With just a couple thousand feet of extra intermodal traffic at the drawbar KCS 4006 idles away in Shepard at the Calgary Intermodal Terminal

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Today for FCF we'll look at a couple of classic logos. This here is on a car spotted in Watkins Glen, NY on the FGLK. There are quite a few still wearing the paint of this dearly departed deep woods Pennsylvania shortline that remain in service to this customer.

Also, hobo tags

Tags:   lefc logo lake erie franklin clarion railroad

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Tags:   7-11-01 ATSF 866 Chicago Corwith Yard Dash-8 GE C40-8W Illinois Roster Warbonnet blue sky

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Melville, Saskatchewan ; 07:45 Central time. For the passengers on VIA Nº1, this is just yet another stop in the middle of the nowhere but for my co-worker and I, it was the end of a long night dodging trains on CN's busy Rivers subdivision. Our train is stopped at the west end of track two in Melville, awaiting to trade off with the Saskatoon crew.

Just a day after being qualified in Winnipeg, I was forced onto job WI04 with locomotive engineer L.S -- L.S has 45 years of service on the railroad across western Canada, he recently transferred to VIA while keeping his CN seniority.

Like anyone else, I have never been a fan of working the graveyard shift. But I swear there is something magical to it -- I have had some of the most amazing conversations sitting in the cab of an engine during the darkest hours of the night, and that night was no exception. We started chatting and bitchin' about the railroad as soon as we could let Nº1 stretch its legs at high speed, out of the Winnipeg perimeter. You know, as railroaders do best.

The stories about the good old days eventually started to flow. L.S. Told me about that time he was working out of Calder yard in Edmonton on a February night in 1986, building train 413. As he finished doubling the train, the next move was to put a Jordan spreader on the head end. L.S wanted to wye it and put it backwards to fuck around with the outbound crew so that they'd be stuck at 25 per. That did not fly with the yardmaster and the spreader was added facing the right direction, so it could travel at track speed. Train 413 departed Calder yard at 0155 on Feb 8th 1986, heading west to Jasper, AB. Only to collide head on with VIA Nº4, the eastbound Super Continental at 0840 in Hinton, AB. Causing one of the greatest railroad tragedies this country has ever known.

This story doesn’t have a happy ending per se. But hearing it from the mouth of a 45-year veteran, running the mighty Canadian through the Prairies at 80 miles per hour at 4:30 in the morning? Yeah, there was something magical about it.

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C-GCNR, a Bombardier CL-600-2B16 Challenger 604, on approach to runway 24L at Toronto Pearson International Airport in Mississauga, Ontario.

CNR = Canadian National Railway Company of Montreal, Quebec.

Tags:   C-GCNR Canadian National Railway Company CNR CN Bombardier CL-600-2B16 Challenger 604 CYYZ YYZ Toronto Pearson International Airport Mississauga Ontario

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