Algoma & Northland Railway

2008-11-04T18:45:00.007-05:00

Maintenance of Way

We took the VIA to Toronto last weekend, and as we pulled out of Coburg I caught sight of this MOW equipment in the yard:

My wife managed to snap a pic of the head end as we went by, and you can't see that further back on the string is a big back-hoe thing, and a control cab at the far end. But a little Googling finds the Herzog corporate site, and a page on the Multi-Purpose Machine, including a video of it in operation (and if you linger on the page long enough, an MPM drives by in the top banner). The cars look like modified well cars, and the "back-hoe" can drive up and down the length of the train.

It just so happens that, a few months back, I built this little cast-metal kit from Railway Express Miniatures (paint job courtesy my dear wife):

Sort of an earlier iteration of the same idea. Very cool to see a prototype.

2008-10-30T11:16:00.000-04:00

Self-Building Model Railroad!

I so want one:

Kiwi Crazy Train

Hat tip: Tim Warris.

2008-10-29T22:59:00.003-04:00

How Do Trains Stay On The Track?

In case you didn't know, explained by the late, great Richard Feynman:

However, I don't expect it applies so much to the little kind.

2008-10-20T21:52:00.006-04:00

The Rusty Spikes

Last week's OVAR meeting was a little different. Instead of the usual illustrated talk on trains, we had a musical presentation by several members, singing a medley of railroad songs, accompanied by a slide show of train images:
I won't say how great we were because that would be, like, boasting. But I had fun, despite breaking a guitar string half-way through the third song. Kudos to Mike Hamer and Brian Earl for putting the whole thing together!

Here's the whole gang:

L to R: John Stewart, Gerry Berrigan, Bob Hobbs, Mike Hamer, Steve Watson, Brian Earl, Timothy Bowden, Fred Adams, Chris Lyon, John Howard.
Missing: Narrator Don Leger.

2008-06-17T23:32:00.004-04:00

Through the Work Zone

Eastbound BNSF freight at Galesburg, IL, August 2007.

2008-02-22T20:48:00.013-05:00

Hey, I can do this!

....Build turnouts, that is (even in N-Scale).

I used a Fast Tracks jig, along with their Quick Sticks laser cut ties, and following the procedure in their User Guides. Not bad at all for my first attempt, if I say so myself. A 24' hopper rolls through as smooth as silk!

Things I screwed up or can do better next time:

Foil cuts: I neglected to cut the copper inside the frog angle on the last long tie. Since this turnout is to be used in a static diorama, it doesn't matter -- just something to remember in the future.
Filing the base flange off the stock rail in the point-contact area: It's damned hard to hold the rail still with your fingers while filing it! As a result, the end product isn't very neat and smooth. After I was finished, I experimented with building a jig to help, and came up with this. It's made by running a scrap of hardwood through the table saw, to cut a shallow groove that holds the rail rigid, lying on its side. It works not too badly, though I have already thought of an improved version.
Forming the curved stock rail: Through not reading the UG carefully as I was working, I neglected to kink the rail at the start of the point area. I think that because of this, the curve of this rail isn't quite right -- it doesn't hug the outer edge of the groove in the fixture (again, not critical for a static display).
Curving rails in general: Both the curved stock rail and closure rail seem to have acquired a small twist or vertical curve to them in the course of bending. As a result the rail didn't sit flat in the fixture groove, so I had a little trouble soldering it, and the final turnout doesn't sit quite flat on the bench. Gluing it down well will straighten it out, but it would be better to prevent the problem in the first place. (How? Must ponder upon it....)
Soldering the switchpoints: I managed to solder the throwbar to the stock rails by placing the paper isolator in the wrong place. It goes between the throw bar and the stock rail, not the point and the stock rail!
Gluing to ties: Be very careful not to drip glue on the switchpoints, or the adjacent area of stock rail. It says that in the UG, but it deserves repeating. Oh yeah: did I mention about not getting glue on the switchpoints? Or the adjacent stock rail?
Rail length: Through not using the Quicksticks as a reference when cutting, I wound up with the rails a little short at one end, and hanging out at the other. Nothing that can't be fixed later, of course.

But the end result is very pretty. I estimate that, balancing the cost of the jig and material against buying off-the-shelf, the break-even point is about 17 turnouts (not that cost is the only reason to hand-lay).

Now all I have to do is get started on the big layout and I'll have a reason to build 30 or 40 more....

2008-01-11T20:29:00.000-05:00

Kids who play with BIG trains

In Lodz, Poland, a 14-year-old boy has been charged with endangering public safety after he modified a TV remote to throw track switches on the city's streetcar system. He caused several derailments and some injuries.

At least the Poles don't have rail-vs.-kids problems like the Swedes do:

(The text at the end reveals that this is a commercial encouraging children to consider a career in engineering).

