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About Eric Fallas

Raised in Regina Saskatchewan, attending University in Toronto. Admittedly a late bloomer to the railfanning game, as I started during the 2020 pandemic and wouldn't have my Canon Rebel T7 until a year later in October 2021. Enjoy the mix of locations, as I am always eager to come home where the good stuff is!

Eric Fallas's Railpictures.ca photo upload statistics

Number of images: 55
Total gold: 724
Number of comments recieved : 104
Number of comments posted : 47
Total views: 37627

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Eric Fallas's 55 photos on Railpictures.ca:

134's conductor had gone for a train-long walk to inspect an open door 10 cars from the tail that was called in west of Meadowvale in the middle of the morning Milton Line rush. The engineer killed time being friendly with railfans, even doing the courtesy of flipping headlight switches whenever they saw a lens raise at the motive power. One of the 134 lead locomotive's EMD 710 brothers in the passenger sector powers the second last Milton Line service of the morning, overtaking them just past Streetsville Junction where 134 had initially stopped, but then pulled up to the next crossing to make the conductor's walk shorter without disturbing commuting traffic to the nearby Dolphin Senior Public School.

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Canadian Pacific K…
Date:	11/11/2024
Location:	Streetsville
Province:	Ontario

Comments | 12 Favourites

Not something I was expecting to see the other day whilst rolling the dice with CN was the daily Brampton-turn L559 heading back to Mac Yard with a rare quartet of majority GP9s crossing the Humber River. I had actually been waiting for 4125-9555 on L529 coming back from the Highbury spur so the zebra stripes on the leader instinctively looked like exactly what I was looking for, until confusion hit my face seeing 2 more GP9s emerge from the descent from Martin Grove. Ultimately, 4130-9449-7270-7032 made up the consist, the pair of back-to-back duos implied that the second half was lifted from Brampton IMS as they are fitted for the standard use of RCL by BIT yard.
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The debate I'm having with myself right now which I'll open up to the floor is whether or not the crew aboard 7032 is evidence to the contrary and this quartet originated in Mac or if they took a lunch right after lifting the power. Also worth noting the exhaust coming out of the two GP9s, but I don't think that's quite as compelling as 559 could've needed the extra help and borrowed power from BIT.

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Canadian National
Date:	10/30/2024
Location:	Vaughan
Province:	Ontario

Comments | 15 Favourites

Getting one of these grey ghosts to finally behave and stay on-point all the way to the GTA in shootable conditions has been a year-long waiting game after the acquisition of the former Class 1. Although this is the third grey ghost to lead 134, the first was yanked off by request of the crew upon pulling into London, and the second was a last-minute power change to deadhead a bunch of 6-axles to Toronto and had only 10 miles to go by the time the sun rose up behind dense overcast. KCS ran many of these into the ground so badly that they get assigned to work train service stateside too. For the longest time union crews would swat these aside if they could, and the coincidence of an impending rail strike only 2 days out makes me wonder if management snubbed any crew requests to keep 7018 leading when they could've wyed in Detroit or 4570 is a lucky recipient of a hotplate and refridgerator.

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Canadian Pacific K…
Date:	08/20/2024
Location:	Mississauga
Province:	Ontario

Comments | 15 Favourites

A fallen flag EMD 645 leading double stacks at track speed on the Halton... need I say more? Q122 and the NTSB regulations which screwed it was left with an outlawed C44-9W pair, one dead and one without the mercy of PTC exemptions. A miraculous retaliation from Battle Creek gifted them with IC 6250, an internationally friendly PTC & LVVR equipped 6-axle (both things CN hasn't finished equipping to some ex-CREXs). Here they are sweeping north on the approach to Tansley as they hit the outskirts of Burlington to begin their battle upgrade. Had the circumstances applied to anything else offered by CN with work along the way, we could reasonably expect that it would have been a treat exclusive to the Americans. I can't say I've recieved many shocks to the system quite like this train gave me, as I had to do a lot of convincing to myself to believe that such an event was actually going to turn out well for me. Night train, backlit sun, dropped before the border... I was waiting for an excuse to justify not going out for it. I assume these things were more common back in the days of early 2000s foreign power?

