Huge fire at main CN rail yard in Edmonton

[tonyvdb]

Details are still not available but from my place I can see that there is a huge fire burning at the western Canada main CN rail yard (Walker yard) and according to the news it is not under control and two large structures are involved.
Given the location of the fire it looks like possibly one of the main service garages or shop and these are very old structures built in the early 40s from what I understand.
More details to follow as I find out more.

 

[illinoiscentral]

Thank you for this Tony!
I hope they get this under control soon.
Please update as you soon as you can.

Woody

 

[Steveo241]

Yipes! That doesn't sound to good. Sounds like a hot topic I'll have to keep my eyes on (No Pun intended). Hopefully it's nothing like: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/08/04/train-burning.html

Steve

 

[tonyvdb]

Its clearly a large fire as I live about 8km away (5 miles) and the black smoke from it is very thick and wide.

 

[Steveo241]

Well...how do you know it is coming from there? You must know the area amazingly well!

 

[tonyvdb]

Several of the TV stations here have video cameras located on the taller downtown buildings here and they clearly show the fire to be on the CN rail yard in the area of the shops. The news reports also said that Fire crews are fighting the fire in two structures at the yard and is not under control.
Ive also lived in Edmonton all my life and know the city very well.

 

[Steveo241]

Ah, I see. Well hopefully that doesn't get deadly. And hopefully the yard doesn't get too damaged.

 

[illinoiscentral]

I hope that no IC locomotives are destroyed in this!

 

[tonyvdb]

Its a huge yard that stretches almost the entire length of the city (over 11klm long) East to west. The bulk of the main yard is where the fire is located.
Look here for an image of the area.

 

[Tiger313]

mmm oddness... the Edmonton Sun and Edmonton Journal have no mention of a fire, nor do CTV and CBC. Have any internet linkies?

 

[tonyvdb]

Global Edmonton news had details on their 11pm news it was two storage buildings that were on fire. What was in them is unclear but they sustained substantial damage. From what I could see there were no locomotives or rail cars near the fire just a car and truck that also burned in the fire.

 

[cascaderailroad]

Its a huge yard that stretches almost the entire length of the city (over 11klm long) East to west. The bulk of the main yard is where the fire is located.
Look here for an image of the area.

The link to the satelite image shows a really cool looking yard, just begging to be modeled in Trainz.

 

[tonyvdb]

Here is a link the the news story of the fire in our local newspaper

 

[tonyvdb]

The link to the satelite image shows a really cool looking yard, just begging to be modeled in Trainz.

If you scroll to the west on that map here you see more of the yard including a large container loading yard. I already have a smaller version of that yard in my route "Alberta run" that I am currently working on re doing the yard in. There is also another yard on the east side of that main line here.

 

[cascaderailroad]

Cool...what is the elevation of your route...I am building a British Columbia Kicking Horse Pass-Spiral Loops route, and I thought it would be a good thing to make them mergable heights.

 

[tonyvdb]

When I started working on this route in TRS 04 I had no idea about how to adjust for elevation and I started with the default grid height and went from there. I have lots of elevation changes in it but not very accurate.
You can see lots of screenshots of it on my website link in my signature below.