2007-12-16T22:48:00.001-05:00

End of the line!

The picture shows the remains of the old ore terminal at Michipicoten Harbor on Lake Superior. Here, the Algoma Central Railway trans-shipped iron ore onto lake boats from the mine at Wawa, a few miles to the east. However, the mine closed in 1998, and the Michipicoten branch was abandoned.

Looking in the other direction (below), we see the right-of-way, its rails now lifted. There's not much left now at Michipicoten -- just a few cottages and a gravel pit.

A few miles inland from Wawa is Hawk Junction -- where the branch met the ACR mainline. Obviously, Hawk is no longer a junction, but there is still a small yard, and the passenger train pauses here for a little while. The place looked empty the day we drove up, just a few strings of lumber cars parked in the yard:

Also, one item of possible modelling interest: flat cars mounted with propane tanks. For what? Thawing switches in mid-winter, perhaps?

2007-12-15T18:45:00.000-05:00

Catching up to the train at Schreiber

Yeesh -- five months since I've blogged here AND a whole new vacation come and gone, before I've even finished last year's railfan pictures! Without further ado, here's a dump of a bunch of stuff from the tail end of the September 2006 trip.

Camping at Rossport, overlooking Lake Superior, on a drizzly day we hiked up the hill to the CP line, in time to catch this freight coming through:

Then we drove into Schreiber and found the same train doing a little switching:

The town seems to be putting together a small railway museum on the edge of the yard, with this retired S3 and other equipment:

From the old to the new: these AC units came through hauling a westbound stack train, and paused at the depot.

Leaving Rossport and continuing east, we caught this train just off the Trans-Canada, near Terrace Bay (pity about the weather, but what can you do?):

2007-07-09T22:07:00.000-04:00

Advice for Blogging Model Railroaders

Ran across this list of The 20 Blogging Commandments. They're all good and/or humorous advice, but the last one caught my eye (emphasis mine):

20. Though it is a Place only whispered about, it is not Blasphemy to proclaim unto you: from Time to Time it is necessary to enter that Purgatory known as Off-line. Just as ye would not remain in the Basement and play with your Choo-choo Trains for Weeks on end, so too must ye leave your Laptop closed and venture forth into the wider World in search of Sustenance.

That phrase in bold puzzled me: I mean, wouldn't we stay in the basement with our trains for weeks, if we could? (Like, having to earn a living is such a drag, no?) But practical considerations aside, what should any self-respecting model railroader do except play with trains, and occasionally tell the blogosphere about the latest project or ops session?

Then my eye fell on that last word, "Sustenance", and I understood. It means that we should at intervals emerge to attend events like the OVAR dinner meetings, or go out to lunch with the SLD guys in between the morning clinics and afternoon layout tours.

Now it all makes sense.

2007-07-02T11:29:00.000-04:00

I'm Only Half As Old As This Steam Engine!

I turned 50 a few weeks ago. To celebrate, la famille Watson (Steve, Seanna, Trevyn, Nic) took a ride on the Hull, Chelsea & Wakefield Sunset Dinner Train. Old 909 turns 100 this year, making her twice as old as me -- so if she can keep chugging, so can I!

It was raining when we pulled out of the HCW depot, but it cleared up and the sun came out by the time we passed Chelsea. Here I am, enjoying myself: I'm on a train, I'm about to be treated to a great meal and a glass of wine -- does life get any better?

OK: so what's the deal with these Tonka toys? They've been sitting on this track vehicle, on a siding somewhere around Farm Point, for at least five years (my last trip on the steam train), probably longer.

After about 90 minutes we reach Wakefield, where the locomotive is turned, watered and a bit of grease applied to important bits of the drivers. The guy in the snazzy hat at right is OVAR member Michel Boucher, at his summer job as HCW conductor.

See it all, in glorious video that's been compressed to fuzzy crap by YouTube (The original is much better. Really):

The glow of the fire, under the cab:
Sort of like a big birthday candle for me to celebrate having spent a half-century on this planet.

2007-06-17T23:26:00.000-04:00

Could we possibly be this lucky?

This sounds way cool: a light rail transit system connecting Kanata, Orleans and Barrhaven to downtown Ottawa, with extensions to outlying towns like Smiths Falls and Alexandria -- only three years from now. Future extension with more lines, both in-city and to additional exurbs, powered at least partially electrically.

My customary cynicism predicts: the price-tag will be around a billion dollars; city council will dither over the cost, the routes, the need, the colour of the frigging coaches; in the 2009 municipal election, just as it was in 2006, it will be a political football; and three years from now we will still have sweet fanny adams except for owing twice as much for renegging on implementation contracts.

Someone, please tell me a good reason why I'm wrong.

