Placer Rail Photography
Long Gone
On the afternoon of a rather chilly January day, a empty British Columbia bound Cargill with a very rare consist of CN C40-8W 2170 (ex-BNSF 817/ex-ATSF 817) & CN C40-8M 2402 heads northbound on the UPRR Valley Subdivision in Rocklin, CA.
We are going back in time to the year 2021...one of the best railfanning years I have experienced, yet I figured out how to use a DSLR correctly. One of these days was on January 21st, 2021. I was in online school when I would receive a text that 2 CN Dash 8s were leading a northbound empty cargill to British Columbia via the Union Pacific Fresno and Valley Subdivisions. The Dash 8s would arrive 6 days earlier with other units on a loaded cargill before being separated from the rest of the units for today's run. Hearing about this consist was a must see for myself and several others as this would be the final time a consist like this would happen in Northern California. I would race to Roseville immediately after class only to see the train tied down by the yard office with the units getting ready to connect to the train after being refueled for the trek north. I would move north to a spot just south of Sunset Whitney siding to watch the solid Canadian consist roll by, leaving Roseville, CA going north to British Columbia.
Ever since this photo was taken, both units have been taken out of service several years later & would be scrapped as ex-Citirail ES44ACs and newer ET44ACs take their places as they were aging and CN leaned towards newer power for the foreseeable future. A final farewell to those old workhorses as we see more and more modern power roll onto the rails by the day...
Long Gone
On the afternoon of a rather chilly January day, a empty British Columbia bound Cargill with a very rare consist of CN C40-8W 2170 (ex-BNSF 817/ex-ATSF 817) & CN C40-8M 2402 heads northbound on the UPRR Valley Subdivision in Rocklin, CA.
We are going back in time to the year 2021...one of the best railfanning years I have experienced, yet I figured out how to use a DSLR correctly. One of these days was on January 21st, 2021. I was in online school when I would receive a text that 2 CN Dash 8s were leading a northbound empty cargill to British Columbia via the Union Pacific Fresno and Valley Subdivisions. The Dash 8s would arrive 6 days earlier with other units on a loaded cargill before being separated from the rest of the units for today's run. Hearing about this consist was a must see for myself and several others as this would be the final time a consist like this would happen in Northern California. I would race to Roseville immediately after class only to see the train tied down by the yard office with the units getting ready to connect to the train after being refueled for the trek north. I would move north to a spot just south of Sunset Whitney siding to watch the solid Canadian consist roll by, leaving Roseville, CA going north to British Columbia.
Ever since this photo was taken, both units have been taken out of service several years later & would be scrapped as ex-Citirail ES44ACs and newer ET44ACs take their places as they were aging and CN leaned towards newer power for the foreseeable future. A final farewell to those old workhorses as we see more and more modern power roll onto the rails by the day...