Dust On The Tracks. .East Of The Rockies: June 2011

If you wish to follow along in Google Earth, here is the kmz file for download.

May 13th, 2011

Sleep was restless!

May 14th, 2011

I arrived at the Canadian Pacific Railway Pavilion at 09:55 on the corner of 9th Ave and 1st Street SW. When I entered, I was greeted by two CP employees who directed me to walk up the main corridor. I have viewed this building only from the outside on numerous occasions in the past, but this day I would excitedly view the pavilion from the inside.

The interior of the pavilion’s main hall section was more spacious than I had expected. There is also a long portion of the building that is not viewable from the street but can be seen from the parkade where I parked my car. Yes, I parked on the top most level to view it from above, but was in a rush and did not take a picture.

The interior is all exposed structural steel construction with an aluminum curtain wall façade and dome in the main area. All the design specific structural steel and curtain wall mullions are painted black with a few gold accented decorative elements. Most of all other building elements are painted with flat off white which blends nicely in the background as to not detract your eye from the main elements of focus being the structural steel.

The design of the steel work in the pavilion is reminiscent of early train stations and gives you a feeling of being there back in time. This is especially noticeable when looking down the pavilion platform with the early CP coaches and business cars to each side of the central walk giving you a feeling of being on the platform boarding a train to a destination left to the imagination.

Here is the roster of all the coaches and business cars that were in the pavilion.

LEFT PAVILION TRACK
NO.	NAME	TYPE	BUILDER	DATE	NOTES
74	Mount Stephen	Business	CP	12/1926	other notes can be found in the Canadian Trackside Guide
85	Craigellachie	Dining Car	CC&F/CP	08/1931
78	Royal Wentworth	Business	CP	08/1926
77	Van Horne	Business	CP	05/1927
82	Strathcona	Business	CP	11/1927

RIGHT PAVILION TRACK
NO.	NAME	TYPE	BUILDER	DATE	NOTES
79	N.R. Crump	Stateroom	CC&F/CP	10/1930	other notes can be found in the Canadian Trackside Guide
84	Banffshire	Stateroom	NSC/CP	09/1926
71	Killarney	Business	Pullman	??/1916
73	Mount Royal	Business	CP	10/1927
95	unamed	Generator/Baggage	CC&F	11/1952

We boarded the train at 10:55 and after backing up and switching over to the main line, we were heading east.

The unfortunate part of the trip is that I never took one shot of the interiors of the coaches and others cars. My head really was not on straight that day and I really kick myself in the butt for that. Hopefully another opportunity will present itself in the future.

On our way out of the downtown core, I took a few pictures of the shoo-fly over 4th Steet SE. CP has relocated the yard that was here to just off the Manchester lead on the southbound line from the wye at 12th Street Tower. I will post more on this in a future post. Two of the lines have now been re-routed back to their original location which we were on one of them.

I attempted to catch 2816 on the curve coming out of the Depot from the downtown core, crossing the Elbow River and also crossing 8th Street SE. As you can see I have an issue with holding my camera straight when hanging out of the baggage car doors. My timing was also a bit late shooting the photo. We were now heading into Alyth Yard.

There were quite a few things to see once we were in Alyth Yard and viewing from the train gave an interesting perspective that one does not get to see very often if at all.

First up was one of the wye leads coming from the Manchester Lead on the south line heading to the Depot and west to BC. The building to the left in the first photo is called LocalMotive. It is an office building with several tenants and it was one of the design projects done by the firm I work with. The second photo is of the other wye lead coming from the Manchester Lead on the south line heading into and through Alyth eventually heading east. In the second photo, you can just see the 12th Street Tower on the far right. In the distance you can see the Calgary Tower in the left center and the new Bow Tower still under construction in the right center.

Next we came up to a trackside industry called Canada Malting. They produce, well simply put, malt for alcoholic beverages. You can see in the second photo that the facility is fairly large with several silos on one side and several large malt producing buildings on the other side. If anyone reading is a model railroader, this could be a good industry to model on a home layout if you have the room. I again show off my superior camera horizontalness holding abilities in the first photo. I guess the fact that I’m rocking back and forth in the baggage/observation car doesn’t help either.

The next industry we rolled past was ADM Milling which is not as large a facility as Canada Malting but still large enough. ADM produces wide variety of products from baking goods to confectionery ingredients to nutritional ingredients for snack foods. Again this could be a good industry to model on a home model railroad layout.

After the ADM facility rolled by I moved over to the other side of the baggage/observation car to see how the view was looking into Alyth Yard. Thankfully it was pretty open near the Pulldown Tower after we cleared a mixed freight train. It was interesting to see the innards of the yard or at least in part.

In the first photo below, you can see the mixed freight train that we cleared and what appears to be some kind of runaway train prevention system in yellow on the rails which I noticed on several tracks. The second photo shows the Pulldown Tower, the end of P yard, the end V yard and the end of the classification yard in the distance. Further back is N yard but it is not visible from this far back. In the last two photos you can see three SD40-2’s which consist of a former SOO locomotive 6609 to the left, 5731 and 5795 and to the right of them, CEFX 1039 which is an AC4400. You can barely make out the tracks of the Class Yard in the third photo beyond the old baggage car. I was not able to get any reporting marks for it. Between the baggage car and the white CP truck is V Yard and P Yard in the foreground which we were coming out of on P1 track I believe.

Something to note that is not seen in the above photos, there is a small yard with four or five tracks behind the Pulldown Tower which is mainly used to interchange with CN. The intermodal train that was behind the tanker train, on the far track in front of the Pulldown Tower, was coming in off of the wye from the north on the Red Deer Sub and running through Alyth and heading east. Those particular tracks are often used for this purpose.

If I remember correctly, the tank car train in front of the intermodal train had just pulled out of the Class Yard with two SD40-2’s pulling, 6002 and newly painted 6610 which is a former SOO unit. I think both trains were waiting for us to pull out of the yard.

In the first photo below, the bridge that is barely visible in the background from between the containers is on the interchange line connecting CN’s Sarcee Yard to CP’s Alyth Yard. CP also uses the line to service clients up in the Foothills Industrial area. The two lead units on the intermodal train were two SD90MACs numbered 9145 and 9104 at the front.