Friday, December 26, 2008

Two CP F Units At Alyth

November 10, 2008

I went down to Alyth Yard on my lunch and as I was crossing the bridge over the tracks on Blackfoot Trail, I caught a quick glimpse of two F units but didn't catch the branding as I was trying to keep my eyes on the road. I thought to myself outloud in my car "Yes! What a wonderful lunch hour this will be".

Once I arrived on location, I saw immediately that they were CP F units, 4106 and CP 4107. Unfortunately they tagged on each end by some GP9's. From what I was able to find out, 4106 and 4107 are part of The Royal Canadian Pacific train. Both units are FP9A's and were former CN/VIA units.


The were five other units that were tagged on to 4106 and 4107 at each end. One unit in front of 410 and four in front/behind 4106. The first was GMD GP9 1524 and the other four were GMD GP9 1693 and 1551, followed by EMD SD40M-2 5495 and 5497. As you can see in the picture, 1551 had some of her access panels open.

Also, 1648 and 1507 had arrived in the yard with a few scrap metal gondolas and some other freight cars.

On the one siding closest to me, the near side of the access road in the pictures above, there were three deck cars and another of these 'A' frame cars similar to the one in my post titled "Union Pacific In Calgary" on September 26th, 2008. In a response to that post sent to me in an email, the A-frame cars are used to transport prefabricated switch sections to where they are needed. The a-frame was CP 421892 and the three deck cars were CP 507134, CP 507185 CP 507170.

Just past the Blackfoot overpass, There seemed to be some track work going on. I'm not sure if what they were doing was repairing and replacing ties, or if a section of track was being removed completely. I can't seem to find a decent shot in my archives for comparison, and now that there is snow on the ground, it will be difficult to see.

Something else grabbed my attention off in the distance of the yard. It was a massive ring of someking in a stack well car.

References - 4106 & 4107:
WCRA Railway News: July 2007

Cheers,

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi! I hope you don't mind me dropping in unannounced, but I'm a conductor out of Alyth, and I happened to see these pictures.

They were actually lengthening P4, to make it almost as long as P2 and P3. It was out of commission for a while, but now it can hold the big trains, such as potash.