A quiet few moments to capture railway history

Last November, I visited my family around Remembrance Day because I hadn't seen my father over the summer and I wanted to visit with him in his new home. It was a busy weekend with not a lot of time, but I did manage to sneak a couple of minutes trackside to see if there was anything to see at the Sarnia CN Yard.

The yard was largely quiet, although I did manage to see an interesting CSX interchange train picking up a massive piece of equipment that was to be delivered to one of its industrial customers south of Sarnia. You can read about that here.

Other than that, I busied myself taking some shots of the odd assortment of locomotives parked around the old CN roundhouse, which is now the home of Lambton Diesel Specialists, which repairs, rebuilds and leases motive power. You often see old engines there, when they are stripped for parts. Sometimes, you see old units there that are given new life. It's always a mixed bag, which adds a little colour to your railfanning in this area.

This unit below was the one that really caught my eye. I had never seen this scheme before or heard of this railway. It was a misty, grey day so I did my best to grab a photo of it.

 

I was immediately stumped at to what GIO Railways was or where it would have operated. At first glance, the hood is a giveaway as to this engine's lineage. This is clearly a former CP Rail GP9. Thankfully, a couple of quick searches on this unit yielded some unexpected results. 

 

Since I no longer live in Southern Ontario, I didn't know about GIO, which is a fairly new shortline operator. This unit, which was leased from LDS, was first used several years ago when GIO took over operations on the dormant Cayuga Subdivision. The sub, which stretches from St. Thomas to Delhi (pronounced DEL-high), was once a CN concern before it was abandoned. After CN stopped operations, Ontario Southland operated the line before it went dormant again in 2020. In 2022, GIO Rail cleared the brush, laid some new ties and resumed operations, with this old GP9 as its first unit running light over the line.

 

That unit has since been returned to Sarnia, obviously, as operations on the line have been upgraded to include GP38s, judging by this YouTube clip. The newer units no longer have the GIO Railways grey scheme. Instead, they are straight black and are patched LDSX, which means the railway continues to lease its units from Sarnia. GIO Railways is perhaps better known as the company that bought Trillium Rail in the Niagara Region. 

 

This summer, when I returned to Sarnia, the old GP9 was still there, looking like it was either being readied to return to action or being kept in storage. It looked like it had been refurbed at the very least. Note the motors under tarps on flatcars right beside the old roundhouse.

 

While at the yard in November, I also caught this old SW switcher in a red and grey scheme. As this was the only vantage point I had, I couldn't get a side view of the unit. I'm not sure what railway it once belonged to, as I am not familiar with this livery. That's what I love about this old roundhouse. You never know what you are going to see. We live at a time when the number of railways is shrinking and many of today's trains cars are lease fleet blanks, which doesn't leave a lot of variety. This is a spot where you can see railway history.

 

There's also a straight red geep to the left of the image, with a livery similar to CP. I'm not sure where this unit might have originated, since I couldn't see its operating marks from where I was standing. In the centre of the image, there appears to be two other GIO units, one a GP9 of CN origin and a GP38-2 in the rear.

 

Here's a shot of some other SW units, including Nova Chemical's SW unit, which appears to be patched as LDSX 7316, meaning it's a leased unit in Nova colours. In my travels around Lambton County this summer, I noticed that a newer switcher is now handling the tank cars at the Nova Corunna refinery, where Nova handles its own industrial trackage, off the CN St. Clair River Industrial Spur. That means this old unit is either in for servicing or awaiting reassignment. 

 

 

Here's one last image from my November visit trackside in Sarnia. The LDS roundhouse is adjacent to CN's refuelling pad, which means when things are quiet, you can get a glimpse of a lot of yard horsepower in one image. Here's a shot of quite a few old warhorses sitting idle on a quiet November day.

 

 

It's always fun to see old engines that aren't common on railways anymore, like the SW1200s or old CP-style GP9s. I like sharing shots like these because you can look at the image for a while and always find something new. All of these shots have multiple elements that are worth exploring. It might not be as exciting as watching a mainline freight roar by, but for those of us who appreciate rail history, a few shots of a quiet yard can be quite illuminating.

 

UPDATE ON MESSAGES 

 

Since I have switched my messaging over to moderation mode, I'm happy to see that the spam messages have disappeared from my site. There are two sides to this, obviously. My messages from readers has also decreased, which is understandable. I don't want to make it harder for anyone to share their thoughts here or contact me, but I will be sticking with moderated messages for the time being, until I am satisfied that the spam scourge has abated. I'm curious to read what you think. 

Odds and ends on my summer travels

My family has done a fair bit of travelling so far this summer, as our life is more stable. After a wonderful visit to my hometown around Canada Day, we were able to visit my wife's family in London and Stratford in recent days. 

