Canadian Railroads > Miserable Mondays - Grain Train and Robot in Calgary

A few weeks back I posted up an inbound RDC for Miserable Monday, at https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?15,4715277. This is the same day and location, January 5, 1980, at the west end of CP's downtown Industrial Yard in Calgary; the Palliser Hotel is just behind me. My memory is sketchy, but this train must have been stopped, because there's no way I took the first shot and ran across for the second. I like the old freight shed as much as anything in these photos, plus the rail hoist and flat cars on the right of the first photo. This pair of cars, 403924 and 403932, carried rail hoist 7053 on the first of the two (at least, I'm assuming it's these two cars, shot in sunlight September 9 that year. No scan yet; maybe some day). From here, the train went to the yard on the west end of town to pick up a large cut of Government grain hoppers. This accounts for the SD quartet, led by 5838, then robot car (I never recorded the number, but it's a converted box car in the 1017-1031 series) plus two mid-train SDs to be; at this moment, there are only about 25 grain cars. Remember when we cursed the ubiquitous SD? I'd love to see this again. As for that yard west of town, for the life of me, in five years in Calgary, I was never sure if it was Keith or Bowness, but it's the one just west of the bridges over the Bow River, and west of Nose Hill Drive or whatever it is now (part of Stony Trail?). Anyway, enjoy the cold.
Fred



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/19 19:50 by feclark.

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Keith.

Great shots.

Michael

It is indeed Keith. And it is still used for marshalling grain cars but not like it used to be. Back in the day, local switchers would collect loaded grain cars from elevators in the Calgary area or up the Red Deer sub and take them to Keith to be built into the unit trains. Now most of the smaller grain elevators are gone and the unit trains are built right at one terminal like the one north of Crossfiled (Viterra??) or the one on the Brooks sub at Dalemead.

This grain empty has a collection of power that will be used to make locomotive consists for future westbound "robot" grain trains to operate west of Calgary. Some of the units will have come all the way from Vancouver, others have come from Chase BC where loaded trains typically set off a unit from the head end consist.