2007-04-30T21:30:00.000-04:00

Open House at Walkley Yard

Almost every spring, the Ottawa Central Railway puts on an open house as part of the railway-safety program. And for some mysterious reason, in most years the weather is crappy that day. Mike Hamer and the Friday Night Group sensibly went early before things got too wet. By the time we arrived, the intermittent drizzle had turned to steady rain. Oh well.

The Bytown Railway Society had a few pieces from their collection out, including this coal-fired steam crane, shown in operation in these video clips I shot (the background noises are from the OCR locomotive giving cab rides):

Meanwhile, it looks like Trevyn and Adina are still trying to get to Squamish......

2007-04-28T18:36:00.000-04:00

Great Thundering Trains!

....in Thunder Bay, of course!
September 13: We started the day by heading to a Future Shop to buy a bigger CF card for the camera. At the checkout, we asked the clerk if she could recommend a good place for lunch. She replied that the old train station on Water Street had a nice restaurant in it.

Geez, is it that obvious? I mean, do we have "RAILFAN" tatooed on our foreheads, or something? (I don't recall that I was wearing a train T-shirt that day).

So here's where we had a pretty good lunch, on a terrace overlooking the park and marina:

The station is also home to a couple of shops, and to the Thunder Bay Model Rail Association (which unfortunately for us, is only open to the public until Labour Day) . As we were strolling around the park, a stack train came down from the north on the track behind the station -- and stopped, blocking most of the access roads to the park. Fortunately, there was still one exit open, so we left to commence our serious railfanning for the day.

Not knowing Thunder Bay at all, we adopted the strategy of just driving around wherever our map (a road atlas that includes pretty good street maps for just about every town in Northern Ontario) showed railway tracks. Here's a couple of the things we found:

Grain terminals, of course -- the waterfront is stiff with them -- and the accompanying grain cars.

At the Keefer Intermodal terminal, (below) this passenger car with an unknown logo on the side. What on earth is that, and who owns it? More cars for VIA, awaiting delivery and conversion?

We spent a good long while on the Central Avenue bridge, which spans the north end of the yard. Here's that stack train -- a good kilometer away from the depot -- headed by a SD90MAC and an AC4400CW:

Another pair of AC4400's popped out of the yard, apparently to confer with the incoming train crew:
This is a view looking south along the yard:

After this, we drove along the rail corridor, stopping again somewhere down the south end of town where we found several engines parked near a grade crossing that gave public access without trespassing on the property. Here's a brace of GP9u's:

Below are some interesting yard locos, which we saw in operation earlier that day. Each unit consists of a SD40M-2 (right) and a "control cab" (left) -- a SW1200 with the engine removed. I assume the idea is that the set can be driven from either cab, allowing the operator good visibility, whichever direction they are moving.

A little further along, we found this MOW equipment.

Snow plow:

OK, what the heck is this thing? Flanger? I'm not up on all the wierd-looking machines they use to maintain track.

Don't let anyone tell you that pre-fab sectional track isn't prototypical!

A couple of attempts to be artsy: I love the S-bends created by the crossovers, especially when fore-shortened by the telephoto lens.

2007-03-25T15:26:00.000-04:00

Interlude With Waterfalls

September 11-12: Between leaving Duluth in late morning, then stopping in Two Harbors to have lunch take a few more pictures, we realized we weren't going to make Thunder Bay that night. (BTW, Two Harbors is a place where you particularly want to avoid legal trouble, or you might have to hire these people to get you out of it:)

The great thing about touring in the off-season is the campgrounds are rarely crowded, so we just picked a place out of the tourist info we had, and stopped around 3pm at Cascade River State Park, only about 100 miles up the Lake Superior North Shore from Duluth. This is a beautiful spot where the Cascade River flows several miles through a narrow slit of a gorge before passing under the highway bridge and emptying into Lake Superior.

Below is our campsite at Cascade River. On the left is our rolling motel -- a functional and comfortable trailer from Escape Trailers of Chiliwack, BC. On the right of the picture is the 75 watt solar panel that keeps the battery charged when we're camping without services. It's great to feel just that little bit self-sufficient -- but still completely comfortable.
After a peaceful night and a couple of hikes up the gorge, we leave Minnesota and re-enter Canada, camping Tuesday night at Kakabeka Falls (the "Niagara of the North"), about 30km west of Thunder Bay.

2007-03-25T11:55:00.000-04:00

Duluth's Other Scenic Railroad

September 10: A block from our campground was a sign pointing down a side-street, reading "TRAIN RIDE". Obviously, we had to check it out, and found ourselves at a trackside shed identifying itself as the Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad. Back at the (wi-fi equipped!) campground, we hauled out our laptop, found their website, and decided to take the Sunday morning trip. Here is the train we found waiting for us when we turned up the next day -- a 45-ton switcher, two vintage coaches, and the "safari car":

While the coaches are pretty posh, our choice of transport was the open-air safari car -- an old flatcar adapted for passengers.