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Canadian National
Date:	03/16/2024
Location:	Burlington
Province:	Ontario

8 Comments | 9 Favourites

The CPKC scheme is out and we're over a year in since the renaming of our beloved Class I, making CP-only consists a desirable. A trio of CP GEs is now entering the age where they would be considered more "classic" to the crusty mismatch of CP and KCS frequenting the high iron nowadays. How did we get here? <br> <br> Rambling aside, I do appreciate the higher margin of these "classic" consists. CP 7016, CP 9820, and CP 8746 working the middle take a late 230-07 across Southern Ontario, helped by a 12 hour rot in Detroit. My friends in Windsor got to make chase in golden hour, whilst a healthy dose of overcast assisted those of us further east. Here they are making the roll downhill past the Ardent Mills grain terminal in Streetsville as the Galt negotiates its way down to a ROW more proximus to the Lakeshore.

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Canadian Pacific K…
Date:	06/09/2024
Location:	Streetsville
Province:	Ontario

1 Comments | 9 Favourites

The winner of the train race from my previous post is... CP 5936 East! The dual flags-painted SD40 was in the area on work train service, however, CPKC was unable to get a work train crew immediately, so they were assigned to give a helping hand in revenue service. Trailing second is CP 9668, which had been a bit of a veteran to the unit autorack locals in the last couple of weeks or so, and 5908 (5936's partner) was spewing quite a bit in the past couple of days so the duo was created. The slight curve west of Howland obscures BNSF 9783 East which was running only 2 minutes behind 5936 East. The train race was at its tightest around Osler, where each train called those signals about 30 seconds apart. I was able to grab a blurry photo (not even close to worthy of being posted on this site) of both engines from afar prior to the curve after noticing both sets of headlights in the distance.

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Canadian Pacific K…
Date:	02/24/2024
Location:	Toronto
Province:	Ontario

Comments | 11 Favourites

I have a question for those of you who know Ontario's track record on foreign power: When was the last time an executive mac led a CP/CPKC 100 series intermodal train? Well, now it has been 0 days since the last incident. BNSF 9783 went against the odds to lead 134 after trailing on 135 with stacks to Detroit on the 22nd. Somehow they never bothered to use the wye (Windsor crews would pay the price as they had complained to RTC about 9783's toilet not working) and it survived opportunities for power swapping in Wolverton and London. Their crawl on the Galt helped greatly to get some sucker holes here at Howland, losing a train race against a certain autorack local.

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Canadian Pacific K…
Date:	02/24/2024
Location:	Toronto
Province:	Ontario

Comments | 14 Favourites

Part 2 of my GWRS Ballast post. Here is their dumping operation at Valour, facilitated by about 2 or 3 foremen trucks worth of ballast crews, which I had essentially followed by accident from the same gas station in Assiniboia. This was actually my first time watching a ballast dumping operation in my life, but I still managed to notice a significant difference between the ballast grades used by Class Is and the type being dumped here: GWRS seems to use a heterogenous mixture of what I believe to be finer sandstones, feldspar-embedded granite, and andesite. Canadian Pacific, on the other hand, accesses a homogenous grade of andesite sourced directly from trackside mines located in Dyment, Ontario on the Canadian Shield or Swansea, BC, in the Rocky Mountains. The relatively small capacity to carry ballast based on GWRS' limited stock of open-top hoppers made the dumping operation finish within an hour of arriving. Then they ran 4062 around and ran southern style back to Horizon to reload from the pit they had compiled there.

