Occasional Canadian photos, mostly from Vancouver area

[pH]

CN could have inherited, or obtained, trackage rights. Common thing to be awarded to a RR when a competitor becomes too dominant in a particular market/location. But equally, CN may have bought a smaller RR in the past that already had these rights or even it's own access to this particular location.

As far as I know, none of these apply here. The only routes north from Everett to the Canadian border are BNSF lines to Blaine and to Sumas.

[pH]

There are a couple of diesels “preserved” at the restored Canadian Pacific station in Nelson BC. One is a Fairbanks-Morse H16-66 ‘Baby Trainmaster’ painted in CPR colours, though CP never owned it, or any other H16-66 for that matter. It is numbered in the CP ‘demonstrator’ sequence as #7009. The other is CPA16-4 #4104 built by the Canadian Locomotive Company, under licence from Fairbanks-Morse. It is correctly in CPR colours.

 

Though they are ‘preserved’, their situation is not great. They are on isolated sections of track, close together and in the middle of a car park. As you can see, the location of #7009 doesn’t give opportunities for a good photograph:

 

 

#4104 is under tarps, which are becoming pretty ragged. These are supposed to protect it from graffiti, but it hasn’t stopped the fuel tank from being marked. As you can see, #7009, which has had its tarps removed, has been graffitied.

 

 

Overall, these are in quite a sorry state.

 

An interesting detail on #7009 is the roof fan at 45 degrees. I don’t think I’ve ever seen roof fans other than flat.

 

 

A CP freight through Nelson on Saturday had an interesting trailing unit.

 

 

 

It’s just a regular GP38-2, but it has quite a history. Built for the Lehigh Valley Railroad in 1972 and numbered 322, it went to the Delaware and Hudson when the LV was absorbed into Conrail as it was being formed in 1976, and was renumbered as 7322. During the time the D&H was operated by Guilford, the loco was allocated #228, though I’ve not found a picture of it carrying this number. Once the D&H was taken over by Canadian Pacific, it became D&H #7309, then was absorbed into the CPR numbering sequence, again as #7309. So, having been built for a railroad operating on the east coast of the USA, over 45 years later it’s now hauling trains in the mountains of western Canada.

 

[roundhouse]

I was searching of a photo of something else but found these instead.

 

Taken in 1992 on our first trip to Canada.

 

Just West of Jasper the Canadian heading towards Vancouver not long after we detrained and picked up a rental car for a few hours prior to boarding the Skeena.

 

One of the last head end cars, taken from a good vantage point at Prince Rupert of the Skeena service after it had reversed in the wye then backed into the station.

Edited April 10, 2018 by roundhouse

[roundhouse]

A few more photos from 1992, this time on Vancouver Island

 

Victoria station

 

Naniamo

 

Northern most station on the Island that was still in use at the time, Courtney.

 

As well as travelling on the RDC we also drove lineside.

 

The track wasnt in the greatest shape even back then some years before the line 'temporarily' closed.

 

 

[pH]

The sun beams down on Canadian Pacific SD30C-ECO #5002 sitting beside the yard office in Nelson, BC on April 21:

 

 

 

Edited February 11, 2023 by pH

[newbryford]

The sun beams down on Canadian Pacific SD30C-ECO #5002 sitting beside the yard office in Nelson, BC on April 21:

 

IMG_20180421_171346244_HDR.jpg

 

That rates far more than a mere "like".

 

 

 

Cheers,

Mick

[pH]

That rates far more than a mere "like".

 

Why, thank you, kind sir!

 

Actually, it's a total fluke. I didn't have a camera with me and had to borrow my wife's cellphone. In bright sunlight, shooting almost straight into the sun, and unable to see anything on the phone's screen, I had no idea what kind of picture I was getting. I just took a couple of "point, shoot and hope" pictures and thought I'd tidy them up later in Picasa.

