Though my pocketbook is empty And my heart is full of pain I'm a thousand miles away from home Just waiting for a train - Jimmie Rogers

I do, I sure do.

It's the end of the train, it's the end of the work week. Who knows what is over the next hill? Let's find out. Vivian, Manitoba, September 2025

The automated inspection portal at Vivian, Manitoba was inspecting this eastbound container train in great detail on September 22, 2025. These AIP structures capture high resolution images of every rail car that passes through. These images are analyzed and problems can be detected.

Sunrise from my birthday last month... near Dugald, Manitoba.

No food today. Lang, SK this past Saturday.

GO Transit ready to depart Kitchener toward Toronto, yesterday just before noon.

Manitobans were plagued with forest fires this summer, and apparently even Americans were complaining about the smoke and how they couldn't put a tariff on it. In the midst of July I photographed this short yard job rolling into the east end of CPKC's Winnipeg yard on a hazy afternoon.

Back in July I rode my bike under the CN bridge in St. Norbert, Manitoba and into the woods for some forest path biking. The bridge crosses the La Salle River and hosts a couple of trains per day on average.

The Central Manitoba Railway ran a ballast train yesterday down the Carman subdivision... spotted yesterday leaving Winnipeg.

AMTK 736 somewhere in the San Francisco area, 2000.

I saw this wonderful old house last weekend in New Brunswick and had to stop to make a photo. I love that there are still curtains in the window upstairs.

Let's go back 18 years (!) and a bit to August 3, 2007. I was out in the wilds of New Brunswick at Deersdale, when CN 308 came rolling around the curve with an SD60F leading, 5519, followed by 5368 and 5375 and 6021. It was worth the wait.

Early morning on March 30, 2018 finds a westbound train heading out of Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Railfanning from Tim Hortons - the VIA Rail "Ocean" rolling into Halifax this evening.

Last night I bought a sub and a Diet Pepsi in Sackville, NB, then since you shouldn't eat a sub and drive, I paused at Aulac to watch the sun set on the Tantramar Marshes. Because why not.

The aurora didn't show up last night near Winnipeg, but we did get a light show of a different kind.

Mirror, mirror.

I'm very proud of my image of CN 5704 on the cover of the latest CN LINES magazine. Thanks to Kevin J Holland for making it look great as a cover image, and to Alan Lill for suggesting it! Subscribe to CN LINES here: cnrha.ca/membership/ Also, I should straighten my glasses.

Oakville, Manitoba on a lovely fall morning last year.

Set the wayback machine to around 2000-2001... Regina, Saskatchewan... CN irritating motorists on Albert Street but delighting this railfan.

Every town had a "hot 100" radio station, 100.5 on your FM radio dial in Winnipeg! Here's CPKC's "hot 100", train 100 rolling eastward out of the city under smoky skies on July 27, 2025.

Day or night, the trains keep moving.

Rounding the bend at mile 16, eastbound CN 2241 breaks the eerie silence along CN's main line just west of Winnipeg.

I never get tired of the big skies. (near Rosser, Manitoba)

Sometimes you have to get a little muddy.

Canadian Tool and Die was founded in Winnipeg in 1947 and is going strong, 78 years later.

"The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm." - Albert Camus

I have been blogging about trains for 20 years!

"SMELLS grand! PACKS right! SMOKES sweet! Can't bite!" Ad for Sir Walter Raleigh smoking tobacco. (Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen's Magazine, December 1957)

"As you know, we don't make mistakes, we have happy accidents. We just have happy accidents." - Bob Ross I found a blurry photo of "nothing" on my phone. I was about to delete it, but instead I edited the crap out of it and came up with this. I like it. It's a happy accident.

My Sunday morning bike ride brought me here, the Trans-Canada Highway over CN at the south end of Symington Yard in Winnipeg. CN 3848 was bringing a container train in from the east; in the foreground, a remotely controlled trio of locomotives were pushing grain cars over the hump behind me.

Extremely short sighted but not surprising.

Cabooses were a rolling office for the conductor to do his paperwork, and the tail end brakeman would watch the train from the rear, keeping an eye on the train. Cabooses disappeared from main line trains in the 1970s and 1980s and now this little device does the work. Sadly, not the paperwork.

Thank you, conductors and engineers, for the waves!

Excerpt, latest Rapido Trains newsletter: #modelrailroad #modeltrain #modeltrains #modelrailway #modelrailroading

Oh Canada! Slava Ukraini!

I was interviewed by "Multiple Arts & Artisans", a YouTube channel dedicated to interviewing creative people. I really enjoyed the interview. Have a listen / watch! youtu.be/0y8o_2D6dM0

Go Jets go! #WinnipegJets

Reflections of steel.

Squirrel!

"FRESH" A Bombardier Flexity streetcar crosses busy Spadina Avenue in Toronto.

Photo taken this day, 2002 - my first model railway layout, the Nova Scotia Eastern Railway, under construction. The NSER was a great learning experience and I enjoyed its brief existence. We moved in September 2004 and I tore it down, to be replaced by the next layout in a few years.

It’s been said many times that the treaties supersede the separatists. Alberta simply can’t leave without support from treaty signatories. And today, Chief Billy-Joe Tuccaro of the Mikisew Cree Nation made it clear. It’s a hard no. #abpoli #ableg #cdnpoli

The sun wasn't up yet, but the trains roll 24/7. A CPKC crew has finished working the Paterson grain terminal outside Winnipeg and are returning to their train to continue westward. 2025/02/08.

I've had this multimeter for decades. I've used it many, many times, testing continuity in my model railway, checking batteries, making sure there's no power in outlets or light sockets, and on and on. It's not a complicated tool but it's been rock solid reliable. Buy good tools. They're worth it.

As Coca-Cola said, way back when, "it's the paws that refreshes."

What a wonderful photo. The Duomo is amazing and I love this view of it.

Taken this day, 2014 - a CP train heading south out of Winnipeg, crossing the Floodway. They would stop a mile or so south of here in Grande Pointe to take the siding, after the conductor and engineer both chipped the ice out of the switch points. blog.traingeek.ca/2014/03/fore...

Taken this day, 2018. Freshly fallen snow, a road not yet plowed, two trains passing under a blue sky. A good outing.