The tour covers 6.2 miles of track along the St. Louis River, winding west out of Duluth -- all that remains of the mainline of the original LS&M, which operated from 1863 to 1877, before being absorbed by larger railroads. Part of the route is shared track with the BNSF, and in fact our departure was delayed 15 minutes when these two engines came along, ran up the line, and returned with a tank car.

Once en route, we soon find where that BNSF crew was switching: the Tate & Lyle syrup plant.

Proceeding onwards, the line runs through marshland along the edge of the river -- very scenic, and we had a beautiful sunny day. On the way back, this eagle circled above us for a short period, and then we startled a heron in the marsh as we passed.
The LS&M line passes beneath this bridge which carries traffic to the Duluth, Winnipeg & Pacific's Pokegama yard on the Wisconsin side of the river.
Here's the same bridge, seen from across the river -- but what an odd collection of motive power: CN; leased power that looks like ex-Conrail and ex-BN; and Union Pacific.
After a leisurely hour we reach the end of track in the suburbs, and run around for the return journey.

Between yesterday and today, my capsule review of Duluth train rides is:
The NSSRR is the "rail-fan" trip; but for scenery: the LS&M.

2007-01-28T13:41:00.000-05:00

Which Sci-Fi Writer Are You?

According to one of those silly online tests:

I am:

James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice B. Sheldon)

In the 1970s she was perhaps the most memorable, and one of the most popular, short story writers. Her real life was as fantastic as her fiction.

Which science fiction writer are you?

The embarassing part is, I've never heard of him/her (though I've probably read him/her -- I've read a lot of SF in my time).

2007-01-13T19:13:00.000-05:00

Ore Docks! Mini-quads!

I'd read about ore docks in Model Railroader (see MR November 1992 for a spectacular HO model), but for some reason assumed that, like so many other rail modelling subjects, they were things of the past, now all disused and torn down.

On this trip, I discovered I was wrong. Around Lake Superior, there are several ore docks still standing, and even a few (such as this one in Two Harbors) still in use:
(I apologize for the low contrast; the sun was at a bad angle for photographing the accessible side of the dock).

It's a simple concept: push a string of hoppers up the dock and dump the ore into bins below the track. Later when the lake boat comes in, lower the chutes and fill the hold. Here's a couple of close-ups of Missabe Road (now CN) hoppers up on the dock:

About those hoppers: that's another thing I had thought was gone -- 70 tons? Hasn't everyone gone to 100 tons by now? And aren't they older than the regulatory maximum life of rail cars? Apparently not, as there are plenty in the Two Harbors yard. (I also picked up an informative book from the museum in Duluth: Michigan-Ontario Iron Ore Railroads, by Patrick C. Dorin, which gives the state of the industry as it was in 2002 -- according to Dorin, some lines are still running 55-ton cars).

Now as it happens, I have a fondness for these 70-ton hoppers: Atlas makes a nice one in N-scale, in a variety of road names, which can be readily found at hobby shops and train shows -- often at prices under $10 (a definite advantage when you're trying to put together a respectably long unit train!) As a result, without really trying I seem to have accumulated a fleet of about 75 of these things (now all I need is a proper layout to run them on...but that's another story). So this Two Harbors jaunt was sort of Hopper Heaven for me. In addition, they had some of these:

Look carefully, and you'll see orange stripes up the corners of the end car, and on the fourth and fifth cars along. These mark the ends of one "mini-quad" - four hoppers permanently joined together by draw-bars. The DM&IR converted much of their fleet to this configuration in the 1970's, to reduce the number of failure points in an ore train (see MR February 1976, pp. 56&ff). They also added height extensions, as the newer taconite pellets are less dense than the raw iron ore originally carried. Also in the February 1976 MR is an article describing the modifications to off-the-shelf hoppers to bring them closer to this prototype. I decided to try this with a few of my DM&IR hoppers.

First, I needed to fabricate the draw-bars. The MR article scratch-built theirs out of styrene. However, someone at a train show gave me a better idea: every N-scale modeller has about a zillion discarded rapido-style couplers (at least, the ones who have converted to knuckle-couplers do). These things have a T-shaped end that nests in the coupler pocket. By cutting off the big square hook, and doing a little trimming and shaping, you can fabricate the other end into a similar "T". It goes like this:

The patient is ready for surgery:

A bit of work with cutters and a chisel-blade, and we have a candidate draw-bar:

Man-handle that back into the coupler pockets of two wheel-sets:

Repeat thrice, and we have a mini-quad:

Here it is, ready to haul ore:
(OK, I haven't added the extensions or the orange corner stripes. Yet. But even as it stands, it saves a lot of time coupling up the train!)

