Two Days at Portage, 1986

From May 21 to June 7, 1986 I travelled aboard VIA Rail from Kingston to Vancouver return. My trip west is profiled in this post. My destination was Expo86, the World Exposition in Vancouver, and its SteamExpo. I spent six days in Vancouver before heading east aboard VIA No 4 to Portage la Prairie, MB where I spent four days with my Aunt Rosemary and Uncle Wilf. In this post, I'll profile my prolific Portage passages preserved for posterity on June 3 and 4, with June 5's trains in part two of this two-post series (LINK to follow). 

I'm missing some of my original notes for these first two days of Portage train watching, June 3 and 4, so bear with me. I had major life changes on my mind during this trip, about to start a full-time job, propose marriage to the medical stenographer who worked across the hall, and marry her a year later! My usual fastidious note-taking fell by the wayside!

Aunt Rosemary met me at the station on June 3 at 0910, and we met Wilf at the office before heading to their house to drop off my duffle bag (and poster tube of VIA posters from their station display at Expo86). Then it was off to our usual lunch rendezvous, the Co-Op Restaurant adjacent to CP's Carberry Sub for lunch. In the evening, after a turkey supper, we drove around to see Tucker, Oakland, Burnside and MacGregor elevators. I also caught seven CN and CP freights around Portage in the afternoon. I found this interesting westbound crossing 3rd St N.E. CN 5519-4243-4xxx-4xxx are in charge, with a cut of military equipment, likely heading for CFB Shilo, behind the power:

M109 self-propelled and M101 towed artillery

M113 armoured personnel carriers 

M548 tracked cargo (ammunition) carriers and an M578 recovery vehicle (below)

CN 5082 and a mate bring potash empties down the yard lead heading west:

This eastbound grain train is pulled by CP 6041-5965. Fewer elevators still standing in Portage meant less road and rail activity, but improved sightlines! Just managed a photo of this GRAD '85 GLADSTONE graffiti:

An interesting-looking two-unit manifest churns westward behind CP 3082-5012:

A going-away zoom shot of CP 3082-5012. With scads of SD40-2’s, CP still had a little bit of locomotive latitude left! 

At East Tower, CN 9546 brings this manifest west under a sunlit sky. A John Deere pull-type combine is near the head-end, likely for setout at a still-to-be-reached town. 

Lumber empties are led west by CN 9627-5135. The switch in foreground leads to the spur along Fisher Avenue. On the spur, the large number of covered hoppers could not possibly be accommodated by the UGG elevator. Perhaps an over-supply of stored cars, or spotted for producer-loading. 

On June 4, I was back at the station from 1015-1200 before we headed into Winnipeg to visit CN's Symington Yard followed by a supper at Don Cherry's Grapes restaurant. Plowing west past the CP station, 6000-5559 have a boxy stowaway behind the power! 

Robot 32, a.k.a. CPHX 1032 was built in 1977 and owned by Ontario Hydro. Typically used in the mountains, not the Prairies, this unit was originally CP boxcar 204200 and contains Locotrol equipment used to control mid-train helper units. 

Switching near the CN station, striped 5226-5229 have a Pacific Fruit Express mechanical refrigerator car in tow. 

The chase is on! CN 5009-5017 head for the U.S. border with lumber and other resource products in this pacing shot south of Winnipeg on CN’s Sprague Sub. 

Ahead by a nose! At a crossing near the distinctively boxy Mile 142.4 Manitoba Pool Elevators installation along the Trans-Canada Highway, we got ahead of 5009’s train. 

Ex-CN hogger Mark Perry says this photo was taken at Deacon's Corner - where Manitoba Road 207 intersects the Trans-Canada Highway; out of Symington Yard we'd just visited - beyond the Red River Floodway. I think my uncle was driving pretty fast to get us ahead of the train and on the sunny side! The elevator and elevator track are long-gone, now a self-storage location:

The snail-like synchronicity of posting photos taken trackside 38 years ago continues. Hey, better late than never. In the fullness of time, I plan to finally feature all my Portage photos. It's part of the balance of then and now, passenger and freight, CN and CP, pop-up and for-posterity posts here on Trackside Treasure. Thanks for being along for the ride!

Running extra...

Watching the US Cabinet nomination hearings in front of the Senate has been an exercise in watching UNderwhelmingly UNderqualified candidates in front of UNimpressed Democratic senators and UNinquisitive Republican senators. Is this the UN or the US? The SecDef candidate has never managed more than 200 people and is set to take on a workforce of 3 million. Oorah! (Perhaps indicative of the Unimpressive nature of this process, when I typed Oorah, the spellcheck feature changed it to Oprah!)

I'm tempted to change Trackside Treasure to a current world affairs blog. With new governments in the US and Canada, a potential mid-East peace deal, worldwide political intrigue, and enough conflict and strife to fill several conference rooms at the UN, I tried out an online blog name generator for some blog name ideas. Here's the portmanteaux the AI gave me: WorldLens, GeoPulse, EcoSphere and WorldReflections. I'm going to go my own way and call it The World is Going to Peaces.

Here are two book-end viral moments to encapsulate the now-ending Trudeau-Biden era. 

Oh wait, wrong Trudeau.