Change of plans

We left winnipeg Monday morning, travelling through more of the prairies. It’s mostly flat, but not completely, there are some hilly areas. Our destination was Calgary for the weekend, where we were finally going to get the other boxcar. This boxcar contains the DGRMS (Deployable Gauge Restrain Measuring System), which drops a bar down that puts lateral pressure on the rails as we are moving, and by measuring the position before and after the stiffness can be calculated. It has been under repair this whole time, which is why we haven’t been doing it. We were originally supposed to get it in Sudbury, but there was still work to be done on it so it got postponed one week later, and then until Calgary. I was excited to go there, and was planning to go to Banff for the weekend and climb a mountain. I haven’t been to the Rockies in recent memory. My parents claim I was there once when I was small, but I don’t remember it so it doesn’t count.

Well, we found out on Wednesday that the boxcar isn’t moving as fast as they were hoping (it wasn’t in Calgary yet, but somewhere in the states) so instead we were going to finish our testing that week and then move as fast as possible to Montreal where we’d meet the boxcar and attach it there. I’m not completely sure why they changed it to Montreal, it’s kindof the opposite end of the country.

We were testing yards on Thursday and Friday, so we would go back and forth on every track in the yard and then travel to the next one. Both days we were scheduled to start at 7:00, so we were up at 6am, but didn’t get moving until 10am and 11:30am. Lots of waiting around. We finished Thursday at 3ish and parked in Medicine Hat, so I went out for a walk. Found a path on top of an escarpment type thing that had a pretty nice view of the town. Walked down another one and found a park/nature preserve, and walked around in there down some pretty nice snow-covered paths. Was walking around a corner and came across a deer less than 10 meters away that was just standing there and staring at me. I stood still and stared back and snapped a couple pictures before it started running off. Walked back to downtown and wandered around for a bit until it got dark and headed back to the train. 

After testing the yard on Friday we started heading back to Montreal, and pretty much ran non-stop, even through the night. We stopped sometimes for a crew change or for a train meet, but never for more than an hour. We finally arrived monday at midnight, which means about 82 hours of almost straight travel. I’m surprised at how well I slept, I thought I would hardly get any sleep with the train bouncing around all the time. I slept alright the first night, and only woke up a couple times the other nights.

There isn’t much to do on the train, we don’t get any satellite signal or internet, and it’s hard to do precise movements with a mouse, so a lot of computer games are out as well. I’ve found that reading bothers me when the book is jumping around all the time, and it’s hard to focus on the small letters. There are a fair amount of movies on the train which I’ve watched quite a few of now. There’s also standing between the cars and looking at the scenery, but it’s a lot colder now, especially with a 50mph wind chill (it’s been below zero a fair amount, there’s snow in pretty much the rest of Canada except for southern Ontario).  I’m also working on making a monopoly game using excel and macros and userforms. It’s a lot of fun, I like programming. I’ve already made one that can solve easy sudokus, and one that can create and solve mazes of any size. It gets frustrating when I’m trying to put my cursor somewhere to edit and it’s jumping around all over the place, so I have to use the keyboard as much as possible. (Note: not all train travel is this bad, it’s probably really smooth. Our car is a converted boxcar that’s almost 50 years old, so there is minimal suspension)

I really have no clue what the plan is for the rest of the week, and I’ve given up trying to figure out what the master plan is, as it has changed over 5 times while I’ve been here. We are supposed to be getting the boxcar late this week, and after we’ve done some basic maintenance and moved stuff from the old boxcar I’ll be in a hotel in Montreal until the boxcar comes. Even then I’m unsure of exactly what my role will be, as I don’t know very much / nothing at all about the new system.

I just hope we still get to go through the rockies, but from what I understand there’s a chance it might not happen. Dang. Guess I shouldn’t complain too much though, I still got to travel over most of Canada by train J