Author: Chris Doering

Tour Train Aspen Crossing

Twilight Train

Twilight: that most magic time of day. The sun’s last and final hurrah, that warm golden glow enveloping the world dark shadows and a deep blue in stark contrast. It’s serene, peaceful, something damn powerful and words alone don’t seem enough. Then, add a train, a tour train taking in...

Golden Arrow Playfield

Golden Arrow

In the 1970s pinball was king. You couldn’t swing a dead cat, to use that always chuckle-worthy adage, and not hit one. They were everywhere…your local arcade, back when there was arcades, the corner store, the mall, the neighbourhood watering hole, pool hall, anywhere one could be plopped down. And...

Dorothy AB Grain Elevator

Dorothy’s Elevator, a new angle

It’s been photographed…an awful lot. Not that it should come as a surprise, the little grain elevator in Dorothy Alberta, a near ghost town in the Red Deer River badlands, is one photogenic building. Standing there, right beside the highway, in this lovely valley setting, below the sprawling plains, one...

CPR 40 Foot Boxcar

Boxcar

Here we are, travelling down some back road we’ve never been before (and you thought we’ve seen every one), Crowsnest Pass area of Alberta, and we see this, an ancient boxcar in retirement. Once belonging to Canadian Pacific Railway it’s at the edge of a field sitting in a corral...

Ranch House Film Set

Scott Ranch

It’s convincing! Standing here in this town straight out of the American Old West, this 1800s roadhouse along a dusty cowboy trail or this stately ranch from the distant past…it just feels right. Look around, there’s no signs of today, no highways, no skyscrapers, nada, nothing. All about it’s grassy...

Wood Grain Elevator Ogilvie Mills

The Last Wood Ogilvie

Wrentham Alberta, a teenie-weenie little village, the term “metropolis” never once used to describe it. In the far south of the province it was founded around a century ago when the railway arrived. The population, well, it’s a mere handful, hearty folks all, as people who dwell in these small...

Railways Log Car

On the way home…

It’s in our blood. It’s what we do. We take the “back way” when returning from adventures and we do it every darn chance we get. We have this insatiable hunger, us, this pair of restless souls with a never ending desire, a burning drive taking us to the point...

Mt James Walker

James Walker Creek

Let’s see…a nice easy hike taking one to a stunning mountain rimmed valley, home to a charming little lake. What’s not to like? Here, the perfect choice when ambitions are lacking but the call of the nature is loud and strong. This is about the easiest lake destination hike in...

Shandro Pioneer Historic Village

Shandro Historic Village (Closed)

This post is from 2017, and shot the year before, but with fall 2024 updates. It was never a town to speak of, more a locality or a dot on the map reference point for the general area. So not an incorporated community (for Barb Foran: one lacking a municipal...

Calgary AB Boler Trailer

Calgary Boler

This Boler could use a good wash. A common problem with these fibreglass trailers, Bolers and those made similarly of the same material, is the build up of mould, mildew and dirt in general as the gel-topcoat ages. For old trailers, the exterior seemingly becomes a magnet for grime and...

Old Store Viking Museum

Museum Tour: Viking Alberta

Nothing beats a good small town museum. Team BIGDoer is huge fan and think you should be too. They’re hidden gems, wonderful places to learn about local history, the people who came before, those tough and resilent folks from times past, on display at these venues the things connecting them...

Canada Centennial Drone View

Some random hillside…

This post should have been published last week. We meant to publish it last week. Really, honest to God we did. We started work on it, got about half way done, then something darn distracting stole us away for a couple working days. It’s only Chris & Connie holding down...

Rails to Tales Stettler

Coming Attractions!

To say we have a “couple” articles in the works would be a gross understatement. We’ve been busy exploring and photographing all over the west, at some crazy accelerated pace, Chris & Connie seemingly possessed or something and accumulating a huge number of photos and information for new posts. We’re...

Abandoned Motorcycle Track

Valley Motorcycle Park

Flashback…it’s sometime in the latter half of the 1980s. It’s race day at Valley Motorcycle Park, an “MX” (motocross) track found in a shallow coulee on the Alberta Plains. It’s a busy event, groups of riders coming in from all over Calgary and area eager to challenge the track. The...

Ventura Camping Trailer

Teenie-Weenie Ventura

There were countless manufacturers of small fibreglass trailers in the 1970s and 1980s, the golden age for these types of campers. Of course we all know about Bolers, one of the most common of the era, and Trilliums, which are still made today. But there were a huge number of...

