Felix Lesiuk's first July rail fanning trip

Long time WMRC member Felix Lesiuk took two rail fanning trips with Louis Lenz riding shotgun. They headed west and made it to Harte and Moffat, two popular rail fanning sites. Harte has an iconic grain elevator which makes for some spectacular shots. Despite light rail traffic due to track maintenance, he managed to take some excellent pictures. After experiencing some heavy rain, he was rewarded with a rainbow that took direct aim at some MOW equipment.

Felix Lesiuk's latest rain fanning adventures

Felix Lesiuk and Louis Lenz headed west on July 19 and August 14. On their first journey, they made it as far as Rivers, Manitoba and on their second trip they went as far as Moffat. There was still a lot of variety of motive power cruising around. A lot of the newer grain cars are starting to become more prevalent as well. As they were brand new, there hasn’t been any tagging on them yet. Felix also went along Hwy 221 and took some images CP’s recently upgraded motive power.

Felix Lesiuk's winter grafitti gallery

Our prolific rail photographer Felix Lesiuk took another rail fanning trip with Louis Lenz on March 7. They headed West on a Thursday to try to catch the VIA Canadian, since both the east and westbounds run on Thursday. But both were many hours late.  They made it as far West as Moffat. Traffic was light on CN, but they saw more CP trains than normal.

But what Felix did catch was an amazing array of graffiti on some of the rolling stock, which is what we’re featuring on this post. Some of the work is very intricate, and quite fascinating. It’s amazing how the graffiti taggers manage to do what must be very time consuming work without getting caught!

Exclusive images of wrecked CN locomotive

Our intrepid rail photographers Felix Lesiuk and Louis Lenz headed West for the first time in a month. Weather for rail fanning had been a bit sketchy lately, as it was either very cold, windy or unsafe to be on the highways and back roads. A decent day presented itself on February 22. Weather really cooperated and turned out to be a nice sunny day. They followed CP to Portage La Prairie but not much was happening along the line, but they did catch the local CP switcher working around Portage.

    While in Portage they saw what they thought was one of the wrecked locomotives from Nattress sitting in the yard on a flatcar. They also saw that CN is busy getting ready for summer and is stockpiling a huge amount of concrete ties.

     They headed west and got as far as Moffat, where they saw some unique patched lease units. CN traffic was fairly light, which might’ve been because their crews were working on the wreck at St. Lazare. They saw two semis with scrap oil tank cars heading towards Winnipeg along the Trans Canada highway. They caught a CN potash train in Portage as the sun set. 

Felix Lesiuk spots twin VIA 40th anniversary units

 
By Felix Lesiuk

Louis Lenz and I headed out on Thursday, August 2. The weather started off with some rain and the rest of the day was spent with the sun darting in and out of the clouds. Not too hot, not too cool and a slight breeze to keep the bugs away. A perfect rail fanning day.  We bumped in to Cliff Davidson, who was also heading west and rail fanning. He informed us that VIA had tweaked its schedule and was running a bit earlier now. That would explain our surprise of seeing VIA's No 1 heading west at Harte around one o'clock. Super early!

That surprise was complimented by the fact that the westbound had a pair of wrapped 40th anniversary units on the lead. Awesome! The chase was now on. Thankfully VIA was following a freight and CN was fairly congested with traffic. We beat it to Moffat and caught it in Rivers coming into town and leaving. Nice! CN traffic was steady and we even caught sight of some elk near Moffat.  The new VIA schedule might make it possible to catch both at Rivers more easily (I hope).
 

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.

Felix Lesiuk and Louis Lenz go winter rail fanning

Long time WMRC member Louis Lenz is seen capturing the image of a CP freight train.

Who says that rail fanning is only a summer pursuit? Not Felix Lesiuk and Louis Lenz! These intrepid long time club members ventured out for the first time in the New Year last week. The weather was quite nice, especially for January, as it was well above zero. 

There was a lot of snow around so it limited parking locations. They got as far west as Moffat. They missed a few trains, but CN didn't disappoint them! CN is running quite a few new units lately. They even caught VIA's Canadian heading west!