VIA, CN and CP, Oh My!

For all the times that we sit trackside and watch empty tracks, we have to remember that occasionally Lady Luck smiles upon us and sends us something unexpected.

I went downtown early in the morning of April 30 to meet up with David McCormack and his son, who were passing through Winnipeg after riding the train from “the Peg” to Churchill and back. After I parked my car at the Forks, I ran up the slope to capture the next Churchill train at the station.

I had a nice time chatting with David and his son, and I gave them a ride to the airport where they were catching their flight home. I visited the new home of the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada – very nice – and then decided to check out CP’s yard before heading to Diamond to catch VIA 693 leaving town.

When I drove near the CP yard, I observed two things:

1. A long container train, very likely blocking the view of the Weston shops; and
2. A train heading west out of the yard

I chose to follow the westbound train. It beat me to the Brookside Boulevard road crossing, and I observed that it was taking the turn at Woodman to head onto the CP Glenboro subdivision rather than continuing west on the main line. This meant that it would be heading through Diamond on its way to one or more of the grain elevators on the Glenboro, like Starbuck or Elm Creek.

After it passed, I headed through the CentrePort area and took a few long distance shots of the train as it slowly rolled along.

It was a lovely, clear day so I could take these photos without much distortion.

I especially liked the photo of them “passing downtown” – they were about a kilometre from me and downtown was another 9 km away.

Given their speed, I probably could have caught them somewhere near Assiniboine Downs but I chose to head straight to the bridge over the Assiniboine River to be sure I could set up in time. I parked nearby and walked to the “sun” side of the bridge and waited. Some Canada geese were arguing with each other and the occasional jogger or walker went by, but it was pretty quiet.

Eventually I heard their horn as they approached Headingley, and magically the sun came out and lit things up just before they came onto the scene.

The train had two locomotives (an SD30C-ECO and a GP38-2) and about 48 grain cars, very likely empty.

It was nice of the Canada Geese to float through the shot.

Once they passed, I walked back to my car and headed to Diamond. I was hoping they were stopped there, and sure enough, they were being held by the CN dispatcher until VIA 693 came through.

My friend Brian Schuff arrived shortly after I did, and we chatted briefly as we waited for VIA. The tracker web site showed that it was already on the move, and I didn’t have to wait long for it to arrive. Despite the windy conditions, I chose to launch my drone and record the train passing.

With one hand I took one photo of the train approaching, and another of the train departing… otherwise my attention was on controlling the drone.

They still have a buffer car tagging along.

As VIA headed around the bend at mile 16, we saw the headlights of an approaching CN eastbound train. CP would have to wait a little longer…

I put my drone in the air again, and it was really buffeted by the train’s slipstream. This was definitely on the edge of safe flying for the drone and now I know its limits. In the video below you’ll see that the drone wasn’t terribly steady while the CN train passed.

The drone did give some good “context” views of the CP train waiting its turn.

Once the CN train passed, I drove down to the crossing to catch the CP train. I cut it too close to take still photos, so I recorded the train passing as a video on my phone.

I combined the drone and ground footage into this video.

It was nice to meet up with friends again, and do some railfanning at the same time!