Friday, March 4, 2011

C46, The Only Train On The Brooks Sub

If you wish to follow along in Google Earth, here is the kmz file for download.

June 25th, 2010

Back in June, the model railroad group I’m with was thinking of making an appearance at an event in Carseland. I figured I would head out there early to do a bit of railfaning there. Unfortunately we were not able to attend the event due to various reasons. Unfortunately I had not read my emails for a bit as I was busy with other things so I unfortunately did not get the memo saying that we were not attending. I was out there…alone…quite literally as matter of fact.

After I found out via a reply to my questioning email to another group member on my Blackberry, I figured I might as well continue railfaning while I was there. Unfortunately I did not have my scanner so I could not get advanced notice of arriving trains. So I sat there in the heat waiting and waiting for the trains that would not come.

I also unfortunately failed to remember that there was no traffic on the Brooks Sub due to washouts and floods near Medicine Hat. So unfortunately there would be no through traffic on the Brooks Sub. At that point I decided to leave.

Unfortunateness is unfortunately unfortunate. Holy Shitballs Batman, say that three times fast!

Instead of following Highway 24 North, I continued West onto Township Road 221. A bit of fortune was with me this time. I could see the local switcher, train C46 which runs out of Alyth, on the West Carseland Spur switching cars for the Orica and Agrium plants which I posted about these two industries previously. The locomotive used this time to do the switching was 8886, an ES44AC.

After a few minutes of switching it headed into the Agrium plant. It was coupled to five covered hoppers with a bulkhead flat car on the tail end.

The first three covered hoppers marked JTSX are apparently owned by David J. Joseph Company (DJJ). They are in the metal, alloys and scrap metal recycling brokering business. Among their various services, they happen to own and manage a private fleet of open gondola railcars and operate a rail equipment leasing group with bulkhead flat cars, covered hoppers, aggregate hoppers, flat bottom gondolas and mill gondolas. Almost forgot to mention that they do railcar scraping and railcar parts reclamation as well.

RAILROADREPORTING MARKTYPE
DJJJTSX 55373Covered Hopper
DJJJTSX 46152Covered Hopper
DJJJTSX 130753Covered Hopper
ACF LeasingACFX 59197Covered Hopper
PLM InternationalPLMX 129090Covered Hopper
CNCN 22341Bulkhead Flat

After they pulled into Agrium they sat there for about 15 minutes, so I decided to resume my travels into Calgary to Alyth to see the new yard that CP built. That is another story.

Goggle Earth kmz file.

Cheers,