Two trains passed over this trestle in the 45 minutes I was here, but the second one was shorter and headed in the opposite direction, so much less photogenic. It is located just west of Wainwright, Alberta and is the main east-west line for Canadian National, one of two transcontinental railways in Canada.
The next picture picks up the train after the section of oil tankers on the left edge of the picture above. The total train is probably between 120 and 140 cars, but I couldn't count them.
The three locomotives at the front are assisted by a fourth locomotive in the middle. One crew will operate all of them, and North American railroads don't have stringent hours of work regulations like trucking companies do, so mishaps due to crew fatigue are on the rise. In case anyone is wondering why crude oil is being shipped by rail instead of pipeline, there is a problem getting politicians to approve new pipelines, so over a million barrels a day of crude rides the tracks, even though it is the least safe way to transport oil and costs about three times as much as transporting by pipeline.
The
Battle River Railway Trestle was built in 1907 and 1908 for the Grand Trunk Railway (which went bankrupt and was eventually resurrected as CNR) and is 2775 feet long. Anywhere other than the Canadian prairies, this would be called a creek, the mighty Battle River is the narrow winding white strip barely visible in the top two pictures. Slightly more water flows between its banks in the spring, but by autumn it typically dries up to not much more than a trickle. It is called the Battle River because of conflict between Cree and Blackfoot tribes in the area during the later half of the eighteenth century.
Originally posted by pjv 
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