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USE THE SAME PHOTO OF WILLIAM BAIRD

CP at STEAMTOWN!

CP GP20C-ECO #2279 displayed at Steamtown in Scranton, PA for Railfest August 4th,with the NS SD60E 911 Honoring First Responders Loco.

Raymond T Bozek
Conductor
Canadian Pacific Railway
Saratoga Springs, NY

PHOTO CP 2279 RAY 2

PHOTO CP 2279 RAY


Will,

I noticed on your Shortlines page (last Month), you had a listening for GMTX 206. I thought I would give you some history of this EMD MP15DC.


Re- New arrival GMTX MP15DC 206 has been delivered to Canexus in Bruderheim, AB. The engine will be used to switch the facility which supplies a variety of materials for the oil industry.


It was built in 1980 and sold to KCNW (Kelleys Creek Northwestern Railroad) #2 engine which serviced Valley Camp coal company Mammoth, WV mine. It was sold in the mid 90's when the mine closed to Alaskan railroad and became ARR 1554. Tt was later sold by ARR to a repair depot in Tacoma, WA where it was rebuilt to become GMTX 206. My father worked on the train during its days at KCNW.

Thanks,

Stephen Richard

Here is a photo of ARR MP15DC 1554 stored Tacoma, WA in 2010, well before rebuilt/repaint into GMTX 206. (Richard Olsen)

PHOTO ARR 1534

STORM FALLOUT IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: This shot was taken August 31st, 2015. The location is about a mile down the street from my place in historic Maillardville (part of Coquitlam now), at Heritage Square next to the old CP Fraser Mills Station. This is now a small rail museum run by the Pacific Coast Division of the Canadian Railroad Historical Association. Part of their display is the old CP Caboose (CP 434553), that they repainted back in 2012. At that time I posted a few shots of it, and the first shot in this set is one from that time so you can see how it looked then. Many of you will know we had a freak wind and rain storm here on Saturday afternoon that knocked down a million trees around town.

PHOTO CP 434553 AC 2

Hi all,

Here's an image of the afternoon CN Montreal-Toronto "Rapido' at Wilson ON, the first station east of Belleville ON. on July 3rd,1971.

We (a whole carload of Montreal area railfans) were there for the annual Belleville Railway Days, a long running CN and civic event which took place in the 1960's and 70's. I'm assuming that this is the afternoon Rapido because it has the "Bistro" bar car behind the power, no baggage car and a mostly day coach consist. I can't recall if the Rapido's still had dining cars in 1971, but there is something on the rear of the train with a smoke jack. Possibly one of those converted heavyweights used as club cars.

With a brother living in Toronto, I rode the afternoon Rapidos fairly frequently, but because these trains ran in the late afternoon and evening, I have few photographs of them. Fond memories, however.

Cheers,

Phil Mason

PHOTO CN 6521 PHIL MASON

Hi,

The shots you posted with Aspen Crossing Rail on the former CP Lomond Spur (itself a former Sub), triggered this set of scans which you can post. Returning from Fort Macleod to Calgary on business, I came to Aldersyde as 2nd 992 pulled out across the Highwood River behind GP9s and an F7B; that scan went out months ago. Once it cleared, the 8540 formed up its train of 9 Branchline Rehab ballast hoppers then headed off for the Lomond Sub, which I hadn't heard of before, and never again until the new operation showed up. The grade crossing shot is Twp Road 200, just north of the Highwood River, and the going-away shot, of which I'm fond of very few, shows the train plus van on the bridge over the same river. The date is June 19, 1980. It was a nice morning, because I encountered 3rd 992 behind UP SDs and a CP F on its way out of town, and shot it at DeWinton and the bridge at Okotoks.