And here's a guy who's gone the whole way -- quads with extensions and an ore dock (scroll to the bottom -- it's worth it!):

http://www.grvs.com/missabe/nscale/index.htm
http://www.grvs.com/missabe/nscale/atlas_taconite1.jpg
http://www.grvs.com/missabe/nscale/Layout/dc_2.jpg

2006-11-24T21:12:00.000-05:00

Duluth & Two Harbors

September 9th: In case you didn't know: Duluth is a serious railroad town, having been a major centre for shipping iron ore to smelters back east, as well as being the last port on the Great Lakes. As with most such places, the rail business is not as lively as in days of yore, but there's an active volunteer corps preserving the history and equipment of that time. One such group is the North Shore Scenic Railroad, which operates an active excursion schedule over 26 miles of line from Duluth to Two Harbors, using equipment from the Lake Superior Railroad Museum.

Now, much as I hate to seem critical of good folks doing Good Works, I have to say that the trip itself isn't really all that "scenic". The first few miles along the Duluth outer waterfront are pretty, but after that the line runs through suburbs several blocks back from the shore. However, Two Harbors itself is worth seeing. (Suggestion for visitors: if you want to see the best part of the NSSRR line, take the shorter Lester River trip, then drive up to Two Harbors yourself).

The Equipment

Here's a shot of the whole train, posed in front of
the old Duluth & Iron Range depot at Two Harbors:

The Two Harbors excursion usually consists of just the RDC, running under its own power. However, on this day a private party had chartered the business car, so the NSSRR had combined the consists and hauled the whole train with this sparkling clean SOO GP30 (no objection from us -- when it comes to big things with flanged wheels, the more the better, right?)

The depot is now a museum of local history, and has additional historical equipment parked outside, such as this 2-6-0:

However, we were in for an extra treat! Unbeknownst to us, the Museum was running a special railfan weekend, and as we were poking around the edges of the CN property west of the depot, along came this novel consist intended to depict a typical Great Northern mixed train of some decades ago (though I tend to doubt that the original had railfans hanging out of every door and window of the combine!):

(You can't tell, but that train is actually backing up: the depot spur branches off at the north end of the CN yard, ie. trailing point with respect to trains outbound from Duluth).

Once the GN fan-trip had arrived at the depot, a brief episode of slapstick ensued. It seems some of the railfans were photography purists, and felt that the little yellow-flowered plant growing in the ballast spoiled the view of the engine! So off one of them went to deal with the offending vegetation:

Finally, we can all take our locomotive pictures, unmolested by daisies:

They make a pretty pair, n'est-ce pas?

After an hour or so, the GN fan-trip departs back to Duluth, and our engine makes its run-around on the now-vacant track:

The engine will back our train out to the mainline, then run back to Duluth with long nose forward.

But: while in Two Harbors I made a discovery -- which I'll get to in my next post.......

2006-11-11T19:21:00.000-05:00

GMD1 in the Soo

Mike Hamer recently posted some pictures of the Edmonton railyards taken on his cross-country VIA odyssey. Among these are shots of CN GMD1s (third and fourth pictures down). So I thought I'd trot out these close-ups of a GMD1u that was operating at the north end of Steelton yard last fall, as our Algoma Central train returned to Sault Ste. Marie.

2006-10-29T10:29:00.000-05:00

Train Wreck!

September 6th: Some of us have trouble with vehicles that don't follow you when they're supposed to. But when a railway has that kind of trouble --- the results can be impressive! We were just toodling down Hwy 17 near a place called Spragge, when we came across this:

These boxcars took a beating:

The derailment must have happened a day or so earlier, as the line has been cleared and repaired, but the wrecks have not been removed.

A few hundred meters east of the wreck, some MOW equipment is parked on a siding. On our return (about two weeks later) we noticed several work crews along the line between here and Sudbury. Perhaps the HCR decided they needed to do some maintenance, to prevent further mishaps?

2006-09-27T20:41:00.000-04:00

Bicycle Sets Speed Record on Highway 17!

The previous post, and the next few, present a travelog of our recent trip around Lake Superior. We'll get to the trains soon enough, but in the mean time.....

September 5th: First day out from Ottawa, lots of nasty construction zones on Hwy 17 but we're only a few klicks short of our destination for the night. We're cruising down the Sudbury Bypass when a white van goes by, horn blaring, flagging us over. So we stop, and discover that the rear-most bike on the back of the trailer has fallen off the carrier and is being dragged down the highway by the cable lock (good thing we used that, or we would have left it as a road hazard in our wake!)

I have no idea how long we were dragging it, but it looked pretty wrecked. I suppose it was repairable, but we were having a little car/trailer electrical trouble as well that occupied more of our attention. So we abandoned our poor battered velocipede to a Value Village in Sudbury before blowing town the following day. Maybe someone else can fix and enjoy it. But in case you were ever wondering what happens to a bike that tries to do 90 km/h down the road, sideways:

Burning rubber?

