winnipeg, starting at Oakville and its wooden grain elevator.

CN 3931 West at Oakville

CN 3931 powered a westbound train past the historic wooden grain elevator, apparently still in use.

CN 8014 West at Elie

At Elie, I saw that another westbound train was approaching. Since I’d already photographed a train passing the grain elevator earlier in the day, I chose to catch the train on the west side of the town, to show the entire train.

CN 2234 West at Mile 17.8

Here I was 17.8 miles from downtown Winnipeg, watching CN 2234 West carry on past. It had a lot of miscellaneous freight cars, including…

POOOOOOOL(s)

Long-time readers know I look for these cars, still bearing the iconic Saskatchewan Wheat Pool logo. The Pool ceased to exist in 2007 when it merged with Agricore United to become Viterra, so 18 years later, these cars are pretty rare.

The funny thing was that there were two former Pool cars on this train.

This car, lettered for St. Mary’s Railway West, has a void where the Pool logo was… but it was definitely a Pool logo.

Here’s the video for that train.

https://youtu.be/T9QOW6jxdRY

More Pool Cars

I added a “category” to some of my old blog posts that contain ex Saskatchewan Wheat Pool cars:

Peruse Pool Posts