Cheers,

Fred Clark

PHOTO CP GP9 FRED CLARK 2

PHOTO CP GP9 FRED CLARK 3

Hi Folks;

As I was collecting the lighting at the rear of the Civic prior to loading it into the trunk after capturing the pair of ex-UP SD9043MACs from Rogers Island, I overheard the D&H North End dispatcher telling the VRS crew up in Whitehall Yard ...... ”They should be up there at03:30” and I concluded she (Maureen) was referring to local D47 which operates out of Whitehall Yard and runs to and from Saratoga Yard. Frequently the VRS night job from Rutland waits for D47 to deliver cars, and apparently this was one of those nights. And...... D47 operates with a pair of CP GP 38-2’s! I remembered how Greg Klingler had dragged me over to the station in town to check for possible angles after a night photo we combined on in the past there on Rogers Island, and I thought...... why not? This is about as spontaneous as I get at night! Lol!

A few minutes later I was walking around the east side of the Fort Edward station, liking what I found! The only wrench in the works was a speed limit sign and post I had to compose around. After I repositioned the car on this side of the tracks, I quickly got to work setting up lighting, imagining how nice a pair of bright red CP GP 38-2’s would look against the refurbished station. Two different police vehicles came past several times as I was going back and forth from the Civic with lighting and one rolled down his window to ask...... ”Are you surveying”? I bet the two officers has guessed on what I was up to! This officer lost, as I told him I was setting up to take a night photo of a train. Officer Bill Gatewood, down in Ashland, Virginia would have won the bet as he knew what I was up to when we crossed paths years ago! lol! The officertonightasked when the train was due, mentioned how they come thru all night long here, and then we parted ways wishing each other a safe night.

I’m just finishing the lighting when things start falling apart! I can hear D47 coming down Gansevort Hill below me, the grade ends at the bridge which crosses a portion of the Hudson River onto Rogers Island...... the stepladder and camera are still in the Civic. Not good! I get to the car and stuff the tiny GR and Pocket Wizard into each back pocket then make a racket dragging the stepladder out of the back with light stands and clothes falling onto the ground after coming along with it. As I position the stepladder D47 is blowing for the bridge, not much time to waste! I mount the Pocket Wizard onto the GR hotshoe turn everything on and climb up atop the stepladder as D47 rumbles over the bridge perhaps half a mile away. I fire off a test shot and it looks way too bright! Something is not right as I had set the flash output to expose the scene much darker! I examine the exposure settings and try to increase f-stop from f2.8 but the GR for some reason does not respond! I’m not using the correct dial?

The crossing gates are activating next to the station! Unable to adjust the f-stop, I increase the shutter speed to 1/1000th of a sec. from 1/640th and the test shot looks better as D47 is blowing for the crossing. I’m thinking this is wild! How can it expose like this at 1/1000th? I had manually preset the focus so as D47 comes into sight I frame up the view and watch as the leader comes out of the dark, over the crossing and past my mark at around forty mph. A silent press of the shutter results in the lighting reflecting back...... Champlain Blue, Yellow and Silver, as D&H 7304 flies past me! What a nice surprise! And the shot looks excellent! How can this be I wonder standing atop the stepladder as D47’s short train is gone into the night. Then...... I notice what’s goin’ on.

In my hasty handling of the GR I cleverly (somehow) managed to move/nudge the protected MODE DIAL which I normally set on manual everything. I had moved the dial to “shutter/aperture mode”! In this mode the camera adjusts the ISO setting for the selected aperture/shutter speed. SO I’m checking the settings on the rear screen of the GR, 1/1000th...... f2.8...... ISO 12,800! Oh no! I instantly conclude I have a grainy/noisy shot here at such a high iso setting, as I was using iso 1600! But...... zooming in it does not look bad on the GR’s rear screen! I can’t believe it! Back home in post-processing the image is CLEAN! I’m impressed. This is quite a performance/save from a $560 camera/lens combo! Plus, it’s a shot of D&H 7304, one of two remaining locomotives on the CP roster to wear a variation of the D&H Lightning Stripe scheme! Please enjoy! Comments are welcomed. SHot on June 12, 2015 at 02:55 in Fort Edward, NY. Special thanks to Greg Klingler, you were right Greg!