General damage: stem post, left handlebar and gear shift. The ground metal surface was too hot to touch when we picked it up!

The hot seat!!

I'll get to the trains next post, I promise.

2006-09-27T20:18:00.000-04:00

Trucking Nomes Sighted In Mattawa!

Well, do you see any driver in that truck? I don't.
(For those who don't get the joke, you need to read this very funny book. Actually it's a trilogy, but the other two are worth reading as well.)

2006-07-15T21:35:00.000-04:00

In Which Trevyn and Adina Go Railroading

This is my older son Trevyn, age 21, and his girlfriend Adina.

One sunny July day, Trevyn and Adina went to the Canadian Railway Museum at St. Constant, PQ. While there, they decided it would be nice to go visit Adina's family in British Columbia.

First they tried taking the Museum's "Golden Chariot".....
"Trevyn, this trolley is really fancy and all, but I don't think it goes as far as Squamish!"

So they went looking for something else to get them there......

"Look, if we just pick this sucker up and stick it on that track over there....."

"Hey -- this one's got a chain drive, just like our bicycles!.......Only lots bigger"

VIA Rail was offering some kind of Student Super-Saver-Ultra-Micro-Fare deal. What they don't tell you is that "Coach Class" means it includes a coach to show you how to make the thing go.....

"OK, which way to Squamish? We don't want to end up in like, Galesburg instead"

Looks like they managed to get an upgrade, to something that's at least self-propelled.....still doesn't keep the rain off, though!

"OK, this is better....but I don't think anyone sells coal along the line any more...and geez, look at all those valves!"

Finally, they find their way to the cab of this big old F-unit. Looks like they're ready to hit the mainline.....

2006-07-10T17:53:00.000-04:00

Workin' On The Railroad

Ever have a day like the guy in For Better Or For Worse, where each job you set out to do turns out to require some other task to be completed first?

2006-07-04T17:08:00.000-04:00

Railroading, Rural Cambodian Style

Cambodia's bamboo railway -- improvised railcars constructed by villagers, running on the country's little used meter-gauge right-of-way. Google turns up a number of additional hits, with pictures (note: you may have to search down for "bamboo railway" in some of those pages).

2006-06-29T18:22:00.000-04:00

How not to go railfanning

A rather sad story about train surfing among poor youth in South Africa.

2006-06-03T21:13:00.000-04:00

Ethics on Mount Everest

(Note: absolutely no mention of trains in this post. Well, except this one.)

I've always had a minor fascination with Mount Everest. It started when I was maybe 10, and read John Hunt's The Ascent of Everest, the account of the expedition that put Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on the summit, 53 years ago. Since then I've managed (without particularly trying) to read a few other works -- some title-forgotten history of explorations of the mountain from its first discovery by Europeans, Chris Bonington's Everest The Hard Way (first ascent via the forbidding South West Face); and followed the progress of the 1982 Canadian expedition. However as with so many other things, what was once unique and remarkable becomes almost commonplace: according to the Everest History site, 2249 people had reached the summit by the end of 2004 -- over 300 in that year alone. From being among the most inaccessible spots on earth, it seems that Everest has gone to being a sort of esoteric (albeit expensive) tourist trap. It's no longer news.

But lest we get blase about what climbing the mountain entails, realize that the "Mother of the Universe" (as the mountain's Tibetan name Chomolungma means) exacts her own stern tithe from the tiny humans that crawl about her -- the history site also records a total of 186 deaths on the mountain. In round numbers, for every 12 people that have stood on the summit, there is one corpse -- many of which still lie where they fell overcome by cold and hypoxia, or buried beneath tonnes of ice in the Khumbu glacier. Chomolungma is well-guarded. The local weather means that she is only climbable for a few weeks in Spring and Fall -- the rest of the year it is either snowing like hell, or lethally cold and windy. Then there are the approaches to the mountain, through fields of unstable ice. Finally, the air pressure on the upper reaches is barely one-third that at sea level -- the top 850 meters lie within the "death zone", where no human can live for long without supplementary oxygen supplies. At that altitude, even with oxygen the body deteriorates quickly, and climbers cannot linger for long at the highest camp -- they make a quick push for the summit and return to base. This is not a Sunday scramble up the Niagara Escarpment: those who climb Everest are among the best in their rarified and highly technical sport, and are driven, focussed and determined people. You have to be to subject yourself to that level of discomfort and danger, for the privilege of standing atop what is after all, a very large lump of rock and ice.

