Nice back story! There's another reason I love this hobby - the history behind trains and railroads can be even more interesting than the trains themselves. Not just dates and places, but people, decisions made, why they were made, the influence of railroads on a country's history, and so on. And, of course, playing with trains.
Thanks, guys! I'm working on an article for Railfan & Railroad Magazine on the history of Minot and its railroads. This was a snippet of that research.
I've seen pics of the original bridge in my Great Northern book, rickety as all get out! Glad they built the new one!!
Back to the Northgate Branch, the Crosby Sub at MP 15.6 has yet another wooden trestle. Waiting in the icy wind to get rime ice shots, is this bozo in the middle of nowhere. The crews must really get a chuckle out of me...
I can only imagine what the crews must be thinking when they see us trackside, 100+ heat, driving rain showers, and below freezing temps!! They chuckle for sure! "Look at this knucklehead, taking pics of a train in poring rain, lol!!"
Well below freezing! The Crosby Sub being known for wooden trestles makes it a big draw for me chasing the Northgate Locals, and here's one I have yet to catch a train on (and haven't yet put forth the effort to do so yet). This overpass crosses a dirt road and a creek.
The Northgate Local on the Crosby and Niobe Subs would make a great model railroad for someone who doesn't do much ops and just wants to see trains run thru the scenery.
A hefty lashup leads an eastbound unit grain train from Ceres Ag on the Saskatchewan side of Northgate, seen here at Aurelia, ND. Somehow these large motors look out of place, but I can't quite put my finger on it....
Call me crazy, but the Northgate Branch has become a huge draw for me. Unit grain trains on spindly wood trestles, dilapidated elevators, second-gen EMD power, diminutive trains, it has it all. Here's the elevator at Hartland, ND with some crazy clouds:
And with a train, another unit train out of Ceres Ag in SK. I liked the b/w rendering, so I included it too.
I really like that one, with the sun just barely getting through the clouds, and the cold, somber atmosphere. Then it warms up with a train going through...
I have been doing a bunch of work on the branch recently, here's some more. A super-rare (not in recent memory has a CN unit been on the branch) leader on the Northgate Branch at Aurelia:
One can just make out the class GF-640a, which is an SD70I. CN was the only customer for the SD70I. Nice machine.
GF-640a: F=freight, 6 axles, 40 is probably referring to horsepower (4000). G? If it's not GM (GMD?), I got nothing.
In CN's classification system, G is EMD/GMD, E is GE, M is MLW, C is CLC. F is road freight, R is road switcher, S is switcher, etc. For the 6 axles and 4000 horsepower, you nailed it. The first number is the number of axles, and the two next ones the horsepower rating in 100's of hp. The lower case letter at the end is to differentiate between different locomotive orders of the same axle and hp configuration. Before this format, CN used a two digit number only for the hp rating, example: MR18d for the 4th order of 1800 hp road switchers, in this case, the RS-18.