[pH]

CN stack train arriving in CP yard in downtown Vancouver on May 6. The locos uncoupled, and two CP GP38-2s pulled the train back towards the container terminal you can see in the background. The CN locos (L to R) are #8917 (SD70M-2), #2149 (C40-8W, previously ATSF/BNSF #828) and #2314 (ES44DC).

 

 

(Nice weather, eh?)

 

And a closeup of #2314:

 

[PhilJ W]

No active trains today. However, here's a picture of a picture on a local information board. There were several lumber mills in the area (the last one is about to be closed, and condos built on the site) and this is a picture of the log dump at one of them:

 

IMG_1841.JPG

 

Anyone like to guess at the builder of the loco? (I don't know.)

 

And here's the boiler and firebox of what I presume (given where it is) was one of the engines used on the line to that same mill:

 

IMG_1845.JPG

 

I have posted a picture of this before, but it's been absorbed into the forest even more since then.

Looks like a Baldwin.

[daveyb]

I've seen that pic before and I think it's a fairly standard tourist info board pic. It looks very similar to many in a very interesting book entitled 'Logging by Rail' my copy of which is currently packed away but I'll dig out the details soon.

[pH]

View forward through the driving position of Nelson Electric Tramway Society car#23 between runs:

 

[The Lurker]

Here are a few photos from our holiday last year. Very few (as a proportion) were railway related but here goes:

 

Vancouver station 28 July 2017

 

Various parts of the Canadian - it's too long for the platforms

 

Walking down the train to get on our car 28 July 2017

 

The view looking back along the train from one of the dome cars 28 July 2017

 

Sunrise over Kamloops 29 July 2017

 

The Canadian has arrived in Jasper29 July 2017

 

Preserved engine in Jasper

 

A few days later, spotted while on a walk around Jasper

 

[pH]

Some pictures from this afternoon, Wednesday August 8.

 

CN eastbound holding just west of Piper Avenue level crossing in Burnaby. Engines are ES44DCs #2257 and #2235.

 

 

VIA Rail “Canadian” westbound at Piper Avenue. Lead engine is F40-PH2 #6442. I didn’t get the number of the second engine. The train was moving well and had time in hand for a punctual arrival in Vancouver.

 

 

Lead engines of an eastbound just past the crossing. It had a mixture of power – CP ES44AC #8918, CP AC4400CW #9814, CN (ex-BCOL) C40-8M #4610 (still in BC Rail colours), and a rare CN SD70I #5614.

 

 

The track here is owned by BNSF, but dispatched and maintained by CN. It appears that the tracks are bi-directional, and all three trains I photographed were running left-handed.  

Edited August 9, 2018 by pH

[pH]

Some pictures taken at the West Coast Railway Heritage Park in Squamish, BC last Saturday. Our son and daughter-in-law were attending a wedding there. The roundhouse is available for functions. They use locomotives or cars to define the space for the function, parking them on roundhouse tracks to ‘cordon off’ a sector of the building appropriate to the size of the function. It means a small group doesn’t feel lost in a massive space.

 

The bride arrived by train, having boarded somewhere else on the site. Here’s the train parked beside the small marquee used for the service. They travelled in the nearest car, I believe the ex-CPR business car ‘Alberta’.

 

 

We looked after our grandson while the service was happening, and then took him back to his mum and dad part way through the reception. I took the chance to take some pictures in the yard of the museum.

 

The unit used on the wedding train was CPR FP7A #4069. Here it is being moved by CPR S3 #6503:

 

 

And a closer shot of #6503:

 

 

Another FP7A on the site is #1404 in Algoma Central colours. It was originally a CPR loco. When Algoma Central owned it, it had the number 1756. The West Coast Railway Association (WCRA) kept the Algoma Central colour scheme but renumbered it with its original CP number. (No, I don’t know why, either!)

 

 

BC Rail Budd car BC-14. There are another two ex-BCR Budds here – BC-21 and BC-33.

 

 

BC Electric GE 70-tonner #941. The BC Electric line is now owned by Southern Railway of British Columbia (SRY).

