The WMRC photo contest special event for 2025 will be the Empress

WMRC photo contest chair Larry Leavens has announced that the special photo event for the 2025 spring open house will be “The Empress”, CPKC’s steam locomotive 2816.  It will be in Winnipeg on display on July 6 from 12PM to 4PM at 949 Jarvis Ave. The train will arrive at 9:00AM on July 6. On July 4 it is moving from Thief River Falls, Minnesota to Winnipeg. On July 7 it will travel from Winnipeg to Brandon. On July 8 it will go from Brandon to Moose Jaw.

CPKC limits the speed of their heritage passenger fleet to 50MPH, but other than the mainline they might not be going that fast. The roadbed on the Emerson sub is not up to the standards for carrying passenger cars, so 40MPH might be a better estimate.

For those wishing to follow the train across the border, the CPKC line closely parallels highway 59 in Minnesota from Thief River Falls to Lancaster. There is no information available as to when it is running on July 4.

The Emerson sub doesn’t parallel any roads after it closes the border into Canada, but there are many level crossings available for photo shoots on highways 201, 205, 23, 305, 311 in Niverville and 210.

There are many photo opportunities after it leaves Winnipeg, especially along highway 221 to Marquette, along highway 26 by Poplar Point and High Bluff, in Portage La Prairie and Town along the Trans Canada such as MacGregor, Austin and Carberry.
   
CPKC strongly cautions that everyone should keep clear of railway property and the right of way, which extends 15 metres (50 feet) from the centre of the tracks on either side. It is unsafe and illegal to be on railway property. Please keep in mind that if you’re rail fanning in places other than level crossings you might be trespassing on private property belonging to others.
 

Winter rail fanning with Felix Lesiuk

By Felix Lesiuk

Louis Lenz and I headed west for the first time in 2018. Finally got a break from the deep freeze. The forecast for the weather was calling for a mild day with partly sunny skies.

It was a mild day but it was mostly cloudy. After I picked up Lou, we headed out along Wilkes Avenue heading out of town. We caught a bunch of CN trains including two parked east bounds waiting to head into Winnipeg.  It was looking promising!  We headed north and followed CP out to Portage la Prairie but only saw some maintenance crews around.

Just past Austin, we headed out to follow CN. The farther west we went the more we realized CN was having issues. Other one moving westbound everything was parked in sidings and on the mainline. CN was a giant parking lot! We got as far as Moffat and saw a parked oil train there.

We decided not to sit around and stare at empty track and headed south to try our luck with CP, but we saw nothing there as well.  Headed to Portage la Prairie, nothing in town. Closer to Winnipeg around Elie, CN finally started to unplug the drain. We saw a few in the fading daylight. Too bad it wasn't summer, with a longer day we would have sat at Elie and probably caught a ton of backed up trains.