In November 2010 I bid goodbye to the Kingston area and made the long drive west to the city of Calgary, Alberta.

Calgary is a contrast, being located in two distinct ecosystems. The eastern part of the city is in the prairie, grass covered rolling hills with open fields that the rails cut across arrow straight. In the western part are the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, which dominate the city’s distant skyline. Through this area the railway meanders as it follows the rivers, the surrounding slopes covered in evergreens.

The city is predominately served by Canadian Pacific with lines radiating out of the city in all four cardinal directions. To the north is the Red Deer Sub, which heads to the namesake city, and eventually to Edmonton. To the south is the Aldersyde Sub, which for years was known as the Macleod Sub, and runs adjacent to the city’s light rail service through the south of Calgary towards Okotoks, eventually reaching Lethbridge. To the east is the Brooks Sub that goes to Medicine Hat while to the west is the Laggan Sub which heads through Banff and the Rocky Mountains to Field, BC.

At the nexus of all these CP lines is Alyth yard. This is a great place to watch trains arrive and depart while yard jobs marshal the freight cars for onward movement. On weekends it is quite common for rail fans to congregate at Portland Street, a small industrial parking lot that is located alongside the Brooks Sub, between the Aldersyde Sub and Alyth yard.

Alyth is where the extra locomotives used in the mountains are added to westbound trains and removed from eastbound trains, the train often stopping just long enough to be re-crewed while the helper locomotive is attached or detached. Except for the occasional re-crewing east of Ogden, as well as all local turns, the crews based in Calgary work the Laggan and Red Deer Subs while crews from Medicine Hat work the Brooks Sub and crews from Lethbridge the Aldersyde Sub.

Adjacent to the yard is Alyth Locomotive Facility and among the ubiquitous GE’s and GP20ECO’s there are many stored locomotives while an occasional locomotive from a foreign road will show up. While UP is quite common it is not unknown for a Ferromex unit or a locomotive from an eastern road such as CSX or NS to appear. In the days before I returned to the Kingston area the first of the SD70ACu’s were starting to show up at Alyth and now they are a common sight in the Calgary area.

To the east of Alyth, along the Brooks Sub, are the famous Ogden Shops, which upon my arrival in 2010 still had several interesting old pieces of equipment stored outside, including CLC units. However Ogden Shops closed in 2012 and the western part was rebuilt into CP’s new headquarters with myriad tracks ripped up so that the land could be used for parking spaces.

Both Christmas trains that operate across Canada and the United States each year are stored at Ogden when not in use while another part is home to the heritage train. This includes steam engine 2816, as well as three FP9A’s, 1401, 4106, 4107, and a solitary F9B, 1901. While 2816 is currently stored the F units are used to haul charters, including the prestigious ‘Royal Canadian Pacific’ train.

The CP headquarters had previously been located in the downtown area, immediately adjacent to the CP station, and they were easy to find from the street as steam engine 29, a 4-4-0 built by CP in Montreal in 1887, was on display outside. However in June 2017 number 29 was moved to Ogden and placed on display alongside FP7Au 1400. There are also two former Amtrak Budd cars on display at Ogden, having passed to CP when they acquired the Iowa, Chicago & Eastern.

The CP station that once hosted the original ‘Canadian’ now sits unused, as only freight trains pass through. The last passenger train to use the station was the ‘Rocky Mountaineer’, which until 2015 used to service Calgary. But now the last stop is Banff and the train runs empty to Calgary for turning and servicing.

At Shepard, east of Ogden, is the Calgary Intermodal Terminal which is the CP’s container yard in the area. This place is impossible to access for photographs as it is surrounded by industries. Anyone wanting to photograph the trains has to wait immediately to the east or west and hope that the trains would depart in a timely manner.

As soon as the rails heading west leave downtown Calgary they start to follow the course of the Bow River as they climb towards Cochrane. In the very west of the city’s limits is Keith Yard. During my time there the majority of this yard was removed, leaving only a few tracks for trains to park on before proceeding along their way.

By contrast with CP the Canadian National has a much smaller presence and then only in the eastern part of the city, with the Three Hills Sub heading north-east, and the Lyalta spur heading east on the old Drumheller Sub. CN’s main yard in Calgary is Sarcee Yard, located in the south-east quadrant. This was the only yard until they built a new facility in nearby Conrich, which is north-east of Calgary on the Three Hills Sub. This cut down on CN trains blocking busy roads as they languidly traversed the section of line within the city limits. However the new yard is not located adjacent to a public road and is therefore hard to see into. The Three Hills Sub is the only line that CN can now access the Calgary area by, all the trains having to come from Edmonton through Red Deer.

The only other CN line that runs out of the city is the Lyalta spur, which used to be the Drumheller Sub that headed east to Drumheller, the line continuing through Dinosaur Junction towards Saskatoon. Over the years the majority of this line has been lifted until only a spur to an industrial facility at Lyalta remains.

Both systems have a limited industrial presence in the city, all the industrial spurs being located in the south-eastern part of the city. Aside from a single privately owned SW900 used at the Western Fertilizer facility located off the Brooks Sub either CP or CN switch all of the industries in the city.

The city also has a light rail system known as the C-Train that is operated by Calgary Transit. There are currently two lines, the Blue line runs from Saddletowne in the north-east to 69th Street in the south-west while the Red line runs from Somerset in the south-west to Tuscany in the north-west. On its southern part the Red line runs adjacent to CP’s Aldersyde Sub from Somerset station to just south of 39th Ave station.

Both lines share common tracks along 7th Avenue as they pass through the downtown. There are three facilities for C-trains, two in the south-west, Anderson garage and Haysboro storage, while in the north-east there is the Oliver Bowen Maintenance Facility, commonly called OBMF.

On the shores of Glenmore Reservoir, in the city’s south-west, is Heritage Park. On display outside the park entrance are ex CP 7019, an ALCO S-2, and 5931, a MLW 2-10-4. From the parking lot to the park’s entrance visitors can ride one of the replica streetcars numbered 14 or 15 while inside the park is an oval of track where a 0-6-0 steam engines pulls a passenger train around.

The only other railway that operates in Calgary, although only during the summer months, is the narrow gauge railway in Bowness Park. This 16 inch line was opened in the 1950’s and is still in use, having recently been rebuilt after the devastating flood in 2013. The train is powered by a Miniature Train Company (MTC) G16, serial 656, based on the GM F unit, delivered to the line when it opened.