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Great Western Rail…
Date:	08/30/2023
Location:	Valour
Province:	Saskatchewan

1 Comments | 14 Favourites

GWRS began ramping up MoW operations in the late summer through early winter of 2023, running regular Ballast trains to facilitate new siding construction across their system. The first generation of siding construction began in August, running 4062 solo between their ballast source in Horizon on the RCRR and the 3 new sidings at Valour, about halfway between Limerick and Assiniboia. This first operation took about 2 weeks to complete, sending 1-2 loads every weekday, with each load of ballast covering about half the siding length at Valour. From what I understand, these MoW operations continued onto other locations until November when a friend of mine went himself to catch grain season. Here they finish easing into the Willow Bunch Valley after starting the downgrade in Verwood as they follow the valley towards Assiniboia.

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Great Western Rail…
Date:	08/30/2023
Location:	Readlyn
Province:	Saskatchewan

3 Comments | 19 Favourites

It seems like BNSF's unorthodox method of paying off horsepower hours to CN continues to pay dividends to railfans with the case of this consist on L55931 08:
- "BN Whiteface" painted GP39E to boot
- "CN Zebra" painted GP9RM second
- Followed by 14 loads of ballast in a continuous cut of early-CN open-top hoppers bound for a set-off in Torbram.
Such an occurrence would've been unimaginable at the start of the year, yet became a reality thanks to the close timing of both units for 90-day inspections from London (4131 back on 12/01 from 583) and Belleville (2926 back on 11/23 from 518) coupled with the order for ballast to leave Toronto, and the actions of power planners to conjure up this lash-up. It began from scratch with 4131/4726 running 529 on the 4th, evolving to 4131/4726/2926 on the 7th after 529 lifted 2926, only to immediately drop the 4726 the night before this 559. Ironically, 4726 was meant to replace 2926 over in Belleville and had already returned to Toronto on the 3rd. The eagerness by power planners to run it for only short periods at a time implies perhaps that it was underperforming or was undesirable by crews. Either way, this also contributed to the creation of this 559 whose local status was retained by the 4 revenue cars on the tail end and the awaiting industry empties in Brampton. The spot was rather rushed as a result of hearing "BNSF 2926 West" call their departure from Mac Yard before even getting trackside, hence, any shot would've beat no shot at all. The consist of 559 would come as a surprise after the fact, and I enjoyed the sight as it cleared Snider West.

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Canadian National
Date:	12/08/2023
Location:	Vaughan
Province:	Ontario

1 Comments | 12 Favourites

Train length in frame! Q102 tends to run in crisp morning light on the Watrous Sub during those classic dry summer months of Saskatchewan, making it a simple waiting game for a good leader if one were to reside in Melville (Mr. Kowalski was driving by me as I grab this frame). CN 8010 serves as DPU on the rear, characterized by a handful of pixels just shorter than the heights reached by the string of double stacks on the horizon, a detail I was happy to spot after shooting. Anyone wanna count the car length?

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Canadian National
Date:	06/13/2023
Location:	Leross
Province:	Saskatchewan

1 Comments | 8 Favourites

CP 3016 on the point of E37 outlaws a second crew after much work in the Mosaic Potash Belle Plaine, since starting the day prior. I stayed with the skeleton of this tied-down local to watch the sunset fade into the late-August smoke-filled skies that persisted all summer. This GP38AC wandered into Saskatchewan in early summer and surprised me to see it in active service, given its rare breed of AC power and retaining class light specs, so this shot satisfied my subtle eagerness to catch it.

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Canadian Pacific K…
Date:	08/26/2023
Location:	Belle Plaine
Province:	Saskatchewan

1 Comments | 18 Favourites

If you were a fan of my previous work on the Davenport Diamond Guideway, (First historical VIA 1 on the Guideway: <a href="http://www.railpictures.ca/?attachment_id=51598"> http://www.railpictures.ca/?attachment_id=51598 </a> ) this serves as more of a follow-up shot to capture the "Metrolinx"-style change seen with the composition of this location. The first thing you might notice is that the unfinished noise barrier construction that had barely even started in April has neared completion. Additionally, the old ground-level Newmarket Sub trackage has completely disappeared since the tearing up of the diamond in June, along with the searchlight that protected it. The only redeeming feature of this spot remaining seems to be the unique angle of the Canadian GE water tower with the modern Newmarket Sub. Now that this location has suffered from some overgrowth in the summer, the increasing difficulty of this shot seems only worthwhile for historical value. I may revisit once the Guideway project achieves true completion and the right-of-way is converted into green space (assuming said green stays out of the way from this angle :) ).