 

 

Great Northern Railway ALCO RS1 #182. Sold by GN to a coal mine in Saskatchewan, and eventually acquired by WCRA.

 

 

As you can see from some of the pictures above, the climate here is not too kind to railway equipment stored in the open.  Here’s something in even worse state. I think it’s CPR F7B #4459, but I couldn’t see any numbers on the unit itself, and the information on the WCRA website is not great (or I can’t find my way around the site, which is possible!).

 

[pH]

Canadian Pacific GP38-2 #3087 and GP38AC #3019 on tanks at Coquitlam Central station this afternoon:

 

 

#3019 is still in the 'Pacman' paint scheme, which is now quite rare.

 

Skytrain (rapid transit) elevated track behind.

 

(Very late edit - GP38-2, not -3)

Edited September 5, 2018 by pH

[Jim49]

Hi Peter and others. Just a few photos from our holiday in Canada in May 2015. Hope these might be of interest.

 

Now, if the photos come out in the sequence I have planned they are:-

 

CP Snow plough 400840 in Banff station yard

CP Spreader 4002870 in Banff station yard

Banff station. A beautifully restored and maintained building then given over to a small coffee shop, offices and depot for Brewsters Transportation coach business.

5718 and 2627 leaving Jasper with a train of packaged timber products, tankers and hoppers(?) 

Via Rail 6419 with the empty stock for the service to Prince George /Prince Rupert. The Skeena service.

Rocky Mountaineer in Jasper station quadruple headed with the  stock which would form our train to Vancouver the following day.

Canadian National 4-8-2 6014 on a plinth beside Jasper station.

Jasper Station building well restored and in similar use as Banff.

 

Jim

Edited September 8, 2018 by Jim49

[dibber25]

Three more from Vancouver Island in happier times.

6148 among the broom blossom at Malahat in the final year of operation.

A new Dash-8 and the BC Rail RDCs at Lillooet around 1990.

One of my earliest Canadian photos. Hockey-mask livery 9103 in 1976. The Victoria-Courtenay 'Dayliner' is still a CP Rail operation and it still stops 'on flag' at the smaller stations. This is the southbound, at Shawnigan Lake.There was no flag available so Di asked me "How do we stop it?"

"I guess like you'd stop a bus at a request stop - just stick your arm out," I responded.

So she did, and I captured the moment. (Picture scanned from a very dark slide). 

(CJL)

[dibber25]

A golden oldie that's a firm favourite. My wife took this while I was shooting video (long since lost). On the video you could hear the sound of the locos change as they 'dug in' for the climb over the hill to Port Alberni. Two Rail America-liveried GP38-2s sandwich Ottawa Valleys Railink GP20 No. 2099 with (from memory) 23 cars for the paper mill, including box cars of pulp and at least three tanks cars of china clay slurry, the tanks all in full ECC, English China Clays International, livery. This is the view across Cameron Lake from a roadside picnic area. The service ended a year or two later when the paper mill operations on the island had a big shake-out, Port Alberni no longer had the incoming pulp and its outgoing products went by road. (CJL)

[dibber25]

BCL-8 Budd Wiser and a chop-nosed RS-3 lays over in Lillooet yard c.1990. This was the school train for First Nations children from Seton Portage to Lillooet. The passenger car was ex-Gulf, Mobile & Ohio, but does anyone know what happened to it once it became CN stock? The school train became a kind of two-car speeder. (CJL)

[pH]

Canadian Pacific SD30C-ECoS #5047 and 5015 on grain loads for Vancouver elevators at Burnaby this afternoon:

 

 

 

Unusual instruction on the side of several of the hoppers - I believe the black paint is a special coating:

 

 

The reporting mark on those cars:

 

 

which belong to the Crab Orchard and Egyptian Railway! 

Edited October 9, 2018 by pH

[Regularity]

The reporting mark on those cars:

 

which belong to the Crab Orchard and Egyptian Railway!

 

Presumably they are now a railroad car-leasing company? The same is true of the “Louisville and Wadley” Railway.

