Big Yellow Beasts

We’re easily distracted. We’re out on a road trip going where ever (we put a lot of miles behind us as you know), see something we like and have to stop and take a few snaps. It happens all the time, trust me, and is simply the way we function. Pad the schedule cause we know they’re will be a distraction or two along the way. Accept it, work with it, embrace it, and most importantly, enjoy it. We’re always discovering.

And so it happened this very day. We’re headed out to a gig, we’re taking the back roads, and sure enough we see stuff of interest – we have many and they’re strange and varied – with trains and big machinery being some of the most popular subjects. So of course we have to stop and gawk.

On a cool April morn, blue skies and wispy clouds above, things seen along the way…

First a passing CNR train. Just a couple switchers out collecting and dropping off cars to various industrial concerns in the east edge of Calgary, the backdrop a large power station. The last car is for carrying wood poles and the like, while the other two are used to haul metal coils. The top lifts off allowing access to the interior.

The locomotive in front is of particular interest and is one of the oldest the railway owns (a General Motors “GMD1” from the late 1950s). Don’t expect it, and the few others of this model still hard at work for CNR, will last much longer. The railway sure got their money’s worth out of them! This model was designed to be used on light rail branchlines (those are all gone) but today typically they can be found patrolling industrial spurs and switching yards.

Photograph them while you can.

The second locomotive is a bit more modern, a General Motors GP38-2 from the 1970s.

And a second stop (do we ever get to where we’re going?), some giant earth moving machinery along a side road. Neatly lined up, these “bottom dumps” presumably await their next assignment. They’re used by a Calgary firm (Contour Earth Moving – hey guys we’d love to photograph these at work) for site preparation and the like or any job where a lot of material has to be moved from A to B.

Powering the rig is a Caterpillar 773x series tractor (modified from a straight dump). They of course are painted in standard Caterpillar yellow. The driver sits way up there, at nose-bleed heights, and has a good three hundred and sixty degree view of the area around the rig.

According to the maker, these trucks produce some six hundred horsepower and change from a twelve cylinder engine and have a top speed of perhaps sixty clicks. In the configuration seen they can carry well over a hundred tones of material, which is unloaded via a series of doors on the underside of the trailer. They can move a lot of material. And move it fast. No doubt they’re something to see in action.

These trucks dates from the 1990s and 2000s. The 773 series is still being made today, in upgraded form. Caterpillar, in fact, makes a whole series of off-road and mining trucks of similar appearance, some of them many times the size of the ones looked at here. They’re a juggernaut in the industry.

And the road calls. Snap off a couple last shots, jump in the car, speed away, a little diversion behind us. Told you, we’re easily distracted.

Supersized earth moving equipment!
Draglines and Shovels – Reynolds Alberta Museum.
Diplomat Mine Site.
Bigfoot and Brutus (from afar).

If you need any more information on what we talked about here, by all means contact us!

Date of adventure: April, 2017.
Location: Calgary and area.

On the way to where ever, this short train working industrial sidings.

Stop right there…big machinery!

The massive machines belong to a Calgary earth moving firm.

They’re parked along a back road, presumably awaiting their next assignment.

In familiar Caterpillar yellow.

The 773 series is usually a straight dump, but here is configured as a tractor.

Those blues and yellows!

These beasts are used on site preparation jobs.

There’s a good number of them here.

Class photo…