Canadian Adventure: CN at Jasper 1999...

In 1999 I visited Canada for the second time, and armed with a slide film loaded SLR and some good beginner camera equipment I enjoyed documenting the trip. The majority of the 5 films used in the 3 week period are landscape and building photographs but whenever we saw a train I asked us to pull over and see what we could capture...

These photos were taken in and around Jasper on the 31st July 1999. We'd drive down to town after dinner for the 2 nights we were there, and I'd have a nose about the station. This was the Canadian National mainline, and although my Dad was a CP man, I had a real soft spot for the CN, in fact in 1989 when I was bought my first H0 scale model I chose a Bachmann CN liveried F7. 

Whereas CP had gone straight from a EMD SD40-2 dominated roster to the GE AC Dash 9s, CN had a more varied pool of power. Out here in the Rockies we saw both old and new... above left to right are a pair of wide bodies Dash 8s (I think!), a brand new Dash 9 and an older non-dynamic braked SD40-2.

The wide bodied Dash 8s (or C40-8Ms) were fairly common in Jasper in those few days and I saw them more than any other type. We were lucky enough to catch Via trains a few times too, as Jasper was a key interchange for the two passenger trains in the area at the time.

The stalwart of these services were the F40s, although I wasn't a great fan of this revised livery, remembering fondly the neater narrow blue stripe and no flag original livery. They certainly looked great at the head of the Canadian and the Prince Rupert to Jasper services.

As we headed north we left railroad country for a time, crossing north-west towards Prince George, and then altogether as we pushed north up the Cassiar, but more on that in another post. Again as last week these photos are taken from slides using an iPad as back light and my iPhone as camera, hence are not great quality but despite that I hope you enjoyed this nostalgic read, and can see how Canadian railways became part of my life and a shared experience with my Dad in a way that British railways never had been. Have a good weekend, more soon...