Canadian freight train timetable

[mrredrunner100]

Hi all. Currently in Banff, Canada and seen they have some pretty big freight trains and fancy spotting and photographing some in some spots

From my googling, there is no timetable for Canadian pacific frieght, just wondering if anyone knows of anything available for today or tomorrow that my research can’t find

Thanks

 

[furnessvale]

Hi all. Currently in Banff, Canada and seen they have some pretty big freight trains and fancy spotting and photographing some in some spots

From my googling, there is no timetable for Canadian pacific frieght, just wondering if anyone knows of anything available for today or tomorrow that my research can’t find

Thanks

Most freight in the USA and Canada seems to run as specials. There may be a daily intermodal or manifest between two locations but timing can be a bit haphazard.

My best guess would be to meet a passenger train at the station. There is a good chance that there will be a freight in its wake, from either direction, that has been looped, or put in a siding to allow the passenger's run.

 

[ac6000cw]

they have some pretty big freight trains

The Canadians run some of the longest and heaviest trains in North America.

From my googling, there is no timetable for Canadian pacific frieght,

That's pretty much the case everywhere Canada and the US (in terms of publicly available info). But the CP/CPKC mainline is fairly busy (for a line that's a mixture of single and double track) so you'll just have to be patient. They tend to group together ('flight') trains in each direction to maximise the capacity of the single track sections (Banff is in the middle of one of those).

and fancy spotting and photographing some in some spots

I've been to the area twice in the past (2012 and 2017).

If you've got a car, then drive west - some easily accessible spots are Castle Mountain, the classic Morant's Curve (east of Lake Louise, on the Bow Valley Pkwy), on the west side of Lake Louise village, near the summit of Kicking Horse Pass and the crew-change point of Field at the foot of the west side of the pass (there is a nice view of the yard at Field with mountains in the background from the viewpoint next to the Truffle Pig Bistro/Hotel).

Some of the video covering the Banff to Field area from my two trips:

 

[godfreycomplex]

I think the closest you’re likely to get is something called the Canadian Trackside Guide. Sort of a Quail map, Platform 5 guide and Working Timetable all rolled into one. No complete PDFs available, sadly, but it’s published annually by the Bytown Railway Society and they will post it to just about anywhere except the US. Alternatively if there are any model shops etc in Banff (I can’t find any on Google Maps) they might sell it.

 

[Gordon]

Most freight in the USA and Canada seems to run as specials. There may be a daily intermodal or manifest between two locations but timing can be a bit haphazard.

My best guess would be to meet a passenger train at the station. There is a good chance that there will be a freight in its wake, from either direction, that has been looped, or put in a siding to allow the passenger's run.

Waiting to 'meet' a passenger train at the station is a bad idea! It might take you several days as there are no passenger trains to meet at Banff station! The exception is the occasional Rocky Mountaineer, but in any case the minuscule number of passenger trains are subservient to freight, so its the freight that will come first!

You just have to wait somewhere near the line for a freight to turn up. There is no fixed timetable.

But when they do turn up - oh boy! My record sighting last summer was a double stack running to over 163 cars which took around 7 minutes to pass by.

 

[furnessvale]

Waiting to 'meet' a passenger train at the station is a bad idea! It might take you several days as there are no passenger trains to meet at Banff station! The exception is the occasional Rocky Mountaineer, but in any case the minuscule number of passenger trains are subservient to freight, so its the freight that will come first!

You just have to wait somewhere near the line for a freight to turn up. There is no fixed timetable.

But when they do turn up - oh boy! My record sighting last summer was a double stack running to over 163 cars which took around 7 minutes to pass by.

My bad! You are indeed correct. It is some years since I arrived at Banff on a scheduled passenger train and saw a loaded grain train waiting for the meet.

My only saving thought would be that a walk to the station would have revealed the absence of scheduled passenger trains and may just have found a loaded grain train awaiting a meet with another freight!

 

[ac6000cw]

But when they do turn up - oh boy! My record sighting last summer was a double stack running to over 163 cars which took around 7 minutes to pass by.

With how many locos, out of interest? (I'm guessing it was four or five, in a distributed power configuration)

The potash train in one of my videos above took over 8 minutes to pass Lake Louise at around 13mph (climbing a 1% gradient towards Kicking Horse Pass). Someone from the area commented on YouTube a couple of years later that the length of those trains in summer had increased to 200 cars plus an extra loco (so 5 in total, about 22,000hp) - that's around 27,000 tonnes loaded and 2 miles long. Then after they've gone over the summit of the pass they descend a 2.2% gradient through two spiral tunnels down to Field. This is serious mountain railroading...