Murray Brown sweeps awards at WMRC banquet

Murray Brown is one of our newest members. Although he joined the club just last year, he has become one of our most enthusiastic members. For the club’s special event model contest, he placed second for his accurate and well researched diorama of a level crossing at Meadows, Manitoba. He won third place in the annual photo contest for his photo of the CN Symington yards repair shop.

He won the Robert Weaver memorial award for an article he wrote that was published in The Lantern, the official publication of the WMRC. Murray also found the time to rewrite a draft of the club’s constitution. We need more members like Murray Brown!

 

 

Murray travelled to Meadows, Manitoba to take on-site photos and measurement of the level crossing at mile 22.4 on the CPKC Carberry subdivision to help him create this accurate diorama.

 

 

Murray's striking, almost monochromatic image of these wheel sets at the CN Symington yard won third place in the WMRC's annual photo contest.
 

 

Exclusive photos taken by Felix Lesiuk of new CP MOW units

The WMRC's intrepid and prolific photographer Felix Lesiuk is outstanding in his field! As a matter of fact, that's where he was when he took these images. He was out standing in his field! All kidding aside, he caught these very cool shots of rarely seen CP MOW equipment in a very snazzy paint scheme outside of Meadows, Manitoba last month.

Grain elevator at Meadows, Manitoba being taken down

Our intrepid roving reporter Felix Lesiuk captured these images of the grain elevator at Meadows, Manitoba being taken down. Meadows is on provincial highway 221, in between Marquette and Rosser. Marquette lost its grain elevator four years ago.

It's sad to see another one of these prairie giants leave the landscape. Now that two of these once familiar buildings on the same road will be gone, the road to Marquette is going to be a lot more bleaker.

Winter rail fanning with Felix Lesiuk

The prairie winter landscape is beautifully caught by Felix lesion's lens as Via Rail's Canadian barrels down the countryside.

At least once a month, long time member Felix Lesiuk sends us somewhere between 5,000 and 10,00 photos of his rail fanning adventures. He's usually accompanied on these journeys by Louis Lenz, another long time WMRC member. We have been using them as filler when there's nothing else to post, but they've proven to be extremely popular. Two of these posts have made the all time top ten most popular posts on the WMRC blog! So we're gonna give the customers what they want and post this most recent entry, which he took near Meadows, Manitoba.

By Felix Lesiuk

I got up real early last Thursday, as one of my military friends used to say, at OH dark hundred. It was worth my trip out to Meadows to catch the sunrise by the old elevator. The sun came up on cue pretty much at the end of the tracks. The only drawback was the temperature, minus 25 degrees! After bundling myself back into my truck, I went out to pick up Lou. Even though I was around CP for about 2 hours, here were no trains. 

We went out along Wilkes Ave and caught a CN train almost immediately. Then we decided to go back to CP as the snow banks along Wilkes block the view of the tracks. We followed CP out to Portage, but there were still no trains. We travelled west out on Hwy 1 and saw two CN trains. We saw a CP train sitting parked by Austin. We waited for a while but it just sat there so we headed west. After piking up our Subway lunch at Austin we headed out west to Moffat.  

I stuck to the main roads as there was a lot of drifts on the roads from the previous night. At Moffat we caught a parade of trains some using a distributed air car and two with distributed air containers. The real catch of the day was a freshly painted BCOL cowl unit into the current CN paint scheme. I am really glad they are going to keep some. We did see two other BC units that perhaps soon will be run through the paint booth.  

The day started off nice and bright and sunny, but as the day wore on it became overcast.  VIA showed up on time but after the sun went away. At around 4:00 we had to start heading back home.  We did see the CP train still sitting by Austin. It now had two units tied on to it now. The new Eco unit was smoking heavily. We waited a bit but it was not going anywhere so we headed home.  We caught a CN train in Portage, but the light now is fading fast. All in all, a great day to be outside, even though we had to keep the truck running often to keep us cozy.