If you wish to follow along in Google Earth, here is the kmz file for download.
June 25th, 2010
Back in June, the model railroad group I’m with was thinking of making an appearance at an event in Carseland. I figured I would head out there early to do a bit of railfaning there. Unfortunately we were not able to attend the event due to various reasons. Unfortunately I had not read my emails for a bit as I was busy with other things so I unfortunately did not get the memo saying that we were not attending. I was out there…alone…quite literally as matter of fact.
After I found out via a reply to my questioning email to another group member on my Blackberry, I figured I might as well continue railfaning while I was there. Unfortunately I did not have my scanner so I could not get advanced notice of arriving trains. So I sat there in the heat waiting and waiting for the trains that would not come.
I also unfortunately failed to remember that there was no traffic on the Brooks Sub due to washouts and floods near Medicine Hat. So unfortunately there would be no through traffic on the Brooks Sub. At that point I decided to leave.
Unfortunateness is unfortunately unfortunate. Holy Shitballs Batman, say that three times fast!
Instead of following Highway 24 North, I continued West onto Township Road 221. A bit of fortune was with me this time. I could see the local switcher, train C46 which runs out of Alyth, on the West Carseland Spur switching cars for the Orica and Agrium plants which I posted about these two industries previously. The locomotive used this time to do the switching was 8886, an ES44AC.
 |  |  |
 |
After a few minutes of switching it headed into the Agrium plant. It was coupled to five covered hoppers with a bulkhead flat car on the tail end.
 |  |  |
The first three covered hoppers marked JTSX are apparently owned by David J. Joseph Company (DJJ). They are in the metal, alloys and scrap metal recycling brokering business. Among their various services, they happen to own and manage a private fleet of open gondola railcars and operate a rail equipment leasing group with bulkhead flat cars, covered hoppers, aggregate hoppers, flat bottom gondolas and mill gondolas. Almost forgot to mention that they do railcar scraping and railcar parts reclamation as well.
| RAILROAD | REPORTING MARK | TYPE |
|---|---|---|
| DJJ | JTSX 55373 | Covered Hopper |
| DJJ | JTSX 46152 | Covered Hopper |
| DJJ | JTSX 130753 | Covered Hopper |
| ACF Leasing | ACFX 59197 | Covered Hopper |
| PLM International | PLMX 129090 | Covered Hopper |
| CN | CN 22341 | Bulkhead Flat |
After they pulled into Agrium they sat there for about 15 minutes, so I decided to resume my travels into Calgary to Alyth to see the new yard that CP built. That is another story.
Goggle Earth kmz file.
Cheers,
3 comments:
Hi Jason,
Noticed you changed your blog theme. The signals and brown background are a nice change.
Regarding the Brooks Sub, Steve Boyko also posted to his Confessions blog on June 23. I commented at the time that I'd photographed a lot of AWP elevators along the Brooks Sub from the vestibule of the Canadian. Still haven't posted these to Trackside Treasure, and it's now nine months later. Puttin' on my to-do list.
Regarding the unfortunateness, it was starting to sound like Charlie Sheen there for a minute! Anyway, nice post and some interesting switching with a big CP unit.
Eric
Thank you Eric. I'm glad you like the change, I figured it was about time to change. I was never very happy with it from the get go. This will tie it in with my design ideas for my future web page that I've been working on. The background picture of the signals is actually just up the tracks from the West Carseland Spur wye.
It was a bit odd to see such a large unit doing switching on this spur and I was a bit surprised. Train C46 usually only has a couple dozen or so cars for the two plants.
I'll be keeping an eye open for those elevator photos when you post them.
Thank heavens I'm not like him! The unfortunateness wasn't all that bad really, it was mostly due to my lack of preparation and forgetfullness that day. Haha.
Cheers,
Jason
Ah, the ol' Carseland Agrium plant. I've been past there once or twice, on the way out to the adjacent 'Bow river resort', which was owned by relatives of mine until awhile back. I recall seeing an SD40-2 sitting with freight cars, it stayed there for about two days.
Post a Comment