My Railroad Photographs - # - bendenna's Photos

Trains, trains, trains...........anything trains

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Anyone who knows me is very aware of my love of trains. I've chased them my whole life and can vividly remember sitting atop my dad's shoulders watching steam locomotives in Toronto when I was very, very young. A strong influence, my dad spent a goodly amount of his time going along for the chase, or driving the car himself as we raced ahead to get the best shot possible of our target. I'm still not the best photographer, but the zeal is certainly there, and I'm going to share it with you though the photographs I consider successful.
The EMD SD38-2 is quickly fading into oblivion as larger and more efficient motive power takes to the rails. Here, a couple of old warhorses, 1653 (ex Northern Alberta Railway 5703), and 1650 (ex Northern Alberta Railway 5700), sit idling away in Lloydminster, Alberta, on the afternoon of September 19, 2012. The sun is beginning to set and the shadows are lengthening, just as time is on these two gals.

EMD SD75I 5690 and GE C44-9W 2610 head west beside Highway 16 after some local mainline switching by Maidstone, Saskatchewan on the afternoon of September 20, 2012. I stopped at the side of the highway to ask the engineer if he was headed down the line soon, to which he gave an affirmative nod. I raced up the highway to a grade crossing and waited on the sunny side of the tracks, watching with delight as he got under way, belching thick, black EMD soot. I'm sure the engineer was kind enough to let me get set up before he pushed the throttle forward.

There's a spot on the southside of Edmonton where I like to stop in on every once in awhile and sit and listen to the locomotives idle away before the days duties start. Many is the time when I'm sitting with my eyes closed, listening to check valves popping and turbines whining, that I feel I could never put the truck in drive and leave it all behind. Such was the case on this quiet morning of Sunday September 23, 2012. EMD SD40-2 5961 and 6009 quietly rumbled away while I sat beside them and savored my cup of steeped tea with two cream from Tim Horton's. I took more shots than this for the details, but chose this photograph to post into my album. Canadian National is my railway of choice, and I always feel a traitor when I take photographs of Canadian Pacific livery, but the sound of an SD40-2 is the same under any color paint, and it is permanently etched into my sound bank for all my days to come.

EMD SD60F 5536 and EMD SD60F 5510 bask in the warm sun on September 28, 2012 near Marshall, Saskatchewan waiting for grain cars to be filled and readied for departure. There's quite a set of grain elevators here, and everytime I've ever passed this location and empties have been dropped off, it's these two locomotives that get parked alongside them to wait until loading is complete and they can be hauled away. Such was the case this day, when opportunity offered up it's reward and I was able to stop and take this portrait.

It was a memorable day for me here because on this morning, I had to leave work and get admitted into hospital because of systemic poisoning due to a nail in my toe. I nearly lost the toe, but the health complications were severe and left me changed for life. The infection killed the Franic Nerve on half my diaphragm, leaving it paralyzed and pushed against my left lung hard enough to cause the lower half of that lung to collapse permanently.
It was October 09 2012 and I chased this train, made up from ES44DC 2229 and ES44DC 2292, through a couple locations on my way back into Lloydminster, hoping to get a good shot. Unfortunately, the sun was positioned inconveniently so that both sides of the train were in shadows. I chose the best photograph of the bunch to post here in my album, with the train gracefully rounding a curve in this location, a tiny little bit east of Lashburn, Saskatchewan.
I ended up in hospital for eight weeks and as of this narration here, December 23, 2012, I'm still visiting the hospital every seven days for dressings and inspections of the foot. My disability will be on the go for months yet.

EMD SD70M-2 8964 and EMD SD70M-2 8915 come coasting into Jasper, Alberta in preparation for a crew change on the early evening of July 26 2012. They stayed all of about ten minutes and were soon charging westward out of town into deeper territory that I unfortunately didn't have time to follow into.
There was a time when this train would probably be four or five EMD SD40-2's with mid-train helpers, but not anymore. These are monster locomotives and it is with confident ease that they get rolling again and go thundering off into the distance.

BCOL 4641, the only BC Rail C44-9WL repainted in CN colours, sits quietly on the shop track in Jasper due to relay problems on the evening of July 26, 2012, awaiting a lift back to the shops in Edmonton. It took me awhile to find out the identity of this girl, but there's an excellent website called Railpictures.Net that has tens of thousands of photographs of trains, so I chanced it and even found out why she sat here quietly sleeping away under the blue Alberta sky.

It was mid-afternoon on July 27 2012 when we took our last photograph of ES44DC 2299 and GE C44-9W 2727 ambling their way past an unknown position about 45 minutes west of the British Columbia/Alberta border. I had chased this train since Hinton, Alberta and this was most rewarding photograph of all. The boys in the cab gave one last cheerful wave to my family as we sat sat there in our truck waiting patiently for their train to pass. As soon as it did, we were making our way back up to the highway in search of another target. There were plenty, but the locations weren't very good so we skipped back to our hotel in Hinton to eat supper and rest for the night. The next day, we were on our way to Grande Prairie to see our cousins Lucien and his beloved wife, Femy. Sadly, Lucien died two weeks later out of the blue, and our next trip back to Grande Prairie was to say one last goodbye to him.

Ah the forty foot boxcar may well be a thing of the past in most instances when it comes to railroad traffic, but it still soldiers on as offices, storage containers and anything else the railroads can put them to work at off the rails. This location was about 60 kilometers west of Jasper and was as tranquil and peaceful as could be. The sun was warm and I took some time to turn the truck off and listen instead to birds singing and wind whispering through the trees.
Take note of the smokestack on the roof of this old girl, as well as a window, which is boarded up, at this end. For you model railroaders out there, I might also point out the two propane tanks at the left of this photograph, which no doubt, supply the source of that smokestack.

Anyone who knows me is very aware of my love of trains. I've chased them my whole life and can vividly remember sitting atop my dad's shoulders watching steam locomotives in Toronto when I was very, very young. A strong influence, my dad spent a goodly amount of his time going along for the chase, or driving the car himself as we raced ahead to get the best shot possible of our target. I'm still not the best photographer, but the zeal is certainly there, and I'm going to share it with you though the photographs I consider successful.
The EMD SD38-2 is quickly fading into oblivion as larger and more efficient motive power takes to the rails. Here, a couple of old warhorses, 1653 (ex Northern Alberta Railway 5703), and 1650 (ex Northern Alberta Railway 5700), sit idling away in Lloydminster, Alberta, on the afternoon of September 19, 2012. The sun is beginning to set and the shadows are lengthening, just as time is on these two gals.