All of which is just a long-winded way of leading up to the point of this blog post:

This collision of human ambition with sublimely indifferent lethality brought Everest back into the news the last month, with a pair of Good (or Not-So-Good) Samaritan stories. First, on 15 May climber David Sharp died at the 8500m level while descending. Controversy flared when it came out that some 40 climbers had passed him by without attempting a rescue -- the argument is covered in this Wiki article, so I won't belabour the point further. (I also won't take a position: having never been in anything remotely like that situation, I am in no way qualified to comment).

But I'm interested in the sequel: a week later, Australian climber Lincoln Hall also ran into trouble at the 8700m level on his descent. His Sherpa guide was forced to abandon him, and he was assumed to have died in the night. However, the next morning Canadian Andrew Brash found Hall still alive during his own summit attempt. As Brash relates, he immediately abandoned his quest and turned to aiding the stricken Hall, now delirious from hypoxia, with the result that he was eventually brought down alive. The CBC program As It Happens interviewed Brash, and along with his account of events, he expressed his disappointment and frustration at not reaching the summit -- a chance he may never have again. I was particularly struck by Brash's attitude: it was "the only thing to do". No question; no hesitation -- just do what you must, period. (Both the sense of obligation and the frustration come through with greater force in the radio interview than in the news item).

Now here's a thought experiment: suppose that Hall had not been there; that choosing whether or not to save him wasn't even an issue. Presumably, Brash would have gone on to the summit and returned. From that achievement, he would have obtained an enormous sense of personal satisfaction; the respect of his fellow climbing enthusiasts; the admiration of his friends and family; perhaps some awe from his students -- and the rest of us would probably never have heard of him. Being the 2687th (or whatever the count is now up to) to reach the summit of Everest is, as I say above, not "news". Instead, he's famous. Not as in movie star-famous or politician-famous; not famous because he wanted to be (because he didn't); but famous for a great moral achievment, a selfless act of compassion. And in that he has set a very public example -- to all of us; to the kids he teaches -- of the best that humans can be, in a world where we daily hear far too much of the worst. Andrew Brash will have to make his own peace with his "failure" to reach the highest point on earth; as a non-climber I cannot empathize with his disappointment except in the most abstract way. But for my money, what he did achieve is far greater.

2006-06-03T02:00:00.000-04:00

Railfanning Galesburg

When our younger son Nicholas was considering higher education, he decided to look beyond the typical Eastern-Ontario destinations of Carleton, Queen's, McGill, etc. and eventually chose a small liberal arts college located in Galesburg, IL. It's a really nice college located in a town of about 30000, set in the Midwestern prairie. The main drawback is that it's a two-day drive to deliver Nic to school. However, from our point of view, there's an additional compensation that makes the trip well worthwhile -- a feature big enough to be visible in this satellite photo. See that long thin gray thing sticking south from town? That's one of the largest BNSF yards in the USA.

So last Labour Day weekend, having delivered offspring, assorted furniture, books and what-have-you to an apartment on a pleasant tree-lined street, we headed out for some train-watching....

First stop was the Railroad Museum, which displays artefacts and memorabilia from Galesburg's long history as a railroad town. On our last visit (see article in June 2005 Interchange), the collection was still housed in an old Pullman. However, they've now moved into a new depot-style building, with much more space to display the artefacts. For example, there's Nic "driving" the control stand out of a GP38.

Where to railfan?

It's only a small exaggeration to say that there are few places in Galesburg that aren't train-watching spots. The Museum, for example, is located next to the north end of the yard, where you can see arriving and departing Amtrak and freight -- some with fascinating open loads like this one:

However, possibly the best spot is the Thirwell Road bridge (see background of topmost photo), which spans the yard near its midpoint. What's more, though the road is only two lanes wide, the bridge was built with four lanes, so it's easy to just park in the curb lane and take pictures undisturbed by passing traffic. From up here there is an excellent view of the locomotive fuelling facility to the north of the bridge (and look at the variety of road-names on that line-up in the foreground -- how many of them are no longer in business?)

But the real action was taking place to the south of the bridge, in what (if I understand the layout correctly) is the eastbound classification yard. Here, 5205 is leaving eastbound with a long train. One thing I enjoy about BNSF trains is that they always use multiple engines -- no two of which are in the same paint scheme!

Meanwhile, way back in the top centre of the picture, two yard employees seem to be discussing the next job. Once 5205 gets out of the way the yellow/blue and green/white locos back there start to move.

But take a close look at the photo below left: do you see anyone in the cab of 6397? Who's driving that train?! You can't quite make it out at this resolution, but the red sign above the number boards reads: REMOTE CONTROL EQUIPPED. The operator is actually standing on the ground, just to the right of the last car. Of course, they warn you about this at the yard entrances with big yellow signs (below right). There's an irony here: while we model railroaders are trying to capture that "in the cab" experience, the real railroads are moving their operators out of the cab, and handing them little boxes to drive their engines with!

