i seen a very wierd train today (friday) it was here in south calgary heading north (to city center) on the cp rail mainline. the engine looked kinda like this (quilk sketch i made to show the wierd shape)
it was dark blue. it had 2 or 3 passenger cars that were blue with a yellow stripe (almost like via, but without saying via on them. after the passsenger cars there were these black cars, seemed to have to do something with maintance, look like generators almost, there was alot of these and i ahve never seen anything like them. i have seen a simular train many years ago on the same track. does anyone know anything about it?
looks like one of those Amtrak things…“103’s”??? i think
did it look like this? http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=61810
t3488g, I’ll admitt I haven’t any idea of what you saw, but will take a wild guess that it may be new equipment enroute to Alaska for the Alaska Railway. I make this guess because of the dark blue with a yellow strip. The road name may have been left off as an agreement for trackage rights to transport it there. [%-)][%-)][%-)]
Possibly a rail grinder train! Or another possibility would be a train that carrys the equipment to a new power plant.
The Alaska Railroads new equipment is all routed through Seattle from Denver so I doubt that it would be ARR equipment.
I know the Alaski just bought some SD70MAC’s so I guess thats what you saw.
Passengerfan, your reply makes a lot of sense, especialy the power plant part. I had the good fortune to see rail grinders in action a few weeks ago on the CSX line and those don’t look like anything that t3488g discribed. Thanks for the info on the Alaska Rwy routeing. Regards, Ken
A little hard to tell what you are getting at with that scetch [;)]
My guess is going to be that it had something to do with track inspection/railgrinding.
Though I do believe if it had been a railgrinder there would have been a caboose on the train, no?
Was the last car looking like a passenger coach with a window pointing out the back looking at the tracks?
OK now that I think about it the is a rail grinding company called Pandrol-Jackson that has stuff painted like the thing you saw.
i checked mr october 1999, there si a pic of one and some info. that looks alot likt the one i saw, but there was only one engine on this one, the article says that they had a few cars for grinding, passenger cars for the crew, and generator cars. all makes sence. i’m pretty sure it wasn’t grinding, or i would have seen the sparks, but it was movien slow, maybe cause the lrt constuction in the area. thanks everyone for enlightening me on what it could be.
does anyone know if any companies make one of these in HO? i think it would be kinda neat to convert one to a track cleaner.
here it is:
Wow, one of these as a track cleaner. I really like that idea actually! However, I don’t know of anyone who makes these. They are, however, getting much better with MoW equipment and their may be one in the near future, or even already! I really enjoy MoW, but many of it requires scratchbuilding…
I had the good fortune of catching a loram railgrinder a few months ago, and they really are interesting.
I heard about those in Continental Modeller a while ago - they’re based on a heavily hacked F40 apparently, looks as though most of the modifications were made forward of the cab side doors as these seem to be in their original positions, though the cab has moved forward. The body profile aft of this is pure F40 from what I can see.
no i want want one really bad [:(] i could put the track cleaning part where the grinder comes down, and the shields to prevent sparks form going far will make the cleaner hard to see. until someone releases one i guss i will have to stick with my peco track cleaner and my round house box cab diesel that goes for 3 ft and stops, the pads don’t touch the track either.
maybe we should send our request to a model company, probaly Athearn (bb, not rtr), every thing else of that quality is too expensive for me.
In response to v w train, the CPR mainline runs east to west, not north and south and I saw it too, quite a sight when it’s grinding. Others replied it might be going to Alaska, now don’t trains need tracks? how would it get from Canada to Alaska? is there something we don’t know? and what is AMTRAK??
from calgary, the cpr tracks go north to edmonton, west to the mountsins, east to saskatchewan, and south to… not sure but they do go south. my school is right next to the main line so i see alot of trains, mostly cpr and cefx (spelling?) leasers, but there are some union pacific,and other american trains too. it can be seen here:
http://www.trains.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/000/342opuif.asp
my school is right next to the south main line so i see alot of trains, mostly cpr and cefx (spelling?) leasers, but there are some union pacific,and other american trains too.
it is possible to go from the us to alaska by the bc rail (now cn) lines
VWT. CPR MAIN-LINE MAIN LINE because a train runs by your school does not make it a MAIN line. The line south from Calgary is a BRANCH line. The CNR runs to PRINCE RUPERT B.C. which is a long way from Alaska. Check C N R website which is excellent.
theres no need to get angry. what would you clasify as a “main line”? imo it would be a track used by alot of trains. 3-7 pass by on this track a day, so i think it would be one.
The CNR took over BC rail which ran from vancouver to fort nelson http://www.bcrail.com/Maps/bc_rail_route_map__b__w.htm
i found out that it is not possible to go from the us to alaska by another site, but the parts could be transported form to fort nelson by train then to alaska by truck.
Maint Of Way types look very unusual, if this was a passenger type tourist train could it have been from Rocky Mountaineer Rail Tours ???
Rail grinder trains have an engine which grinds the rails, cars that also grind(this one did not) gererators to poawer the grinders, and passenger cars converted to crew quarters.