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	VIA Rail
Date:	09/10/2023
Location:	Toronto
Province:	Ontario

2 Comments | 11 Favourites

I may have been late to the show for this green bean nestled in Ontario, but it's still running out of Brantford and has thus far survived enough rounds of power swaps that it begs the question of when CN will do its overdue 90-day inspection. Its partner is now 4791, and this particular run on Labor Day was unusually late, departing Brantford after 9am, had a lengthy lunch break in Hagersville, and did almost 2 hours of work at CGC. They only got into Caledonia on their northbound leg after 4:30 pm, and the crew being over 10 hours on the job, could often result in a tie-down for safekeeping. Fortunately, L581 relieved the train and would take on the responsibility of bringing L580's train back to Brantford. The low-level lighting here perfectly highlights how late they were as they began entering the outskirts of Brantford in the neighborhood of Cainsville at around 6.

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Canadian National
Date:	09/04/2023
Location:	Cainsville
Province:	Ontario

3 Comments | 12 Favourites

Shooting GWRS in the summer is far from ideal, as high summer temperatures often restrict shortline operations and grain traffic is generally at its driest. This short and overpowered weekly run back in July demonstrated this well, as it was outbound from Assiniboia as early as 2am, and would finish working Neville and tie down by roughly 7am. This was uncharted territory for me, and I miscalculated that they would have work along the way to Neville, so after detouring to each siding up to about halfway without any sign of them, I quickly realized they would soon be at their terminus, and I narrowly beat them to Neville by only about 3 minutes. On point is one of GWRS' newest acquisitions of 4-axle power; 577 was one of two ex-Conrail B40-8s purchased from GECX in 2021 and got a fresh coat of GWRS paint added prior to delivery. Trailing is an ex-ATSF B40-8W still in BNSF H2 paint.

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Great Western Rail…
Date:	07/25/2023
Location:	Neville
Province:	Saskatchewan

1 Comments | 9 Favourites

The Mon-Fri CPKC Regina turn borrowed work train-assigned CP 6069 and CP 5798 from Moose Jaw this week, whilst the regularly assigned 4-axles were busy doing orders for the Bulyea Sub. Looser restrictions on local power allow them to run through the steep Qu'Appelle Valley grades while work train power has to be treated with a higher standard of care if they are to do any revenue runs. Thus, this SD40 pair had a couple of days to themselves as substitutes to pick up the power shortage slack. I had coincidentally taken the day off from my summer job oblivious and hoping for GP38 action, so it was with much gratitude that I saw this oddball power on temporary revenue service.

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Canadian Pacific K…
Date:	08/16/2023
Location:	Regina
Province:	Saskatchewan

4 Comments | 10 Favourites

After spending an extended period of time in BC on welded rail duty, 5792 and 5988 headed to Winnipeg this week to refill Transcona rail loads to ping-pong back west. Here they lead CWR-21 at Crecy Junction, intersecting the CPKC Indian Head Sub with the CN Ross Terminal Lead, the eventual CN Glenavon Sub, and the SSR Tyvan Sub. Note the different names given to the searchlight stacks: the south stack is for CPKC on Mile 88.8 Indian Head, while the north is for CN on Mile 4.4 Ross Terminal. Because of this, only the approach-lit 888 signals light up as 5792 clears the junction, whilst 44 remains unlit. This was another instance of fortune on my part, as I was not aware of its presence until I overheard RTC coordinating a meet of this CWR with 112 at McLean. I subsequently diverted from my initial plan to do a quick bike ride to shoot local movements, to a roughly 30km trek round-trip to grab them at this unique searchlight setup.

