An Hour At Alyth

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

April 2nd, 2010

One Sunday back in April, I was observing some action at Alyth at my usual location. I was only there for about an hour, but did manage to see the hump backing in, one train arriving from Edmonton, two trains leaving Calgary heading west, and a few locos hanging around.

I arrived at around 16:30 and as I was arriving, the Hump in the process of pushing a train over the hump into the classification tracks. Someday I would like to be able to see a hump operation in action, but I know that my chances are very slim. The lead on the hump was 6612 with 5795 both SD40-2's. An interesting bit of info is that 6612 use to be a former SOO locomotive.

As the hump was pushing in, a train lead by 9635 started pulling out heading west. There were a few auto racks at the front and the remainder of the train was intermodal. About halfway through was 9540 and that was all for locomotives on this train. It wasn't an overly long train which would explain only two locos. I would assume that the train would probably pickup another locomotive or two somewhere along the way before they reached the spirals at Field in British Columbia. Both locomotive were AC4400's.

After it had gone by, I spotted a familiar paint scheme. Over by the diesel shops were FP9A's 4107 & 4106 and F9B 1900. 4106 & 4107 are the main power for the Royal Canadian Pacific passenger train. Also by the shops were CEFX 1050, CP 9753 and CP 8275, two AC4400's and a GP9. And further into the yard you could see the hump still working and another set of SD40's waiting, but they never came out while I was around and was not able to identify road numbers. Notice the blue sign indicating that track P$ if closed as there are people either inspecting or working on some of those tankers, or some other reason.

From out nowhere a team of locomotives, 8646 and 8837, in reverse were on the track heading into the wye and more than likely to turn around to latch up to a westbound train. Here is an opportunity to identify the differences between an AC4400 and an ES44AC locomotive as the two look very similar. If you look at the second picture, there are two major differences between the two locomotives. The first is the trucks and the second is the radiator hood. You can also notice the rear headlight is a single on 8646 and double on 8837, but this may not be for all railroads as some have their own preferences for headlights. There may be a few other subtle differences, but the trucks and the radiator are the two visibly major ones.

Sitting there all alone on one of the far tracks was an Alberta grain hopper number ALPX 628373 with the "Take an Alberta Break...visit Medicine Hat" slogan. It must have been a bad order or something. You can find a fairly extensive list of all the Alberta grain hopper at Barraclou.com

About ten minutes later, a container train came in off of the wye from the north. A couple AC4400's, CEFX 1047 and CP 8604, were in the lead of this one.

I took several shots of some of the containers as well for modeling references.

After quite a few well cars there were a few box cars and hoppers and a block tankers of which I also photographed for modeling references.

As the train was going by, 8646 and 8837 showed up reversing to somewhere in the yard out of sight.

About another ten minutes later, another train was leaving the yard heading west with 8834 and 8606 pulling, and 8524 at some point in the middle. This train was all intermodal. As the train was pulling out, a couple other railfans showed and we chatted for a bit.

On one of the maintenance tracks on the far side, there were 6 locomotives that had been sitting there since my arrival. They were 5793, 3110, 3084, 9779, StL&H 1625, and 1696. Their types were SD40-2, GP38-2, AC4400, GP9 and GP9. Steve Boyko from the blog Confessions of a Train Geek saw 1625 in Winnipeg at the diesel shop there and posted a picture on his blog. He updates his blog frequently, so there is no shortage of good info to read and videos to watch.

As I chatted with the other railfans, they mentioned that there was a KCS unit around the back side of the diesel shops. They said that there were a couple clean SD70's at Sarcee Yard. I said my goodbyes and headed out to see if I could find the KCS unit.

When I did find the KCS locomotive, I couldn't get a really clear view of it. The three pictures below are the best I could get. KCS 2500 is a GP40.

Apparently KCS 2500 was on loan to CP as a test unit. It and 27 other SD40's and GP40's were converted to SD22ECO Locomotives and refitted with the 710ECO diesel engine. The EMD 710 engine was used for its "record of reliability and service ability in rugged locomotive applications" as is stated in a KCS news release. You can read details on the KCS website.

After that I headed up to CN's Sarcee Yard for Some New CNery to spot those SD70's.

Goggle Earth kmz file.

Cheers,

Some New CNery

If you wish to follow along in Google Earth to see my stops and travels, here is the kmz file for download.

April 2nd, 2010

After having spent an hour around Alyth, I headed to CN’s Sarcee Yard up oon 50th Ave to follow up on a sighting tip. While I was at Alyth, a few other railfans had showed up and told me that there were a couple nice new and clean SD70’s and a couple dirty ones.