This being vacation, I was able to make my way trackside quite a bit and was fortunately, saw lots of mainline action in both Sarnia and Stratford. I have not even begun to process some of my better shots and figure out how to present them thematically. So, as these are the lazy days of summer and I am not thinking too hard, here are a few random photos that I captured in my travels that I thought would be interesting to share.

This shot made me laugh a bit. This was taken in the eastbound lanes of the 407 as we approached MacMillan Yard. There is an overpass in this area where container trains are often passing over the highway. On the other track, a trio of engines sat, awaiting their next assignment. The unit in the middle was clearly an ex-BNSF unit that was hastily patched over by CN. I shared this with a couple of my friends, and they had the same reaction. Nice patch job!

Over the course of any year spent railfanning in Ottawa, it is inevitable that there will be a large amount of Via Rail pictures. A friend jokingly told me as we were preparing to head home to Ottawa, "It's back to Via Rail purgatory." Don't get me wrong. I will take photos of any trains, but Via Rail photos can become monotonous after a while, which is why I wasn't all that keen to capture passenger rail photos in my travels. This shot is an exception, though. I thought it was cool to catch Train 84 backing into Sarnia Station from its overnight parking spur.

Via operates one train out of Sarnia each morning and one train into Sarnia each evening. The new Venture sets mean that Via no longer has to wye its trains in the yard, as they are bi-directional. All they have to do is tuck in to the spur beside the station each evening and back in to the station the following morning. Easy. 

Via Rail used to have early morning service from Sarnia when I was a university student, but the train now leaves mid-morning, which is better for those who aren't earlybirds. I wasn't specifically seeking out Via trains on this morning, but I was happy to catch this move. 

When we first arrived in Stratford, I headed for the CN/GEXR yard to see if anything was moving. This isn't like Sarnia, of course. You need to know when things are moving on the CN Guelph Subdivision or you will be waiting quite a long time. Luckily, I had some good information to work from, which allowed me to catch both CN and GEXR action. However, when I first arrived, there was nothing happening in the yard and the familiar GEXR units were nowhere to be seen from the station platform, which I found odd.

So I took a walk across Nile Street crossing to Guelph Street, which gives you a different perspective of the yard. Deep in the yard, tucked away behind long strings of steel coil cars, were the two GEXR units, parked at an odd angle. I was told that these tracks are situated like this because they once led to the old Stratford roundhouse. I didn't know that until I shared this photo with a friend who knows the local operations.

So it was cool to catch these units framed against the massive Masterfeeds complex. Those elevators helped frame many of my shots over the course of my visit. 

It was a ridiculously profitable vacation for me for future blog content, but as mentioned, I need to get some themes together to properly share some of my photos. I look forward to the challenge. 

 

Summer observations and musings

I spent a wonderful few days with my family in Southwestern Ontario for the Canada Day weekend. It was fun to be in my hometown for Canada Day for the first time in decades. While there, I was able to amass countless photos from the local railway operations. My challenge now is how to organize it all thematically so it makes sense in the context of this blog.

First, a bit of news passed along from a reader (thanks Michael F.). The City of Ottawa is planning to widen Carling Avenue and do away with a railway bridge over the road in the west end of the city. This old bridge carried transcontinental freight and passenger trains through Ottawa for generations, but the Beachburg Subdivision was torn up past Nepean Junction years ago, making this bridge a relic of the past. It will now go so that the one narrow stretch of Carling can be alleviated.

This is a photo I took from the passenger seat of my car three years ago. It always pays to take photos of the mundane, because you don't know when the mundane might become something worth remembering. I will be glad to see this stretch of Carling widened because the narrow fit beneath the rail bridge is dangerous and the rails are long gone, so it's time to do the practical thing. The city doesn't mention on its site whether there will be any bridge over Carling once the road is widened. I would imagine the old rail right-of-way would make a nice bike and pedestrian trail.

Isn't it interesting that, at a time when yet more of Ottawa's rail infrastructure is being removed, there are open musings from our federal government of building new railway infrastructure as part of the government's drive to devote two percent of the country's GDP on defense spending. Given how much of our area rail network has been removed, it would seem remote that there would be any strategic new rail infrastructure built here. However, those who have lived here for a while know that military vehicles and equipment were once delivered to CFB Petawawa via rail. I dare say this wasn't a huge source of revenue or regular thing for CP, CN or Ottawa Central, but there was a time when rail served our defense industry in the area. Check out this post from Trackside Treasure for more information about this piece of railway history.

Also, here's a YouTube video of Ottawa Central making a military delivery to Petawawa. 

Before I get to my treasure trove of rail images from the Sarnia area, I'd like to share a few attempts at rail photography on the 401/407 and the other major highways between Ottawa and my hometown. I did see two freight trains going through Kingston, but neither could be photographed from my vantage point in the passenger seat. 

