Caption: In summer 2008 a bunch of CP brass wanted to see operations on the company's secondary route across the prairies, so this fine looking set of equipment was called upon. The trip originated in Calgary and only made it to Edmonton before encountering its first hurdle. Being that several wheel sets on the coaches had been b/o'd and needed to be swapped out. Late the next day they were on the move again and made it to Hardisty. The next morning they found that one of the units was completely out of fuel and the other was low. No fuel truck arrangements could be made so before leaving Hardisty the decision was made to steal an SD40-2 off another train. So another late start put them only at Wilkie (about 120 miles away) by days end. The next morning the SD40 was removed, the F's were filled up and this thing was getting closer to me. But when taking the siding at Biggar for a meet, a wheel set on one of the coaches derailed. It was nothing too serious but it caused another significant delay and it was quite late by the time they made it into Saskatoon that night. The next morning all seemed to be well as I chased them eastward and made this shot on the Sutherland Sub at Plunkett. But sure enough... Not long after they left the Sutherland and began there journey southward on the Lanigan Sub, they encountered a good old fashioned tie replacement program. A little under four hours was spent waiting to be let through the foreman's limits, during which the crew gave there rest notice (to be in and off in 10 hours) and all kinds of panic and plans could be heard over the scanner. In the end the crew wound up working over in return for a taxi home from Regina afterwords. At Regina the train was reunited with the main line again and began its trip homeward towards Calgary, during which it had no problems at all. I hope the big wigs enjoyed there trip on the branch lines because I sure enjoyed hearing about and photographing it.