I parked in a corner of the Esso Truck Stop parking lot and couldn’t have timed it better. As I was parking the car, the 50th Ave crossing signals were already flashing. Coming from the north were three locos and and string of about 20 rail cars. Leading was 8867 with 8885 and 7078 close behind, two SD70M-2’s and a GP9.

I found it pretty odd that three locomotives were used to pull some 20 cars. A multitude of scenarios ran through my head as to why, and the best I could think of was they arrived with a much longer train and performed a few switching manoeuvres before the end of the shift.

As they went by, I snapped a few shots of the stacked containers, you know, for modeling purposes.

They pulled up past me to clear the second switch down leading into the yard for which they were blocking traffic on Barlow Trail. Once the switch was thrown, they proceeded to back into the yard. I assumed that they were dropping the string at the intermodal part of the yard since they were pulling a few stacks.

I decided to change location and a place to park somewhere closer to the other locomotives I had seen further into SarceeYard when I first arrived. So I ended up parking in a driveway on 3oth street and walk down from there. Sitting there on the tracks were a GP9 and two SD70M-2’s numbered 7077, 8890 and 8912 respectively. The SD70’s were so clean and shiny. The sign of use was a bit of dirtiness on 8890’s rear nose.

Of all the more recent locomotives from the past decade, i have to say that the SD70's are one of my favorites. To be more specific, those with the newer style nose, the SD70ACE and SD70M-2.

A few minutes later the loco trio that I saw when I first arrived pulled up on the far track and sat idling. At that point, I figured that the action was done and I had seen what I wanted to see, so I headed straight to my usual watering hole for a satisfying cold one to end a satisfying afternoon of railfaning.

Goggle Earth kmz file.

Cheers,

Lunch Time Track Work

October 5th, 2010

I decided to head down to Alyth Yard at lunch to see what was going on for train traffic. When I got there, there was no hump and no waiting trains. There was however a track maintenance crew working on the ballast down from the 12th Street Tower. I pulled out my camera and started shooting.

There was no action coming from the tamper so I turned to the ballast regulator who was spreading and, well, obviously regulating newly dumped ballast. Those suckers sure make a hell of a lot of noise. The attachment on the front is basically used to spread the ballast. Inside are many long rubber rods, I think they are rubber, that are attached to a spinning shaft. And as you can see in the second picture, rocks bounce around as it was spreading the ballast more evenly for the tamper. In the third picture the driver is making use of one of the “wing” plows to spread ballast.

Further up past 12th Street Tower were 3 ballast dumpers. I couldn’t get the complete reporting marks for all three, but the first one is CP 455162, the second is CP 4553## and the third is CP 455###.

These two pictures show the difference in the newer ballast and the existing lighter ballast.

The ballast regulator had stopped what it was doing for a few minutes and I saw that the tamper revved up and started moving towards me, so I walked down to meet up with it. In the background of the first picture, the two guys standing are the surveyors. One is behind the tamper’s laser levelling equipment and is holding the receiver of an RTK GPS surveying system. The little white space ship above his head is the GPS receiver mounted on a surveying rod. The control pad is out of sight. In picture two, the tamper is about to vibrate the ballast into place at one of the many switches in Alyth Yard. In the last picture the rods are still vibrating as they are pulled out and lowered a second time.

Shortly after that, an intermodal train came through from BC heading to the Sheppard Intermodal facility. In the lead was CP 8873 followed by CP 9732, an ES44AC and AC4400 respectively. Bringing up the rear was CP 8517 which was an AC4400.

I took several shots of some of the containers and also a few of some of the couplers as they flew by. The last two pictures of the couplers are interesting. They are used to keep sets of three well cars always coupled together. I knew they existed but never really noticed them before or ever thought of looking for those particular types of well cars. That is until I bought a set of Walthers 3 unit CP well cars when I was attending the Edmonton model train in September with my model railroad group.

As the train was going by, one of the supervisors that was talking with the tamper crew, walked over to me and said that rail traffic was really busy that day. Before he could escape me I took the opportunity to ask what exactly they were doing. He told me that they were doing preventative maintenance before winter on the track ballast and raising it up by 6 inches to raise the switches out of the “holes” or the low areas. This is so water does not collect and freeze at the switch leads and operators. As some may know, because of the chinooks, Calgary goes through some pretty drastic freeze-thaw cycles, sometimes a couple in the matter of a few hours. Temperatures can below 0 Celsius in the morning, 15 Celsius in the afternoon and back to below 0 again. After the ballast work is done, a surveying crew surveys the rails to make sure that the rails are at the right elevations.

I then asked him why the ballast was a different colour that the current ballast and where did it come from. He explained to me that with all the derailments and washouts that apparently there is a serious shortage of ballast, so the ballast that they were using that day was recycled ballast. It was just dirty from being dug up and would wash off after a couple rainfalls. As they dig up old ballast from removing unused switches and abandoned lines, they run it through sifters to remove the small unwanted rock, then ship it to where it is needed. By that time the train had gone by and he then indicated that he had to go check up on the other crew.

