Saturday 23 May 2015

Day 9 - Banff to Calgary

Today we drove from Banff to Calgary via Canmore and Exshaw.

First things first, we went back to the station to see what we could see - lights off, nobody home - no trains and no radio chatter. Great.
So we took a little scenic divergance up to the Sulphur Mountain Gondola car park which gave us a bit of a view of the surrounding mountains.




Back to the station, lights are still off, however a burst of life from the scanner - a west bound calling the signal at Canmore. Finally. Some guy was doing some cherry picker training in the carpark and I got fed up with the noise so we relocated to Canmore. With 20/20 hindsight, I would have stayed here instead of Banff. No tourists and a cool little town. Once again, no trains, no radio chatter. Lunch and then the scanner erupted with a flurry of activity from Exshaw - excellent.
We took highway 1A to Exshaw where there are multiple industries that use rail. We found a neat little trio of refurbished GP20s that were switching the yard. Lots of good shots with scenery to boot.

A frame grab from my video camera - taken at Exshaw


The switching crew then stopped for lunch and we continued to Calgary, leaving the Rockies in our wake.

A minor glitch with check-in - the hotel would not accept my Westpac VISA Debit plus card as an incidentals payment method. I ripped into the guy at the desk (Indian) and he was going to pass on my choice words to his boss. I'll have a word to the bank about this wee problem as well. The hotel would not accept anything that had Debit on it.

On the road again and I took the guys for a tiki tour around the outskirts of Alyth Yard. We stumbled across a small industrial area that was right beside the main junction where the tracks from Lethbridge and Edmonton meet with the main line to Vancouver. Lots of photos, lots of footage and 2 new railfan friends made.

Alyth Yard, Calgary.



Dinner and back at the hotel at 9:45 pm - very late.

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