[pH]

Presumably they are now a railroad car-leasing company? The same is true of the “Louisville and Wadley” Railway.

They still operate as a railroad but, yes, they're into car leasing. Incidentally, they are recognised as the last railroad in the US to use steam locos to haul revenue freight services - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_Orchard_and_Egyptian_Railway .

 

Other small railroads run big car leasing operations. One I see a lot of around here (western Canada) is the Northwestern Oklahoma Railroad - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwestern_Oklahoma_Railroad .

 

Apparently, it's to a leaser's advantage to be an operating railroad, since they can charge a higher per diem than if they were just a leasing company.

[pH]

Some pictures taken along the Canadian Pacific route in the Fraser Valley today.

 

CP and CN operate directional running over the lines of the two railways in the Fraser and Thompson canyons - usually eastbound on the CP and westbound on the CN, between Mission and Basque.

 

Here are the headend engines on an CN eastbound of empty potash hoppers on the Harrison River bridge at Kilby. #2699 is a C40-8W, sublettered for Illinois Central, and #5411 is an SD60.

 

 

 

and (I think) ES44DC #2287 as the pusher:

 

 

 

That train was closely followed by this:

 

 

- a hi-rail pickup truck.

 

Later, in Agassiz, I was too late getting into position to photograph the headend engines or the mid-train helper on an eastbound CP train of coal empties, but I did get a shot of the pusher:

 

 

Unfortunately, given the distance, the lighting and (lack of) cleanliness of the loco, I didn't get the number.

Edited December 5, 2018 by pH

[dibber25]

Canadian Pacific SD30C-ECoS #5047 and 5015 on grain loads for Vancouver elevators at Burnaby this afternoon:

 

IMG_2170.JPG

 

IMG_2171.JPG

 

Unusual instruction on the side of several of the hoppers - I believe the black paint is a special coating:

 

IMG_2173.JPG

 

The reporting mark on those cars:

 

IMG_2175.JPG

 

which belong to the Crab Orchard and Egyptian Railway! 

 

Quite a lot of hopper cars have the 'Do not hammer' markings. I understood it relates to the internal coating which can be cracked and dislodged. (CJL)

[Jim49]

Hi folks,

        A few weeks ago I submitted a few photos from our 2015 Rocky Mountaineer trip from Jasper to Vancouver via Kamloops. Those only involved Jasper station so for anyone interested here are some more to complete the journey to Vancouver. Hope you enjoy them.

 

As I still don't know how to link captions to photos captions first with hopefully the photos in correct order:-

 

Seating on RM is airline style - all facing forward so the whole train has to be turned after each trip. This normally involves a turning triangle or "Wye" and the first picture shows the arrangement at Jasper station which is immediately behind the viewer. The rear track is the first leg and continues out of sight on a curve to the right. The seemingly very tight curve is the return leg with the lines in the foreground forming the final side. I have seen the reversal take place and it is carried out remarkably quickly and without any obvious sense of drama.

 

This little Trackmobile was spotted in a depot complex just outside Kamloops.

 

An Airfix girder bridge over the North Thompson river on the approach to Kamloops station. The track into the station turns East and away from Vancouver so another reversal would be required before we could depart the next morning.

 

This is the Thompson River and most of our train. Our original 2 locos and 9 coaches had joined up overnight with the Banff - Vancouver train plus additional stock at Kamloops and now comprised 4 locos and 29 coaches.

 

Not sure what this is. It looks like a burnt out space capsule sitting in a field. Any ideas?

 

Crossing over the Thompson River with the front of our train on the bridge and our end still to go into the tunnel.

 

Some PW wagons. Canada's answer to Wickham trolleys.

 

Avalanche shelters and a tunnel in the area known as Avalanche Alley.

 

Coming onto Cisco Crossing. We are on the original CP route with the other bridge just visible on the much later CN lines.

 

The CN bridge at Cisco X 2

 

Selection of bridges at Vancouver.

 

 

Jim