Here's another shot of both switchers in operation. 6397's driver is now standing next to the loco, and you can see the driver of 6215 (yellow/blue Santa Fe paint) hanging off the right side of the last hopper, as he makes a backing move through the ladder.

After enjoying the view from the bridge for a while (and shooting far more photos than I'm going to download -- DSLRs are a wonderful invention, and make it easy to get carried away and shoot ten pictures of everything in sight!) we drove down a gravel access road on the east side of the yard, until we came to a vehicle entrance. From here (without even going on the property), we could witness an interesting aspect of yard operation: a working hump! Here's a sequence showing a car going over the hill:

Railfanning Galesburg yard was a most enjoyable way to spend a few hours, even in a prairie heat wave. We look forward to getting back down there again this year!

2006-05-07T15:16:00.001-04:00

Freight Train Leapfrog

It was a sunny, hazy and hot day last September. We were cruising east on highway 17 from Sault Ste. Marie, having returned thence the day before from a wonderful trip (which I must blog about some other time) to Hearst and back on the Algoma Central Railway, when we came up on this:
No, not the bearded hippy driving the car -- I mean that orange thing way out the window! That's a Huron Central freight train on the Webbwood sub, drawn by a trio of GP40-2's.

We were moving faster, so a few klicks later we turned left onto a dirt sideroad, about a kilometer down which we came to the track crossing. We didn't have long to wait for the train to reach our position, and grabbed a few shots as it went through:

As it happens, two of these engines are the same ones we caught in Sudbury yard a year before, a photo of which graced the OVAR front page for a while.

Returning to the highway, we soon overtake the train again:

Presently, we come to the town of Massey, where the tracks run just behind the main street buildings. Finding a suitable-looking parking lot, we stop and lie in wait.

And wait.

And wait. In the sun.

Looks like we got farther ahead than we thought.

Did I mention how hot it was that day?

Finally, the 300mm lens picks an approaching headlight out of the heat haze.

And the three big engines roar through town, adding their own increment (as you can see) to the dog-day atmosphere:

As spontaneous, stop-along-the-road-because-you-see-something (and what the heck, you're on vacation after all) happenings go, this was a pretty good one ;-).

2006-04-05T21:12:00.000-04:00

Of Endings, and Beginnings....

This, the first "official" post on this weblog, is in memory of my father, Wilfred Watson, who passed away three years ago this week.

Dad worked for 33 years as a research engineer at Ontario Hydro. Although based in Toronto, his work often took him to hydro-electric generating stations along the Abitibi and Mattagami rivers of Northern Ontario. An enthusiastic photographer with a love of the outdoors, he would always return from these trips with a couple of rolls of exposed film, and stories about flying into some remote location by bush-plane, or flagging down the Ontario Northland mixed train to take his work party (and a box-car loaded with equipment) to the next dam up the line. While not a "rail-fan" as such, he did keep his camera handy, and would usually shoot a few pictures if a train came by. This picture (scanned from one of the 9000 slides he left behind) was taken in February 1969, probably at Cochrane. Those are FP7's in the green/gold ONR colour scheme.

My father came from a working class family in the industrial town of Bradford, Yorkshire. Young Wilfred got his start in electrical engineering as a boy in the 1920's, watching his father assemble radios from what seemed to him a random collection of coils and glass "valves" (Grand-Dad Watson worked as a warehouse foreman -- electronics was a hobby). Dad graduated with his B.Sc. from Bradford Technical Institute in 1939, the first of his family to obtain higher education. It was also about then that he met a young beauty named Winifred Baldwin, whom he married in 1943.

His war years were spent in the British Army REME, repairing anti-aircraft artillery on the English south coast.

Given Wilfred's early exposure to electronic tinkering, it's probably natural that when the BBC announced the start of television broadcasts (1950), he would build his own TV set from bits and pieces -- on my mother's tea trolley! Of course, the "tinkering" gene probably helps explain why I also wound up in engineering -- and why I like model trains. (We did actually have an HO layout for some years, though I haven't found the pictures of it yet in my slow progress through the slide archives.)

My father's love of learning never stopped. In his late 40's, he went back to school in the evenings to study philosophy. Taking one course per semester while pursuing a demanding career at Hydro, it took him about 10 years, but he finally graduated from York University at age 57 with his B.A. I remember this time -- roughly spanning my teens -- as a period when he would explain either transistor theory or the ideas of Rene Descartes, with equal enthusiasm, to his inquisitive son. (Yes, that gene seems to have been passed on, too).

Dad once remarked to me that he considered himself the luckiest of men: that he had always managed to make his way, to earn a good living, simply by doing the things he enjoyed and was good at. The legacy of my father's life is this: Never stop learning. Never stop thinking. Never stop doing what you love.

In memoriam:
Wilfred Watson
31 March, 1920 - 6 April, 2003