Then there was the stretch of the 407 near CN's MacMillan Yard. This is wide highway and the safety barriers make a shot of the yard challenging to say the least, but with a little bit of cropping and luck, you can at least get a glimpse of this huge operation.

This image might look a bit strange. Why so much sky and so little actual railways? Well, that's because I had to crop out the highway safety barrier from the shot. You can at least get a small glimpse of a former CitiRail lease unit making its way toward the 407 while a string of autoracks to the right await their next destination. There are also some boxcars next to the CN building to the left of the shot. I wish I could offer something a bit more detailed, but I like scanning through this shot for all the various interesting elements.

Also, I did catch a passing container train making its way over the highway near Airport Road.

Here's one final shot that I had been meaning to get for years. It once again qualifies as one of those mundane shots that might not mean anything at the time, but can one day become more important. Here's a shot of the old CN ferry landing in Sarnia, as seen from Front Street. The old yard that the railway once maintained for shipping oversized cars over the St. Clair River is now occupied by a gravel dock. But notice how the rails are still there at the edge of the old ferry dock.

 

Given how quick CN is to tear up every last scrap of track here in Ottawa, I was surprised to see rails still there at the end of the old ferry dock, some 30 years after the new tunnel was put into use beneath the river, making the ferry operation obsolete. 

 

I also caught an interesting meet while looking over the old ferry operation, which was once connected by the CN Point Edward Spur, which is still in place today as it serves the grain elevator on Sarnia Bay.

 

Okay, so it's not the type of meet we usually like to see in a railway blog, but I thought it was cool to catch two Great Lakes freighters making their way north and south along the river. The southbound ship is the Mark W. Barker, an American ship owned by the Interlakes Steamship Company. This ship carries taconite, salt and limestone, although it has carried parts of wide turbines in the past. I was not able to get a clean enough shot to read the name of the northbound ship.

 

As I am about to head out on the second vacation with my family, which promises more railway photos to come, I thought a post with some random shots might work best, as I am still thinking about how to properly organize the stacks of images I intend to share from Sarnia in the months to come. Stay tuned. 

Some rare mileage for some rare cargo

In November, I went to see family for a quick visit and to drop off some Christmas presents. It turned out to be a stroke of genius, as the postal strike scotched any mail delivery for Christmas shortly after my visit. I shared some details of my visit to Windsor on that journey, but there were other cool rail sightings and meets that weekend, including this incredibly lucky shot I snagged at Sarnia yard, as a CSX interchange move contained a most unexpected surprise.

I dropped by the yard late on a damp November morning, and it appeared at the outset that nothing was happening.The yard was largely quiet, except for the string of diesels idling at the refueling pad near the old roundhouse (more images from that to be shared in a later post).

Deep in the yard however, east of the Indian Road overpass, I could see something happening in the yard through the fog.

A CN yard engine was idling there for a few minutes before I spotted an engine with a yellow nose emerging from the refineries and industrial operations east of Indian Road. I was a little surprised, as I have never seen a CSX train this deep in Sarnia Yard. I will admit that my time spent at this yard is quite sporadic, so it might be quite common. Still, every time I see CSX in Sarnia yard, its transfer or interchange jobs are usually situated closer to the Via station in the west end of the yard. So this train being this deep in the yard was unusual, at least to me.

As the train began to slowly make its way toward the station and toward its home rails, I noticed something interesting with the power, to say nothing of an oddity at the end of the train. First, the power.

You can see from the rebuilt cab that this is not the typical GP38-2 unit that has been the power of choice in this area for decades. This unit, with a boxier cab is actually a rebuilt GP40, from what I could find online. I see it referred to as GP40-3 6547, part of a series of old geep rebuilds that have been rolling out of CSX's Huntington shops for years. From what I could read, the new cabs are safer and more resistant to crashes.The units are also equipped with new heating and air conditioning, new control systems, new positive train control technology and refurbished starters. Both units pulling this train were rebuilds. The new cabs remind me a bit of the old GP30 cabs, which were a bit more boxy than their peers of the time. I think I might like these rebuilds better if the cabs had curved corners like the GP30s, but that's just aesthetics.

You can see from the photo above that I tried to capture the CN unit deep in the yard in my shots. I love capturing multiple railways in one shot. 

Here's a better shot, below, of the power from the side. You can see the noses and the cabs both look much boxier than the old geeps, with the headlines in the nose recessed and other features that have been modernized. Not sure what I think of this new look. It's something different for CSX in Canada for sure.

So let's focus on the back end of the train, with that impressively large cargo bringing up the rear. I was pretty stunned to see anything on a CSX train other than tank cars and covered hoppers. Its customer base is almost exclusively industrial operations in the Chemical Valley in Sarnia and related industry south of the city. The goods it carries are always in a tank car or hopper.

