C46, The Only Train On The Brooks Sub

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,

Friday Off Meets Weekday Railfaning

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

June 27th, 2008

I left the house in Turner Valley at about 8:00am and stopped in Okotoks at Tim Horton’s for a coffee and bagel to go as I usually do before heading out on an adventure. Since this is one of the rare opportunities that I have a week day off, I wanted to head out to Carseland to see if I could grab a couple of pics of one of my friends who happens to be an engineer for CPR. He does daily weekday runs to a couple of chemical plants out that way. By 8:30 I was on the highway heading east towards Carseland on Highway 7 to Highway 547 and then North on Highway 24.

I arrived in the general area at around 9:15 about 8 km past Carseland. The two plants in the area both receive shipments of Nitrogen and they are Orica and Agrium. After a quick Google search when I arrived home that night, I found out that Orica produces commercial explosives and Agrium produces fertilizer. I could see Agrium's railcar yard, but Orica's was behind their facility and was not easy to see.

I proceeded to scout around a bit to see what was in the area for photo taking spots. There is no shortage of level crossings in this area, but not all were that great. Some were not as level with the road and were too elevated for my liking or there just wasn’t any place to park my car. I stopped at one crossing to take a few pictures of a pair of signals and of a grain elevator.

From there I headed north on a dirt road and turned west on Township Road 222. As I was driving, I noticed a blocked road leading to a crossing. I decided to keep going and return a bit later. I arrived at another crossing just north on Twp Rd 222, and took a few more pictures of some other signals. After a few minutes I headed back the way I came.

On my way back I stopped at the blocked road. This was one spot in particular that pleased me. This abandoned crossing was dismantled and the road to either side was barricaded. It was a nice location because I could position my tripod anywhere and not worry about being run over by a vehicle. I later returned to this location on the south side of the tracks.

There was also a white tail deer hanging around in the area.

I headed back toward the first set of signals and down toward Agrium and Orica. I wanted to get to the abandoned crossing from the south side as I could park my car about 75 feet away from it which was alot closer than the 300 feet on the north side. I was almost up to the two plants and just happened to look north and saw a westbound stack train slowing down. I booted it to the crossing just north of Twp Rd 222, but it had stopped way back.

Just before noon I heard the blast of the horn coming from Shepard. After a quick look back, I saw the headlights and they were coming up pretty quick. Thinking this was my engineer friend, I tried to race back to the abandoned crossing, but I was not fast enough. Thankfully it wasn't him. I did however manage to get some pictures of one of the 2010 Olympic locomotives, number 8861, in the middle of the westbound stack train heading for Shepard that had stopped for the eastbound stack train.

About 15minutes later, my engineer friend rolled by with his train. The engine was a GP38 unit number 5867 and was hauling 17 cars made up of various covered hopper, cylindrical covered hoppers and tankers. They were headed toward the wye leading to the two plants I mentioned above.

When they moved nearer to the wye, they had switched off three tankers onto one of the legs and proceeded to do a little shunting. After kicking off a covered hopper, they kicked another two covered hoppers toward the three tankers on the wye leg. After that they proceeded with some more shunting.

I took a picture just after they went by of a bridge that had been around since 1930.

After a few pictures of them shunting, I then moved to a different location further down the tracks to the west.

I zipped on over to a crossing on Highway 797 about 2.8 km south of 22X. I was quite pleased with this location because the ditch is almost flat and level with the road. Also, there is plenty of space to park a number of cars here and to set up a tripod or two.

At about 1:30, an Eastbound mixed freight train with the lead power being a GP38-2 numbered 3049, followed by another GP38-2 numbered 3094 and then CEFX 102. The train consisted of mostly of hoppers and tankers and came crawling by at a snails pace. This was great because it allowed me to grab a ton of pictures of it. In all there were 4 trains that went by between 1:30 and 3:00 pm.

About 45 minutes after the eastbound 1:30 train, a mixed freight train lead by a GE unit numbered 9772 rolled by. This unit had a number of odd features on it. It had what looked like bolts along all edges and corners. I didn’t get a good look as it was barreling by at a good speed.

At around 2:50, an intermodal train with two power units leading and one pushing at the back went by heading east. All three locos were ES44AC units. The two leading numbered 8813 and 9809 with the pusher numbered 8746.

About 10 minutes later, my engineer friend went by with a dozen covered hoppers and tank cars heading back to Alyth yard in Calgary. After that, I decided to head to my watering hole to cool down a bit and then headed home.

Goggle Earth kmz file.

Cheers,

Introduction

Welcome to my blog!

This blog is about my railfanning excursions and trains & railroads in Alberta, or east of the Rockies for that matter.

How did the name come about? Well, I was at a grade crossing on a dirt road in Carseland waiting for CPR's Empress 2816 steam train to arrive, which I will post about later, and some of the locals kept driving by making it very dusty. It was a thought in the back of my mind that I wanted to create a blog or website of my adventures. That's when it hit me as I was standing in the middle of a dust cloud. Dust in the air, tracks on the ground, dust in the air settling on the tracks on the ground. Dust on the Tracks. And of course I live east of the Rockies in a town called Turner Valley. As for the two periods in between the two phrases, call it artistic expression if you want, I just felt like putting them there and because I can.

Since I currently don't own any camera equipment of my own except for a 2 mpx point and shoot, my posts will probably be few and far apart. At least until I am able to get my hands on a camera of my own. The camera that I get to use on occasion is borrowed from a family member. I'll talk about the camera gear another time in another post.

Cheers.