Slugging it out in the Quesnel rail yard

August 22, 2010 started in Quesnel, BC where I caught up with CN remote locomotives 7045, 7267 with slug unit 260 working the former BC Rail yard under a smoke fill sky. The haze was caused by forest fire burning in the Burns Lake region of the province some 3 - 4 hours drive away. It would have been nice to see BC Rail CRS-20 alco's working but those unit's have since been parted out or scraped. It was different seeing the engineer on the ground with a belt pack around his waist, not something I see in Prince Rupert.

Gord Cooper's Smoking Gun 1968 Kenworth

Well it's been a busy summer between work and shipping a kid off to university but I did manage to squeeze in a few days on the road and fewer opportunity's to rail fan. I made it to the Houston, BC drag race at the local airport where my boys and I got to see Edmonton based Gord Copper's 68 Kenworth (Smoking Gun) make some exhibition passes down the 1/4 mile blacktop strip. The rig is powered by a twin turbocharged Detroit 8V92 engine which develops 3000+ HP (bottom end is stock) propelling it the 1320' distance at just under 100mph using up almost 3 gallons of diesel per pass.

Making the grade......subgrade that is!

Well with traffic increasing through the Port of Prince Rupert, CN is upgrading two sidings (Amesbury and Tyee) between Rupert and Terrace from 6000' to 12,000' bringing the total to three from just the one at Salvis. The first photo looks like a scene from the summer of 59 with the gravel highway paralleling the rail grade and that's what it is, CN is laying track over the old highway grade I use to travel on as a kid. The ribbon rail can be seen in the left hand side of the photo. The second image is of crews installing the control cables for the CTC system and the third is of the prefab switches waiting to be set in place.

CN distributed power on coal train

July 3rd started with a trip to Terrace for the day. Along the way I caught up to an empty coal train headed East around Kwinitsa (midway point between Rupert and Terrace) with BC Rail 4648 at the rear of the train pushing. I first saw this combination about 2 years ago. It seems CN is practicing this quite frequently on there longer trains coming into Rupert. A single locomotive on the front and another at the tail end.

Mile Post 58 "Skeena" on the Skeena Subdivision

Well it's been awhile since my last post so I thought I'd share some photos I captured at mile post 58 on the Skeena subdivision on Canada Day. The first 3 images are of the view looking West towards Rupert, South across the Skeena river and East in the direction of Terrace. The next 3 photos show an East bound empty coal train lead by Locomotive numbers 2231 and 5736.

Derailment May 12 at Carstairs AB

Once again my buddy comes up with these photos of a CP Rail derailment at Carstairs Alberta. No one was injured.

Sunny Sunday in Prince Rupert and trains in the yard

Sunday May 2nd I managed to catch CN 2535 with BC Rail 4645 waiting for the afternoon rail crew to arrive and pull the container cars in the background out to Mayer Terminals Fairview site.

8829 idling on the waterfront

Sunday afternoon, 8829 was in the Rupert yard idling, waiting for a crew. I thought I'd do something different and decided to upload them as black and white images.

CN 2699 engine failure

Canadian National locomotive number 2699 is a 212 ton machine powered by a 183 liter 4400 hp V16 4 stroke diesel. While working under load, 2699 experienced what is known in the trade as a catastrophic uncontained engine failure. The train was passing the town of Independence , La at the time.
The first picture below shows that one of the 16 cylinder packs that form the engine was ejected through the engine bay body side and thrown clear of the locomotive.
In addition to this the piston from that cylinder was thrown free by the force of the failure. It was ejected so violently that it traveled through the air and crashed through the roof of a nearby home where it embedding itself in an interior wall.

Wye Oh Wye - turning locomotives

BC Rail 4610 is seen entering the North end of the wye in Rupert with 2525 as the trailing unit. 2525 becomes the lead unit once it exits the wye heading South out of the yard.