A giant tarp-covered piece of industrial equipment sat on a 12 axle centre-depressed flatcar, buffered by two empty gondolas.This is a serious piece of machinery. But what is it? For that answer, I turned to the Chesapeake & Ohio Canadian Division Facebook group, where people much more knowledgeable than me had an answer. There is writing on the tarp, which says Do Not Hump. That seems obvious, but a good reminder nonetheless.

 

 

I was told this car was carrying a gas turbine used in stationary power generation. It was produced by GE Energy in Greenville, South Carolina. From there, it was shipped via Norfolk Southern to East Point, South Carolina.

 

At that point, CSX took over the move as it moved it to Wixom, Michigan. 

 

From there, it was taken through to Flint, Michigan via Lake State Railway (LSRC). 

 

From Flint, CSX power took it to Port Huron on CN H710. 

 

In Port Huron,CN brought it through the tunnel under the St. Clair River into Sarnia. 

 

From there, CSX took it back to home rails where it was delivered to a customer in Courtright, a small town south of Sarnia with a number of industrial customers in the area, including the CF Industries plant (formerly Tera, C-I-L).

 

UPDATE: The one missing piece of information that I could not figure out was the identity of the customer that needed the turbine. That was, until the day I put this post online and a Sarnia local told me the turbine was delivered to Greenfields Energy, a cogeneration plant beside the CF plant. There are a number of power generation facilities in the Sarnia area that are producing vast amounts of electricity, some of this generation being fed by the output of refineries themselves.

 

So that is the story of how this piece of industrial equipment found its way to Sarnia and how I just so happened to be around when it made its final move onto the CSX Sarnia Subdivision. Here's a going away shot below of the train making its way around the tunnel gantry on the rails curving by the roundhouse.

 

 And one more shot around the gantry.

 

 

I didn't stick around much longer, as I didn't want to keep my family waiting. But it was nice to have a few quiet moments at the rail yard and be treated to a surprise.

 

I have shot mainly CN and Via Rail photographs in the past few years, so it was nice to be able to capture something different. In a way, the fog and cloudy skies also helped, as they cut down on the shadows that usually plague shots in this area on clear days. Some good railway karma for a change.

I'll take it.

Guest Post: More GP9 memories from across Canada

I seemed to have hit a sweet spot in my previous post about the history of the venerable GP9 locomotive. As I mentioned in that post, this old relic is fast disappearing from most major railways, given its age. The last GP9s produced in Canada came off the line at the old GM Diesel in London, Ont. in 1963. CN and CP have used them for decades, although there are none left on CP and only a few dozen left on CN rails.

I shared a few photos of my meets with these engines over the years, including on the CP, CN and even the Goderich Exeter Railway. After I published that post, I received interesting feedback from a few fellow bloggers in appreciation of these geeps.

It occurred to me that perhaps my generation of railfan will wax poetic over these first-generation diesels the way previous generations bemoan the loss the steam locomotives after the late 1950s and early 1960s. I have to admit I don’t understand the fascination with steam locomotives at all, given my age and my lack of experience with them trackside. However, given my fond memories of old GP9s and even SW1200s, maybe I’m not all that different from steam fans after all.

One of those who seemed enthused about my GP9 retrospective is Steve Boyko, author, poet and prominent rail blogger extraordinaire. Most people who come to this blog will know Steve from his long-running railway and photography blog, traingeek.ca. It was one blog that directly influenced my decision to start The Beachburg Sub. Steve was kind enough to share a few of his own shots of GP9s from his time trackside, which I am pleased to share below.

I’ll start with a shot Steve took in Winnipeg, where he lives. The descriptions below the photos are Steve’s, not mine. Read on:

CP operated many GP7s and GP9s in Winnipeg in the first decade of the 21^st century, in local switcher service and local yard service. They frequently operated in pairs, like these two about to cross Plinguet Street, south of Whittier Junction.

An overhead view of CP 1540 in yard service, October 29, 2011.

Many CP switchers met their end here in late 2009. A scrapper used a siding in Fort Garry to scrap quite a few locomotives over a few months. I documented many from a distance, including this massacre of four CP GP9s – 1558 and 1556, bracketing two SOO GP9s, 4202 and 4204.

You might wonder why a CN GP9 is at the famous McAdam, New Brunswick train station – a former bastion of CP power. This line has been owned by shortline NB Southern Railway for quite a while, and they leased a few CN GP9s for local switching in Saint John. Occasionally, one would be put on the Saint John-Brownville Junction freight for extra power. However, they are not permitted to cross into the U.S., so they would be dropped in McAdam. When I visited McAdam on July 19, 2008, 7038 was being used to switch the yard.