There were two locations that came to mind immediately as to where that ballast probably came from and both are on the MacLeod Subdivision. Some of it is probably from near the Azure grain elevator where they’ve removed the rail ties and dug up the ballast. This happened sometime between May 2010 and September 2010. The other location I’m thinking about is further south on Highway 2 near Nolan. Back in July I was heading to a wedding in Lethbridge and noticed that there were work crews digging up ballast and sub-roadbed.

The following two pictures taken back in September show the reclaimed grade crossing near Azure. The first photo is heading towards High River and you can see the auto racks I posted about back in September and October. The second is looking towards Azure and you can just see the top of the grain elevator.

Just before I left I took a shot of some of the workers driving spikes after the tamper had gone by.

At that point I was running out of time and headed back to the office.

Cheers,

Happy New Years!

January 1st, 2011

Happy New Years! I hope everyone has had a safe New Years Eve and for the year 2011 to be to good for all.

Cheers,

My Camera Gear And Other Stuff

I figured I should write up an entry about what gear I have and carry around when I'm out photographing trains or other train and railroad related subjects.

My Camera body is a Nikon D80 10.2Mpx. It is a great camera and I've had no problems so far. Since I shoot in RAW only, I do wish the buffer was a bit bigger up to 9 or 10 compared to 6 or 6+1 as I like to call it. There is a small pause between the 6th and 7th shot. The D80 uses SD cards so my main card is a Sandisk Extreme III 8GB that holds near 800+ shots in RAW even though the display initially shows 655. I also have a Sandisk Extreme III 2GB card and Sandisk Ultra II 1GB card.

I own 3 lenses at the moment. My first lens is a Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 18-70mm 3.5-4.5 G ED, which came in a kit with the body. My second lens is a Nikon AF-S Nikkor 70-300mm 4.5-5.6 G ED VR II. At the time, this lens was about $525 CAD and is a pretty good investment if you're looking for a fairly decent zoom lens. My most recent purchase is a Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 12-24mm 4 G ED, although I don't expect to take very many train shots with this lens. I bought more for the wide angle feature for photographing landscapes and buildings like grain elevators. Maybe I'll try to catch a prairie train shot with it. This one was just over $1000 at the time of purchase.

I also have the MB-D80 vertical grip with two batteries which gives a combined estimation of 5000 shots before I have to recharge the batteries. I usually average between 3000 and 3500 depending how long I leave the camera on, if I'm using the flash, do alot of playback, or playing around with settings in the menu. Cold is also a factor on charge life and reduces the life of the batteries fast. They do regain some of their charge if you can warm them up. Although the MB-D80 does add weight with the extra battery, it is handy for it's vertical grip functions making it less awkward to shoot and of course the extra power longevity.

One purchase that I'm happy about is my Uniden TrunkTracker III model number BC246T. It is capable of holding 2500 channels on average. It depends on how much information I use in the tag to identify the frequency. It was a bit more than what I wanted to pay, but was worth it in my opnion. Besides it was the only choice I had that was decent.

Other items of interest are a Kenko 67mm circular polarizer, an infrared remote shutter release Nikon ML-L3, a pair of compact binoculars, some cleaning supplies, extra Sandisk SD cards.

All of the above fits neatly into my Crumpler Six Million Dollar Home carry bag.

Two other items that I would not be able to live with out is my tripod and ball head. Apart from their normal positions, the legs can be spread out to almost flat. Although I do have to slide out the neck all the way and switch it to a horizontal position. In a stand up position with the neck fully extended, I can just manage to look through the view finder and can barely read the control display on the top.

The list:

• Nikon D80
• Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 18-70mm 3.5-4.5G ED, 67mm diameter
  
• Nikon AF-S Nikkor 70-300mm 4.5-5.6G ED VR II, 67mm diameter
• Nikon AF-S Nikkor 12-24mm 4G ED, 77mm diameter Aspherical
• Manfrotto 055X Pro tripod
• Manfrotto 488RC2 ball head
  
• Kenko 67mm circular polarizer
• MB-D80 vertical grip
• 2 Nikon EN-EL3e batteries
  
• Sandisk Extreme III 8GB SD card
• Sandisk Extreme III 2GB SD card
• Sandisk Ultra II 1GB SD card
• Nikon ML-L3 infrared remote shutter release
  
• Uniden TrunkTracker III BC246T
• Extra AA batteries for scanner.
  
• compact binoculars
• cleaning supplies
• Crumpler Six Million Dollar Home carry bag
• Canadian Trackside Guide 2007 Edition
• 2 different map books of Alberta
• A black journal spiral bound notebook
• Pens
  

Cheers,