On Friday Canadian Pacific ES44AC No. 8781, the Hapag-Lloyd unit – already nicknamed “Orange Crush” by railfans (for the REM song) – came through Cleveland leading the I166 which was formerly Q166. I caught it at Berea in late morning and at East 361st Street in Willoughby in early afternoon.
Photographs by Todd Dillon
Canadian Pacific doesn’t own a foot of track in Ohio and the Port of Vancouver, British Columbia, is thousands of miles away, but the Buckeye State looks to benefit from a recent contract that CP reached that will increase its share of intermodal traffic in Vancouver.
CP will begin hauling starting April 1, about 85 percent of the Ocean Network Express traffic passing through the Port of Vancouver.
How does that affect Ohio? It will boost traffic in the Ohio Valley intermodal partnership that CP has with the Chicago, Fort Wayne & Eastern and Indiana & Ohio.
Ocean Network Express is a consortium of shipping companies K-Line, MOL, and NYK.
Canadian National has 70 percent of the container traffic moving through the Port of Vancouver, but CN officials say they will have to turn away some business due to capacity constraints.
International intermodal traffic moving on CN has experienced faster-than-expected growth and increases in traffic in frac sand, grain, and other commodities have left CN congested, particularly in Western Canada.
CP said the agreement with Ocean Network Express is worth $80 million annually over the three-year contract.
Interestingly, CP is gaining back traffic it walked away from when E. Hunter Harrison was CEO of CP because he thought domestic intermodal traffic was more profitable.
But now CP says its costs are similar to those of CN, which puts it in a position to vie for lower-margin international intermodal traffic.
Back in February Canadian Pacific announced that it was bringing back its beaver herald although it wasn’t until July that the modified logo began appearing on locomotives.
CP used the beaver herald, which features a beaver, a maple leaf, a shield, the company name and the date of the railroad’s incorporation, previously, but dropped it for a more contemporary look.
The beaver has a long tradition at CP, having first been used on a company herald in 1886.
Here in the states we might think of the maple leaf as symbolic of Canada, but the beaver is our northern neighbor’s official symbol of sovereignty.
Between 1886 and 1929, the beaver appeared on four renditions of the CP herald, which featured a shield as its dominant element. In three of those iterations, the beaver appeared atop the shield.
The beaver went on hiatus between 1929 and 1946 when the CP herald was, again, shaped like a shield but featured the slogan “World’s Greatest Travel System.”
In 1946, CP brought the beaver back and it sat atop the shield through three generations of heralds. In 1968, CP decided to give itself a more “progressive look” and adopted a triangle C logo.
Other heralds would follow including one that featured the Canadian and U.S. flags. That was an effort to show that CP was a North American railroad and not just a Canadian one.
To celebrate its independent status, which included resuming use of the name Canadian Pacific Railways, CP resurrected the beaver and shield in 1997 in a bid to give itself a retro look.
Some corporations can only sit still with their image for a few years, so the beaver was put out to marsh in 2007.
CP adopted a minimalist approach with only its name “Canadian Pacific” appearing in its herald. Things got even more concise in 2012 when the herald became simply the letters CP.
Now the beaver, the maple leaf and the shield are back. Unlike the most recent beaver herald, the current logo does not feature solid gold shading in the shield. Instead, the shield has horizontal stripes.
The latest version of the beaver herald is expected to become widespread as CP ramps up a program to repaint its locomotive fleet. The herald will also adorn rebuilt locomotives.
AC400CW No. 9817 wore the previous beaver herald. It is shown leading CSX train Q166 through Berea this past Sunday sporting the new herald.
The Q166 and its counterpart, Q165, are CP run-through trains that use CSX between Chicago and Buffalo, New York.
Just over two hours after the Q166 passed by, the Q165 came rolling through Berea. It is always a good outing when you catch both CP run-through trains on the same day.
And the cherry on the top of this treat was the eastbound “salad shooter” with its usual Union Pacific motive power, shown in the bottom photo.
Train Q165 roars past the Lake Shore Railway Museum in North East, Pennsylvania.
On a couple of back-to-back outings I had the good luck of seeing Canadian Pacific motive power on four trains.
Two of them were Q165 and Q166, which are Chicago-Buffalo, New York, run through trains on CSX that have been operating for a few years now.
I used to somewhat regularly see one of those trains at Berea, but that hasn’t been the case for a while.
I’ve only seen both of them in the same day twice and each time I was in North East, Pennsylvania.
I also found CP motive power leading a pair of Norfolk Southern trains, the 216 and the 67X. One of those was moving and the other was tied down.
I didn’t mind seeing so much red and wouldn’t mind seeing it again now that CP has resumed putting its beaver tail logo on the flanks of some locomotives.
The light was less than ideal to get Q166, which was one of five consecutive eastbounds allowed to move as CSX was single-tracking the Erie West Subdivision between North East, Pennsylvania, and a point in New York York State.
A pair of CPs lead NS 216 through the vineyard country near Bort Road in North East, Pennsylvania.
The first of two views of NS train 67X tied down near Lewis Road in Olmsted Falls, Ohio.
As I write this, summer 2015 is in its waning days. Already, I’ve seen some leaves turning colors. Fall is nearly upon us.
I ran across this photo that I made back in mid May of eastbound CSX train Q166 in Berea. It is one of two — the other being Q167 — intermodal trains that run on CSX between Buffalo, New York, and Chicago that are actually Canadian Pacific trains.
I’ve seen Q166 and Q167 several times and they boasted a solid motive power consist of CP power. But not on this day.
What is that CSX unit doing here? What about that lease unit in the middle? At least it doesn’t look like a rent a wreck.
The lighting is a clue that this image was made in the afternoon, just after 2 p.m. to be precise, and the sun had already begun to shift northward.
May is the gateway month to summer, which never seems to last long enough in Northeast Ohio. The fifth month of year is a time to make plans for summer activities.
It is time, to borrow a line from the song “The Boys are Back in Town” by the British rock group Thin Lizzy, “The nights are getting warmer, it won’t be long. It won’t be long til summer comes.”
But that was then. All too soon, summer 2015 will be another memory.
Although Canadian Pacific motive power has not been rare in Northeast Ohio, it has not been an everyday occurrence either.
But that changed late last year when CP began routing its intermodal trains 142 and 143 over CSX between Chicago and Buffalo.
The trains had operated over Norfolk Southern between Chicago and Detroit, using the Chicago Line to Butler, Ind., and then turning north onto the former Wabash.
CP shifted Nos. 142/143 to CSX so that it could operate additional crude oil trains over the NS route. Another factor was a desire to operate high cube containers, which were not allowed through the Detroit River tunnel that CP uses.
On CSX, the CP trains operate as Q165 and Q166. The Q166 is planned to depart Chicago at approximately 7 a.m. while the Q165 is planned out of Buffalo at about 10 a.m.
The times that these trains actually reach Northeast Ohio will vary depending on a number of factors, including weather and traffic.
I went to Berea on Sunday hoping to fulfill two objectives. I wanted to photograph the CP intermodal trains that began operating late last year on CSX between Buffalo, N.Y., and Chicago, and I wanted to get a sunset shot.
It was mission accomplished for the first objective at 4:44 p.m. as the CP train passes the former Big Four depot.
I achieved my second objective not long after the passage of the CP train. On the way home, I pulled off I-480 onto Tiedeman Road en route to Steak ‘n Shake to get something to take home. I noticed the sky had gotten nice and red so I parked behind the Cracker Barrel restaurant and got the grab shot you see below. Amid the urban clutter are some freight cars parked on a siding on the CSX mainline.
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