This is a very pedestrian shot of CN 7059 passing the Staples store near Island Yard in Saint John, coming back from perhaps switching the Irving refinery. I include it because I have one of the number boards that used to grace this locomotive, which has since donned Cando colours and a new number.

CN often used a pairing of GP9s and a slug for local switching in the Winnipeg area. Here are two pairings, with 7213 at Transcona (with modern CN.ca paint scheme) above and 7254 in Winnipeg below.

Here's an oddity below. Read Steve's caption of this scene below the image.

I’m not sure why this GP9 was on top of the hump in Symington Yard in Winnipeg. Typically, hump locomotives were GP38-2 locomotives at this time, but for whatever reason, 7258 and slug 268 were up high.

For a long time, CP 8251 was one of the very few active locomotives around Winnipeg still bearing a multimark. Here a rainbow graces the scene after a summer storm. CP 8251 was retired in 2013 but has been leased to Viterra to serve a grain elevator.

My thanks to Steve for sharing these photos. It’s a real treat to feature photographs and information outside my usual haunts here in Ottawa and southern Ontario. In keeping with this post’s theme of GP9 photos, I’d like to share three additional GP9 photos that didn’t make the cut in the previous post. 

The first is an old shot my Dad took at the GEXR yard in Startford in the early 1990s. Note the faded Shakespearan name "Falstaff" on the lead engine, in appreciation of the railway's hometown.

A few years ago, Eric Gagnon, author of the equally acclaimed Trackside Treasure blog and several railway books, shared this photo print with me of GEXR GP9 177 leading a string of old EMD power in switching the salt mine on the Lake Huron habourfront in Goderich. Date unknown, but it appears to be a 1990s shot. 

Finally, I'll add one last shot of my own that I did not manage to squeeze into my original post on these engines. Here's a great shot of GP9 720 and slug 223 leading 4761 in Sarnia Yard in August 2014.

So that just about wraps up my tribute to the venerable GP9. I am also working on a similar post about the equally venerable SW1200 and its family of switchers. Stay tuned for that one a little down the road. My thanks to Steve Boyko, the original Train Geek, for sharing his photos this week and his contribution to the cause on this blog. And thanks to Eric Gagnon of Trackside Treasure. It's been years since he shared a bunch of prints with me. I finally have the chance to share one of them.

The GP9: A Scrappy Survivor

When I was visiting another blog a few months ago, I was interested in a comment about the fast-fading GP9s still out there in service. It hit me then that I have tonnes of photos of this unit from my years of sitting trackside. It also hit me that I might not be able to see these old beasts much longer. So I decided to create a small tribute to this unsung hero of railroading, which has done yeoman's work for decades without much glory.

The GP9 officially ended production at General Motors Diesel in London, Ontario, in 1963. The engine first sported a 16-cylinder, 1,750 horsepower engine running on four axles, not factoring in the B units and slugs that were produced as well as the CN GP9RM rebuilds. Some of the slugs are still in service in certain CN yards. Various sites online peg sales of the engine at 3,500 units in the United States and nearly 650 in Canada.

GM London's production of this unit actually ended four years later than EMD in the United States. The 2022 Canadian Trackside Guide says CN still has 29 in active service. CP has retired its fleet, with the bodies and chassis of the old locomotives used for its fleet of GP20C-ECOs. What seems strange to me is when I find references to these engines being preserved. It makes me feel old.

Searching through my photos from my teenage years, I found two early 1990s photographs of these geeps in Southwestern Ontario. The first shot is from Canadian Pacific's Windsor Yard, where GP9s were once a common sight. The most prominent GP9 in this shot is CP 1619, with a fast fading action scheme still visible, complete with the multimark at the rear. Beside it you can see CP 8226, in a more recent action red scheme. This newer one lasted a long time, as you can see it in action on the Galt Sub in this photo in 2008. Although these two units look similar, note that they are numbered in different series. Scanning through some sites online, it seems CP had these geeps numbered in the 1500s, 1600s and 8000s. I tried to find a more recent shot of 1619, but was no able to find anything worth a link. You can also see a piece of a lumber car to the left in this shot from 1991. Note CP's unique high number board plates and classification lights above the front windows.

Closer to where I grew up in Sarnia, I did come across GP9 rebuilds a few times in the 1990s, although at that time, CN's stables of SW1200s shared local switching duties with the GP9s. Here's one of my earliest shots of a GP9RM from Sarnia Yard, when you were able to roam the yard more freely.This shot below is of CN 7226 with slug 259 in front. It was an unforgiving day for sun when I took this shot in 1992. No amount of photoshop could fix this. You can see how CN's number boards were not mounted on extra high plates like their CP counterparts. In fact, their number boards were much smaller and oval shaped.

