Canada 2009 - 17th July

A fairly quiet relaxing day, although I did get to Trains & Such on 4th Street NW, to see what sort of model railway gear they had. A good shop with friendly staff, a good selection of books, rolling stock, and accessories. I didn’t see too many modern CP locos, but did get a CN (Canadian National) Dash9-C44, a Canadian grain car (they are cylindrical, where the American grain cars are straight or curved sided). I also purchased a couple of books, one on the Western Pacific in Colour, and the other on Burlington Northern rolling stock colour.

A note about Calgary streets. The city is divided into four quadrants; north west, north east, south east, and south west. There is a Centre Street running north-south through the city, basically in line with the Calgary Tower. This is the separation between east and west, while the Bow River is the north-south separator. Looking at the north section only the next street to the right of Centre Street (looking north) is 1st Street NE and the next 2nd Street NE. The first street to the west of Centre Street is 1st Street NW, and so on to the outskirts of the city. Same on the south side. The avenues run east-west, and again are numbered from the Bow River. Major roads are Boulevards, and more important roads (nearly motorways) are Trails. Trains & Such is at 2604 4th Street NW, so is between 25 and 26 Avenues, four streets west of Centre Street, and north of the river. There could well be similar addresses in the other three sectors, such as 2604 4th Street NE.

Shamina and Rozi went out shopping for a few hours, while I tried, with the assistance of Rizwan, to get the computer to talk to Alastair’s video camera, with no luck, although the computer temporarily recognises that something is attached via a USB connection.