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Train Spotting

First visit ever to Rouge River Provincial Park. Fantastic trails, and so close to the city.

208844
 
While walking along Dupont yesterday, I heard a train over my scanner. I ran to the nearest viewing point, and saw a fairly typical CP mixed freight approaching. What I was not expecting were the four military vehicles and ex CNR passenger car "Tioga Pass" on the tail end.
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@M636RF Whoa, those tanks look like the Soviet T-72 family. Do you have any other details?
 
Neutrino said:
@M636RF Whoa, those tanks look like the Soviet T-72 family. Do you have any other details?
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These are apparently variants of the German-made Leopard 2. The first two are actual tanks, while the other two are engineering vehicles. I don't know much more, however.

As for the private car, it was brought to Canada (via Vancouver) to provide security for this shipment.
 
Really? The Leopard has 7 road wheels. The one in that image has 6 sized like the T-72. As far as I can tell, CAF engineering vehicles based on the L2 all have 7 wheels. This is really curious for me as a bit of a military equipment enthusiast.
 
Hmmm, interesting. It looks sort of like an Israeli Merkava but not sure. The tarp and stenciling are in English. Who's ever it is, I'm guessing the business car has been leased for the security escort. Possibly heading to/from GD Land Systems in London.
 
Neutrino said:
Really? The Leopard has 7 road wheels. The one in that image has 6 sized like the T-72. As far as I can tell, CAF engineering vehicles based on the L2 all have 7 wheels. This is really curious for me as a bit of a military equipment enthusiast.
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Apologies for the confusion - I was told they were Leopards by someone who I thought knew a lot about military stuff. After asking around, I found out that these are actually British Challenger 2 vehicles. Because they were on CP 421 (a Toronto to Winnipeg manifest), my suspicion is that they are headed out West (maybe to Alberta, where there is a British base). The Tioga Pass passenger car was supposed to have come East recently with another "special shipment", so perhaps the Brits were doing a vehicle swap-out.

Since you're into military equipment, here are my shots of the engineering vehicles:

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Good conclusion. The images I was looking at for the Challenger had different side skirting but it seems was I was looking at was an applique skirting. The British Army has a permanent facility at CFB Suffield in Alberta.
 
lenaitch said:
Good conclusion. The images I was looking at for the Challenger had different side skirting but it seems was I was looking at was an applique skirting. The British Army has a permanent facility at CFB Suffield in Alberta.
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Ah yes, I see it now. Forgot the Challenger also has six wheels. And the edge pattern in the side skirts matches up with Google images photos.
 
alexanderglista said:
Found this on YouTube, pretty unique:

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It's pretty common, unfortunately.

GO will send equipment from their side of the tracks over to the VIA side for work when they don't have room to do so on their side. Those moves are made with GO equipment.

Once on the VIA side, VIA's crews and equipment will shuffle them around the yard and into the parts of the building they need to get to. In this case, it looks like 4 cars that just had some work done were being moved to the "interchange" point where GO will eventually send a loco over to pick them up and take them back across.

Dan
 
GO Train Sticker by Vic Gedris, on Flickr

Some foamer put a GO Train sticker on the underpass railing on Bloor St. west of Lansdowne Ave., Toronto. Photographed when a Barrie-bound GO train headed past.

A better (more appropriate) photo would have been if I caught the cab car instead of the locomotive, so it would match the sticker.
 
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