All The Best,

Gary Knapp

PHOTO D&H 7304 GARY KNAPP 2

Hi all,

This CB&Q Train Order from 1905 has been discussed among some of us who have worked on the Division where this took place and we think it was “tongue in cheek”. Indians in the Ardmore area would be the “Lakota” from the Pine Ridge Reservation, where the last uprising was the Ghost Dancer rebellion that ended at the battle of Wounded Knee in 1890. The best guess is that if anything was happening it was some drunk youths riding around and shooting in the air. At this time the (Burlington) CB&Q was brand new railroad, just opened in 1901.

The 0-10-0 helper engine CB&Q #590 (named in the order), had just been renumbered in 1904 from Burlington & Missouri River #273. It was an 0-10-0 built by Rogers in 1891, one of three CB&Q 590-592, ex B&MR 273-275. We think it would have been stationed at Crawford at the time and have worked down the east slope of Pine Ridge to position itself to help an underpowered westbound. Quite surprising because westbound was the empty direction long before coal was an item—lumber off the GN and NP from Laurel-Billings, livestock out of Wyoming. Later, there was oil out of the Newcastle, Wyoming area and pre-boom coal out of the Sheridan area, but not in 1905. Some folks who have seen this order (which has been forwarded around the web a lot in recent days) immediately think of the one-off 2-4-2 #590 of 1895, with 84.5 inch drivers, ofFast Mailfame, but it was renumbered to #1590 in 1898.

What I most remember about Ardmore is when we had a one-car derailment on a BN coal train there in 1980 and Fred Albert, our Asst Supt Mechanical, took rerailing frogs and had a pilot from the air service we used at Alliance land on Nebraska highway 2 alongside the railroad, where he placed the frogs and, working with the train crew, had the line open again in less than two hours after the incident began. (We had an air service because we had a “deadhead by air” agreement and moved crews around on the Division on a daily basis on twin engine aircraft; Division officers sometimes used single engine aircraft as in this case. I only did that once, when I had a pinched schedule and needed to go to and from Casper quickly.) The most surprising thing to us was the use of a helper on the easy east slope of Crawford Hill (which, by the way, is the CB&Q’s ascent of Pine Ridge). If you are wondering about landing a plane on that highway, I recall the traffic level might have been five vehicles an hour. At least two of them would have been BN. We had an ex-Frisco special agent come to Alliance in 1983 from Birmingham, Alabama, and he commented, “In Birmingham, I would see a Frisco truck every now and then, but here, it’s like an occupying army!”

Jerry Pinkepank

PHOTO CB&Q JERRY

FROM THE EDITOR: William H. Baird

USE THE SAME PHOTO OF WILLIAM BAIRD

With summer drawing to a close, and a major decision for me to make, the Gods shineed on me for a moment and I was very fortunate to obtain the talented services of Walter Pfefferle as our new CRO Webmaster. He will continue to do his fantastic work on the Museums and Tourist Railways Section and will update and improve our mailing lists and has many other interesting promotional ideas for CRO. I am really excited about having my colleague Walter back in the fold. You may read his Bio in CRO STAFF. (You may wish to Update your BIO Walter?)

Nothing got my adrenaline flowing like seeing Big M`s (CP 4704, 4729, a pair of M-636s), rolling southward over the big Parry Sound trestle, 115 ft over the Seguin River in Ontario Arnold Mooney shot this great photograph June 14th, 1979. PHOTO CP 4504 AM

MAILING THE EDITOR:

If mailing me CRO material or payments please note my CRO office Address, and contact info. Any CRO payments sent to me by check, must be payable to William H. Baird, and not to CRO. As well be sure to include your full name, phone number and email address in the letter.


WILLIAM H. BAIRD
Managing Editor - CRO
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