The slugs are very useful in yards like the giant Sarnia Yard, as their traction motors allow the GP9's horsepower to be distributed more widely, which gives the unit more leverage to pull long strings of cars at low speeds. Great for switching duties. There are still a few being used in Sarnia.

This shot was taken at a time when CN had yet to privatize and seemed to operate as a very different railway. It was not uncommon at this time to find 15-20 units all parked and idle near the CN roundhouse. This is not the case today.

Fast forward to the 2000s and you see that these old beasts are still kicking up a fair bit of smoke in Sarnia Yard and in CN's local operations. This shot below is one of my favourites, taken just south of Corunna near the Rokeby Line, as a CN local switched local petrochemical industries in August 2017. You can see three GP9s in this shot, two are able to be identified: 7038 in the lead and 7278 hitched elephant style as the second unit. The third unit, which is clad in the safety stripes, is not identifiable. 

This brings up another interesting point. These units, which have been able to soldier on thanks to CN's rebuild program, can be found in their original mainly black scheme with the wet noodle on the side and the more recent safety stripes scheme. I have even seen one in the CN privatization anniversary scheme, but I have never seen one in the modern CN.ca scheme.

Here's a GP9 in the CN 15 scheme, celebrating the railway's privatization. This is not a terribly common scheme. I was lucky to run into GP9 7256 a few years ago on a brief stopover at Sarnia Yard in July 2021. It was pulling a long string of hoppers in the yard, with a carbon black from Cabot Carbon first in the consist behind 7052.

I should mention as well that, in the two years I lived in Peterborough in 2003 and 2004, CP's affiliate, the Kawartha Lakes Railway, often used GP9s and even a few SW1200s to service local industries on the line, from Havelock to Peterborough. I wasn't in the habit of photographing trains at this time, so I have no hard proof of these observations other than my memory.

One of the great things about these old beasts is they put on quite a show, if you are a photographer. You might recall a post from several years ago titled Smoke! where I was treated to quite a show in Sarnia Yard in October 2016. Here's my favourite shot from that post, below. The GP9 in the shot is coupled with what looks like a GP38. The real smoke is all from the old man, though.

And speaking of those slugs, here's a more recent shot of a GP9 and slug still working the rails in Sarnia Yard in 2015 near the old roundhouse. Notice the old SW1200s in the background, which are either being repaired for industrial use or possibly scrapped for parts.

Of course, it's not just on mainline railways that this unit survives. The GP9 has long been a staple of short line railways, like the Goderich Exeter Railway. I caught this unit idle in Goderich in August 2014. Note its paint scheme. GEXR was once famous for painting its GP9s in a unique green and taupe scheme, with certain units being named after Shakepearean references. Many of the railway's units were later left in their leasing unit or previous railway schemes.

Surprisingly, even CN's operations up in Ottawa have made use of a GP9 on several occasions. Recently, the railway has made use of multiple GP38s, including some former GATX leased units. But as recently as 2017, the regional operations out to Hawkesbury and Arnprior were being handled by units like 4139, seen here near the Queensway overpass in the Greenbelt in 2017. I find this fascinating, as these units are not usually synonymous with long runs, like the 40-km turn out to Arnprior and the long 80-plus-km haul out to Ivaco in Hawkesbury. That's a lot of distance for a yard and local engine.

So why is this little runt of a locomotive worth discussing, remembering and preserving? Well, for one, it is fast becoming an antique, as the last Canadian units made are already 59 years old, and those are the youngest of the bunch. A quick glance through some sites online will show you that this unit propelled General Motors' EMD into the locomotive production lead, which was not the case before the GP9 was built. This brief article discusses how the market for road switchers was still very much the domain of Alco/MLW's RS series until the GP9 came along.

CN purchased 349 of these units while CP purchased 200. CP's numbers might be a reflection of the large number of MLW RS units it brought before the GP9 began production. Other Canadian buyers included New York Central, which purchased 12 for its Canadian operations in Ontario, Northern Alberta Railways (10), Ontario Northland (60), Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo (3) and the Quebec North Shore & Labrador (54).

When you do see one of the surviving GP9s roaming around, take a shot. With their unique curved cab roofs and chopped noses, they are pieces of living history that are sure to fade quickly in the coming years. I am lucky that I was able to see so many of these engines in my time trackside. That's worth celebrating.

Sometimes, you get a second chance (Part II)

As I mentioned in my last post, there are rare times when your train karma will grant you a second chance. I stumbled across one of those rare opportunities on a July trip to Sarnia last year with my family, when I chanced a last-second trip to the Sarnia rail yard.