Calgary Skyline Supermoon

A Vicious Cycle…

A Vicious Cycle (or Circle): A situation in which the apparent solution of one problem in a chain of circumstances creates a new problem and increases the difficulty of solving the original problem (thanks a million thefreedictionary.com). That’s what we got here. In this case we’re talking about after dark...

Superman 1978 Locations

Superman 1978 – Earthquake!

Been a while. A very long while. Far too long in fact. So here, for the first time in eons, a couple years maybe, make room for another Superman then and now. We used to do them a lot, but have been neglecting the series lately. Anyway, here we take...

Calgary Alberta Boler

Calgary Boler

Seems we haven’t been feeding our Boler obsession as we should. Sure, we’re still out there capturing photos of them, but we’ve been super lax in posting. For example the image used in this article…it’s from late 2015! Well, we have been crazy-crazy busy and these seem to fall by...

Views Mount Hoffmann

Mt Hoffmann

This is our second trip to the top of Mt Hoffmann (alternately Hoffman). When we last did it many years back, the trail was not well known nor used, and as such was faint or even nonexistent in places. Since then, more people have come to know this pleasant little...

Abandoned Farm Kitchen

Stops Along the Way…

Seen here, odd bits and pieces, random stuff abandoned in nature found while out exploring Minburn and Two Hills Counties east of Edmonton. We’re there to documented some specific subjects and these were discovered travelling between them. There’s old farms, forgotten metal, empty buildings found on some street in a...

Railway Bridge Canmore AB

Canmore Loop

Here’s a fun little hike, far easier than most we chronicle. It makes a loop around the west end of the Canmore Alberta, also hitting up some trails in the woods just across the river. Mountains, lots or them to see. Stunning stuff here! There’s a bit of history too,...

Central Western Ballast Car

Starland Alberta

Starland Alberta. Not a town. Nothing more than a siding along a former rail line, the only thing here, a lone grain elevator. It’s relatively modern one, a bit unusual in some ways, which we’ll touch on soon enough. Think of it as a transitional design of sorts, from the...

Cowboy Bunkhouse

The Stock Association

Deep in the depths of winter, on our visit, there’s peace and quiet here. The barn and horse corrals are empty. The bunkhouse, the cookhouse, it’s similarly so. Everything’s in place, ready for use, but there’s no one about except us. The silence, the stillness is palpable. Soon on however,...

Brokeback Mountain Locations

Brokeback Mountain then and now – Twist Ranch

An old farm, forgotten, falling down, weather beaten, open to the elements, home only to pigeons, the wind and maybe unseen ghosts. It’s a sombre place, they always are, the property overgrown, the last occupants long moved away, passed on and but a memory. Without exception these two sentences pretty...

Abandoned Barn

Forgotten Homestead

This adventure has us motoring down a lonely back road, one that seemingly goes nowhere. It runs arrow straight, the car raising a cloud of dust as it cuts across the great plains of Alberta, past endless fields of stubble. Then dipping into a low valley it twists and turns....

Abandoned Industrial Turbine

Chemical Plant

It’s happened again. It happens all too often these days. We’ve given the okay to go inside some abandoned place and document it but with one one big stipulation. That is, we speak of it vaguely, making doubly sure we don’t give anything away in the photos or text that...

Gambrel Roof Farm House

Forgotten Farm

One from the archives, somehow overlooked for a time, our subject visited way back when – wow – close to a year and a half ago. This, an old farm house, a rather modest-sized one, with a gambrel (or barn style) roof, weather beaten, open the elements and long forgotten....

Inglewood Calgary Boler

Inglewood Boler

Just randomly walking about town it’s almost guaranteed one will happen upon a Boler or two. The alleys, back yards and driveways of Calgary seem chock full of them (it makes sense since some were made here). In particular, they’re a strangely common in certain neighbourhoods, usually older ones, for...

Nier Alberta Railway

Nier Alberta

Nier Alberta was not so much a town, but more a locality. Think of it as a dot on the map, the centre of an area, perhaps with a post office, but not really by definition a community with houses and businesses. Located not that far north of Calgary, the...

View from Deer Ridge

Deer Ridge

A hill, not terribly tall but still well worth visiting, welcome to Deer Ridge, Sibbald Area Kananaskis, home to a nice little loop hike that’s both easy and scenic. This short route travels through varied terrain. There’s dark brooding spruce woods with carpets of moss, less dense stands of pine,...

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