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Canadian Pacific K…
Date:	07/22/2023
Location:	Pilot Butte
Province:	Saskatchewan

Comments | 10 Favourites

The 2023 sprayer is back for seconds as it retraces its steps through Saskatchewan for some branch line sprayin'. Now wielding the red barn that had been occupied in BC for some time after post-Mayfield repairs were done to it in Ontario, it replaced the Toronto-allocated 5988 somewhere near the west coast to ping-pong it back east. CPKC 2WWE-08 departs Moose Jaw in beautiful low-angled 7am sunlight, for a weekend of spraying the Weyburn Subdivision. Here it clears Moose Jaw East with the ex-CN (Now Southern Rails Co-op) Avonlea Sub bridge overlooking.

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Canadian Pacific K…
Date:	07/08/2023
Location:	Moose Jaw
Province:	Saskatchewan

1 Comments | 13 Favourites

Ever outpaced a Dash 7 on a bicycle? That would be the story of this little operation of mine in recent weeks. The most recent episode of this little gem being reactivated by SSR since its last action in 2020 (Check out Matt Watson's captures of its previous activity <a href="http://www.railpictures.ca/upload/while-i-was-kind-of-bummed-that-the-stewart-southern-railway-had-no-cars-on-the-return-trip-out-of-regina-a-b23-7-on-the-road-in-2020-is-definitely-worth-a-shot"> http://www.railpictures.ca/upload/while-i-was-kind-of-bummed-that-the-stewart-southern-railway-had-no-cars-on-the-return-trip-out-of-regina-a-b23-7-on-the-road-in-2020-is-definitely-worth-a-shot </a> ) began roughly sometime in April when some other attendees at Railfest Regina spread the word about the B23-7 being active once more. Being pre-occupied with my summer job here in Regina and a healthy flow of Albertan work trains from Winnipeg in May, it took me until June when I began placing the SSR in my crosshairs as this trio had been sitting in Regina shops for almost 2 weeks straight.
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Having just missed an outbound run to Stoughton a couple of days prior and the thought that weekend runs weren't a possibility due to the nature of shortlines hiring retired Class 1 crews, I was blissfully out shooting CN local power at the other end of town on my bike when I heard SSR call the Assistant Trainmaster to work Regina. I quickly concluded my CN activities and rode a tailwind across the city with a small detour by the shops to confirm my suspicion. I then continued to my first planned spot on Highway 33 which runs parallel to the Tyvan Subdivision, where I posted to wait them out. Realizing that track speed is 10mph, and that my bike just averaged 20mph getting to the first spot after shooting it, I decided to make chase and beat them to Richardson where they terminated, just 2 mileposts away. During this rush to pack up my equipment, I accidentally destroyed my radio scanner earphones, snagging them on the bike chain and I even had a small wipeout pulling into Richardson due to the gravel road consisting of a looser grade of gravel. The bike was temporarily incapacitated with the chain coming off so I briefly abandoned my bike while I ran off to grab this frame. Just another fun adventure with a pay-off in the end for the books. By the time I returned to Regina, my mileage that day totaled 64km.

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Stewart Southern R…
Date:	06/17/2023
Location:	Richardson
Province:	Saskatchewan

4 Comments | 15 Favourites

I had been spending the last 15 seconds staring at the clouds after E59 departed Regina with CP 3017 leading as shadows began blanketing the ground around me. Luckily a hole emerged last second and sunlight managed to strike the rare breed of AC power. This unit had been on my bucket list for this summer back home in the prairies as it's been locally assigned in the area for a few years, but managing to bag it by luck on my way to the Regina Railfest modeling show sure was nice.

Name:	Eric Fallas
Railway:	Canadian Pacific K…
Date:	04/29/2023
Location:	Regina
Province:	Saskatchewan

Comments | 9 Favourites

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