Canadian Pacific Holiday Train

Canadian Pacific Holiday Train

Hi folks!  I just received this lovely e-mail from Mark.

Last Monday, November 27, the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train (or CPKS this year officially) made its annual trek through Eastern Ontario. I took Ollie and Leo down to Merrickville to catch it just around sunset. 

Here are my photos, and I will also send a video in a separate email due to size. Perhaps you can make up a blog posting or share these with our friends?

Thanks, and wishing everyone a safe and Merry Christmas, and Happy Holiday season.

Mark

 We parked the car on the aptly named “Railroad Street” which is runs just north of the railroad crossing on Broadway (Highway 2) in Merrickville. This gave us a clear vantage point, as all the crowds gather on the south side of the track in the industrial area.

The locomotive pulling the Holiday Train this year seemed quite small, seemed to me at first glance to be about the size of a GP30 - I am used to seeing larger units like Dash 8s pulling this consist as it makes its way across Canada. I had to look this one up. CP 2249 is a GP20. I imagine the locomotives get swapped out throughout the journey.

That being said, of course, this consist is small and cute in its own right, as is befitting a “holiday train.” Following the locomotive there are four boxcars with one word each “Canadian Pacific Holiday Train.” After that one sees a number of additional boxcars, each adorned with a beautiful light display. Thank goodness for LEDs! Here is Leo enjoying the view.

A great view of “trains on trains” in this photo. Santa himself as the engineer! I guess Rudolph and pals are out of a job this year… :-)

The boxcar consist culminates with the special “stage door” boxcar (see later photo) which opens up for the band to play at each stop along the journey. Here we see the three or four heavyweight Madison passenger coaches that serve as accommodation for the cast and crew as they make their way across Canada, a journey which takes several weeks and features different local bands in different parts of the country.

Observation car with brightly lit wreath at the end.

Mark, Ollie and Leo take in the action!

A somewhat grainy photo taken in the fading light from a distance (since we didn’t mix in with the crowd). Here the band has stepped onto the boxcar “stage” for the act.

Thanks so much, Mark, for sending along these great pics and images!

In other news, Chris sent along this interesting image of the frustrations one encounters when 3D printing along with the message below.  His e-mail was titled: "3D Printing - Behind the Curtain"

Hi Mike, you've kindly included some photos in your blogs of my 3D prints, so I thought that perhaps if you might want to include a photo of what's behind the curtain, so to speak -- just in case anyone has the idea that it's simply a matter of pressing a button and waiting for the printer to finish -- these are some of the failures, false starts, and other mishaps that occurred while finishing up the recently-completed passenger trucks in 1:48.

Thanks so much for the image and note, Chris.  Later Chris informed me that it is too difficult to recycle these little mishaps, but alas, it is not as easy as one thinks.  Here is Chris's response to my query regarding the potential of recycling.

Regarding recycling, unfortunately the answer is: it's difficult. 

I personally print with two types of filament: PLA and PETG (there are a lot of other types available, but so far I've limited myself to those two.

A lot of PLA and PETG filaments already contain recycled material, but that material comes from industrial sources -- unfortunately there's no way for individuals to send their waste material for recycling (the city blue box certainly won't accept it). 

PLA is primarily plant starch, so 100% biodegradable, but it's a bit more involved than just throwing it in your backyard composter (and obviously the city green bin doesn't want it either). 

PETG is the same material that plastic water bottles are made from, so technically it could be easily recycled -- the problem is that there is no easy way to determine whether a given blob of 3D waste is PETG or is one of the multitude of other filament types out there that need to be recycled in a different process (and hence would contaminate the PETG process).  That's why recyclers will only accept waste from industrial sources, which can deliver waste in large amounts that are guaranteed to be a specific material. 

All the best...the entire OVGRS crew!  Ottawa, Ontario, Canada