In my previous post, I talked about a train heading for the tunnel, the front of which I had missed by seconds. I was disappointed to have missed the shot, but then something unexpected happened. The train began to back up. It didn't back up far enough for me to capture the engines in any meaningful way, but it at least allowed me a few going away shots. The train then inched forward. But then it backed up again. This happened for a while, which had me confused. (Note: I have since come to understand that part of the train was being scanned deep in the rail yard) The train was clearly not backing up to keep a switch to the main line clear. It was sitting over a busy switch at control point Hobson. So it was clear to me there was no meet happening with an eastbound train, since that would require this westbound to back up past the switch.

I stood there wondering what I could get in front of this train legally and safely, without resorting to trespassing (most Sarnia railfans will tell you not to even try this, as the CN Police are quite strict about any incursions onto CN property in the area).

So, I decided to try a last-ditch long shot. And surprisingly, it resulted in a shot I have never captured before. I went to the Donahue Bridge, a link between a south end residential neighbourhood and the northern edge of the Chemical Valley. The bridge actually soars quite high above the descending CN track in to the Paul M. Tellier Tunnel.

Unfortunately, a pedestrian walkway on the tunnel side of the bridge has been closed off for quite some time, which eliminated that possibility. However, on the other side of the bridge, facing the rail yard, there is a pedestrian sidewalk. 

There's also a tiny stub-end city street that is used exclusively for trucks that use CN's CargoFlo service. That street was option number two. Lucky for me, the tunnel-bound train was still positioned at CP Hobson, obviously waiting the green light to proceed into the tunnel and head into Port Huron, Michigan. 

Here's my attempt at a very long shot from the Donahue Bridge. You can see the Sarnia Station, signals and an SD70 on point. On the left side of the photo, you can also see a small piece of trackage that is the Point Edward Spur, which serves the Cargill grain elevator on Sarnia Bay. There's also a great deal of poles and lights in the shot, which isn't ideal, but it gives you the impression of a busy yard. I like this shot, but wasn't entirely satisfied that I had the shot I wanted.

That's when I decided to try a shot from the sidewalk near Union Street, a tiny little dead-end slab of asphalt used by trucks to connect with cylindrical hoppers on a spur. You can see my previous visit to this operation in this post. But for our purposes in this post, here are my two attempts at getting some the CargoFlo infrastructure in the shot. You can also see Sarnia Station, the sign for CP Hobson and the trackage leading up to the CargoFlo operation. That turnout you see will lead you to CN's refuelling pad and the Lambton Diesel roundhouse operations. This area is a no-go, so stay on the nearby road if you want to have a look.

I like how the bushes and the loader eliminate the clutter a bit. Also, this angle means the white sign (look just left of the SD70) doesn't block the view of the engine as it did in my earlier shot. For my second attempt, I zoomed a little closer, making sure not to focus too hard on the loader. I like both shots for different reasons, but in this one, the train is definitely not as clear. And the zoom function is distorting the rails a bit.

Getting the camera to properly focus was a tricky task, as there was so much in the frame. All of these shots taken from the bridge and the end of Union Street are quite busy. You can see Sarnia Station, the CN Hobson sign (white, next to the locomotive) and also the Indian Road overpass in the distance. 

Since I was in the area close to the CSX Clifford Street rail yard, I drove to the end of the street to see if there was anything happening in the yard. I was not surprised to find the area pretty quiet. I was hoping that I might get lucky and happen across some CSX activity, but it was not to be. The CSX Sarnia Subdivision has seen some increased activity of late, as the railway has been carting away materials salvaged from the ongoing demolition of the Lambton Generating Station near Courtright (More to come on that in a future post). That process is expected to continue for a year or more, which means local railfans might expect to see a few different consists on the CSX line, most notably gondolas. I was hoping that I might be able to see something like that, but all was quiet. 

Oh well. You can't have it all.

Sometimes, you get a second chance (Part I)

Rail karma is something I'm sure we've all experienced. You just miss the head end of a train or you get trackside just in time to see the flashing end-of-train device winking at you in scorn as it disappears down the tracks. Then there's the times when you sit trackside and nothing materializes. I can't tell you the number of times I've experienced all three. 

That was why, when I arrived at the Sarnia rail yard for one last chance to see some trains on a family trip last summer, I was disappointed to see a very long freight train slowly making its way west toward the tunnel beneath the St. Clair River. I decided to watch it anyway, to see if maybe there was a DPU unit or some interesting rolling stock.

Then something happened. The train stopped. Then it began to back up. Could this be a second chance for me? Well, yes and no.

Let me explain.

As I was shooting any type of rolling stock I found interesting, I noticed the train was slowing down. Then it started backing up.

The backup move allowed me to snap a few shots of rolling stock, like this CN coil car, with the maroon IHB cover. Again, this was all very routine for me. I was just hoping that the train might back up enough that I could get a shot of the head end. Sadly, it stopped just short of the end of the platform. I walked along a public road as far as I could to get a shot of the two units from public property, but the train was just not cooperating.

