Joel Dinda's photos with the keyword: cn

From inside SkyDome (well, Rogers Centre). The Yanks beat the Jays tonight.... Camera: FujiFilm FinePix F10 Photo by Joel Dinda

From the Nixon Road end. With lots of sky, and quite a bit of swamp.

Something about that paint scheme.... A GE D9-44CW (Dash-9, which is sort of a generation indicator; 4400 HP, 6-wheel trucks, wide cab). I see that the original paint job on this unit was famously bad . Better, now, but needs a bath. This big feller was parked where I work--State of Michigan Secondary Complex, near Dimondale--on the old Grand Trunk mainline's passing track. Even a decade ago the only "foreign" paint we'd see on GT was CN, which hardly counts, and an occasional IC; nowadays we see virtually everything. Far from ideal shooting conditions, as you can perhaps tell, but I couldn't resist the opportunity. Just a gorgeous loco.

Best LARGE , methinks; shows off my fancy camera, anyway. Canadian National Railway's Cory Yard, just south of Billwood Highway near Dimondale and Potterville, Michigan. This location's on my route to work; it's an easy walk from my office. Cory's not an exciting yard, operationally; all the sorting is done at the GM Delta Assembly Plant's loading facility, which is a couple hundred yards north from where I took this photo. This yard's purpose is to break long trains into shorter segments for GM's purposes, then to reassemble the train after the the cars have been filled with small vans. I presume the yard's named after CN Vice President Mike Cory , who was running their Michigan operations when construction of this facility began.

Sleepy Eye, Minnesota.

A southbound CN train (probably it's officially westbound) hurrying down Michigan's Grand Trunk mainline north of Potterville, Michigan. As you can see, there are signals on the tracks, for the trains--but the Windsor Highway crossing is a locally-rare unprotected crossing, so I wasn't really prepared when I and the train arrived more or less simultaneously. Lucky I got any pictures at all; rather pleased with this one.

This track runs under the bridge in the middle of our office complex. It was raining, I shot it from the car, the window was wet, and (most immportant) the train was moving. I like it anyway.

Old CN roundhouse, with coaling and water tower ruins, Toronto. The Canadian National Railway used to have an enormous rail yard near downtown Toronto, which is marked by the CN Tower and partly occupied now by the SkyDome (Rogers Centre). This roundhouse, and a much smaller yard, are all that remain. You can see Lake Ontario in the background. The picture's a little noisy largely because I shot it through a window. Camera: FujiFilm FinePix F10 Photo by Joel Dinda

Another view. Just west of SkyDome in Toronto. Camera: FujiFilm FinePix F10 Photo by Joel Dinda

Just west of SkyDome/Rogers Centre in Toronto; evidently dedicated in 2003. Really a terrific monument.

This picture was shot a mile or so from my workplace. The train's creeping along on the long siding by Lake Interstate (an artifact of the construction of I-69, friends) and will halt before it gets to the crossing. Presumably there was a train coming the other way. I kinda like the blackbird atop the sign....

Soo Line couldn't be bothered to fully repaint the Milwaukee Road locos they acquired in their 1987 merger. So they just splashed black paint over the MILW identifiers and added their own. The result was ugly back then--nearly three decades ago, now--and it's still ugly. ( Here's a 1987 photo , with the "bandit" paintjob fresh.) As you can see, CP hasn't repainted this one, either. Downtown DeForest, Wisconsin.

I ducked by CN's Cory Yard this morning--it serves the large General Motors assembly plant in Delta Township, near Lansing--and found only this locomotive and a single car on the property. In contrast, the yard within the auto plant's boundaries seemed to be full. I suspect there's a problem with the exiled car.... Regardless, the loco's Illinois Central (IC) 9637, a GP38, of which there are plenty of photographs on the web in a variety of paint schemes. When Cory Yard was new we'd mostly see switchers wearing IC and GTW garb, but CN's apparently unified most everything since. I perhaps should mention Cory's not the world's most interesting rail yard--it serves one facility, and that plant does the sorting of the "goods" before the trains are loaded. It's next door to where I worked, and for me it's been an occasional subject since it was built.