Riding the Alberta Prairie DVD

Click to enlarge

Travel to western Canada for steam action and riding of the Alberta Prairie Railway from Stettler to Big Valley, Alberta. Located roughly between Calgary and Edmonton this is one of Canada's premier steam tourist operations. Power is 2-8-0 #41, which was previously Mississippian 77, and was built for the Frisco Railroad. We even include a couple of old clips of the engine as 77 in the background introduction on the dvd.

As the title indicates this is mostly a train ride, as we see the sights and sounds aboard the train as it heads to Big Valley. We see on-board entertainment with a singer, and a couple doing show tunes, and of course we enjoy the rolling scenery as we travel along. We also see some views from the vestibule of 41 working along ahead of us, and the train is stopped by robbers along the way, with some boarding the train. A shootout also takes place within view of the train patrons. After this we board the cab of 41 for the final short distance into the well maintained depot at Big Valley. This ends our coverage of the train ride, but we have more.

This video was shot in 1999, and we centered our trip around a run of 6060 which would be a longer run. This was a trip east on the former CP line from Stettler to Coronation, and today this line is completely gone. Our coverage is some nice pacing views we shot from the highway along side 6060, which is a 4-8-2 and the largest active steam engine in Canada.

Then we see some servicing views of 6060 at Coronation before ending our steam coverage. This footage was all shot with the same digital camera, and it is all wide screen 16x9. There are no runbys per se as they were all shot with another camera and not 16x9.

Thus most of this is the train ride on 41(about 25 minutes), and 10 more minutes of 6060.

So the train segment is 35 minutes. As a special FREE bonus, we have included another 25 minutes of Canadian wildlife which has a peaceful music background. This was all shot near Jasper, Alberta on the same trip.