This was about as close as the crew came. Over the course of ten or 15 minutes, the train backed up and then moved forward several times. More recently, readers have told me that this is due to the railway scanning its trains before they cross international borders. In this case, it wouldn't back up to the platform or move past CP Hobson sign. So, I decided to improvise and see if I could use the signal gantry near the platform to get some worthwhile shots.

This shot above had the most blue in it, which was nice, since I was shooting after 8 p.m. and the daylight was beginning to recede while the shadows grew longer.

Here's a shot from the platform. I do like the reflection of the setting sun against the side of the train, but I don't like that a pole pretty much blocked out the power from this vantage point. All in all, it was a frustrating few moments.

On one hand, if the train started moving, I had a great chance to get to a vantage point near the St. Clair Tunnel and get my first ever shot of a train entering the tunnel. On the other hand, if the train sat where it was, I was limited in my ability to get a shot from in front of it. After a few minutes, I decided to risk my position at the station, figuring the train was not going to back up and give me the shot I wanted.

I decided to risk getting a vantage point near the tunnel to get ahead of this train. 

But it's never that easy. Railfans in Sarnia know that the pedestrian walkway near the tunnel has been closed for some time, essentially, eliminating that potential spot. That left the Donahue Bride. This bridge provides a link over the tunnel track between the actual residential south end of Sarnia and the northern edge of the Chemical Valley. 

Luckily, there is a pedestrian sidewalk on the bridge, which affords you a long view of Sarnia Yard and the long descending track leading to the tunnel. 

There were two things I had to consider. Was the train in a position where I could see it from the bridge? And was it going to stay there? Also, how effective could my image be, considering how much I had to rely on the zoom function? 

I was about to find out. I'll leave that to the next post. 

The traffic jam

This March, while I was visiting family in the Sarnia area, my brother and nephew took me on a tour of their favourite spots in the area, including many railside haunts. On our way home, we saw a CN train perched near Telford Road, just east of the limits of Sarnia Yard. My nephew was excited by this slow moving train, as we had not seen any freight trains at speed during our day of railfanning in the area. This was the train as it approached the crossing and then stopped. Note that the Strathroy Subdivision is double-tracked here, and there are trains on both tracks visible in the image below, taken from the Confederation Line.

Just a few minutes earlier, we had left Sarnia Yard, where another freight train, this one heading west toward the Paul Tellier Tunnel, also stopped before proceeding down the grade to the tunnel. A few railfans in the parking lot explained to us that the train was backing up and proceeding forward for a reason. At first, I'll admit that I was curious as to why this train would be doing this, unless they were assembling part of the train that I could not see. The railfans said they were "x-raying" the train. I'm not exactly sure that is the right term, but the sense I got from what they told me was the the train was being scanned before it headed into the United States. Here's a shot of the consist inching forward.

At either end of the yard, there were two enormous freight trains, one due east and one due west. Neither was moving. I joked to my nephew that it was a genuine rail traffic jam. Of course, this was not the case, as precision scheduled railways do not usually have trains with massive dwell times taking up space in congested rail yards. Sarnia Yard usually has its share of cars in the yard, but it's never what you would describe as congested or backed up. The blocks of cars appear very organized, at least to my untrained eye. Still, it was an odd sight to see two freight trains, on both tracks on the main line, apparently motionless. 

Moving back to the train due east near Telford Road. Here is a shot as it moved ahead past the end of the westbound train from the image above. I find it interesting whenever I see autoracks behind the engines. It's not something that was terribly common when I was growing up. These cars always seemed to be blocked onto the end of a train. Not the case anymore.

You can see in the image above that the fields looked to be almost ready for planning, even in mid-March. Going back to the westbound train, which we watched for awhile before giving up, here's a shot of the head end through the gantry, which governs trains movements around the tunnel. The bridge also controls the connections to the converging St. Clair River Industrial Spur (and by extension, the CSX Sarnia Subdivision) and the Point Edward Spur, both of which merge into the yard west of these signals.

 

While I was at the yard, I did spy a tank car that had an old logo on it that is not terribly common these days. I remember these CGTX tank cars when I was younger, but they have slowly disappeared over the years. It was cool to spot one. I know it might seem like a mundane image, but I think it's more important now to capture images of old rolling stock than ever.

These images we got from the yard and from Telford Road rounded out a great day or railfanning, even if the actual number of trains we saw was pretty light. You can check out our other adventure from this day in the post Next stop: Glencoe. 

One last shot of an old GP9 idling behind the old roundhouse. This engine is on the approach track that trains off the St. Clair River Industrial Spur and CSX Sarnia Subdivision use to access Sarnia Yard. Sadly, this engine didn't move either. It seemed like a gridlock kind of day when nothing was moving. My nephew wasn't thrilled. I was just happy to get a few images.