Song for a winter's night

Being trackside or on a train on a cold winter's evening makes me a bit sentimental, I must admit. It makes me think of the ways Gordon Lightfoot was able to conjure the feeling one gets on a cold, dark Canadian winter evening. 

The lamp is burnin' low upon my table top
The snow is softly falling
The air is still in the silence of my room
I hear your voice softly calling

Somehow, to me, you can't have a cold, dark winter's evening in this country without the lonely call of a train making its way through the snow, bringing people together and out from under the grip of the season's sometimes harsh and seemingly relentless grip.

I like that line about someone "softly calling." I can't properly describe the feeling I felt when I was young and I could hear the Chessie System freight trains motoring through my hometown at night, as their horns would nudge me awake. 

They were softly calling. 

It's not unlike when I heard the foghorns from the passing Great Lakes freighters on the St. Clair River. It's something that's always comforted me and made me feel as though all was right with the world. That feeling is hard to come by, as you get older.

Being sentimental doesn't obscure the fact that there are serious problems with our passenger rail system right now in this country, but I wanted to briefly try to describe what a cold, dark winter's night does to me, especially when it's combined with my love of railways.

Recently, I took my daughter to Montreal for a Habs game. I will get into all the railway moments from that day in a later post, but I will share these brief observations. On the way home, after our train arrived more than 20 minutes late at Montreal's Central Station, my daughter and I got into the cab control car of our Venture set as we set off for home in Ottawa.

Being at the very end of the cab control car, we could hear the train's horn continually, especially when it sped through Eastern Ontario villages like Casselman, Vankleek Hill and Vars. That had me wondering if people in these communities took any comfort in hearing our train speed by on a cold winter night.

Or were they annoyed? 

It seems more and more people are now inconvenienced by a train horn. That's just not me. The train, to me, is a powerful symbol of our vast nation, and it continues to play a role in keeping us together, despite our internal differences, regional cultures, languages, creeds and differing outlooks. Not all of us have the same affection for Via Rail, but I think we all have a certain appreciation for what trains do for us, even if much of this work is done out of sight and in general anonymity. The geography of our country is challenging to say the least.

Standing trackside, waiting for a loved one, bouncing on your toes to keep them from freezing, watching your breath get stripped away from you by the fierce winds . . . it's a feeling that transcends generations. It's no different than what people did 100 years ago, with the exception of the mode of transportation to and from the train station. My chariot no longer requires a horse, but I'm sure it shivers just the same in the wind. This mere act of waiting for someone connects me with our country's storied past.

There's another factor we don't often consider. What about those people operating the train? I often wonder what goes through their minds as they do their work to get their customers or their goods from place to place. I wonder on those winter nights, when people are under the covers, dreaming warm dreams, if the bleary eyed people keeping the country moving feel the same way Gordon Lightfoot felt when he wrote Song for a winter's night. 

Do they wish they were with loved ones, enjoying a quiet moment in front of a roaring fire? Or do they take pride in the thrill of movement, as their motorized charge pierces the darkness and sprints to its next stop? Or is it just a job? I find it hard to believe that anyone would work these hours and not feel some sort of duty or excitement in their vocation. I don't know that you just decide to be a railroader without feeling something for trains.

There is so much uncertainty in the world right now. Our country has problems, both internal and external. Yet, as uncertainty mounts and hockey games become geopolitical proxy wars, I sometimes just feel like we should appreciate the constants and the eternal truths. 

Trains are as much a part of our country's history, heritage and soundtrack as anything. Their presence makes me grateful for this big, beautiful country. They make me grateful because they bring good people together and remind us of what it means to be human, to want to be somewhere, to want to be with someone, to share a moment, to love. 

I say all this because there's so much vitriol and hatred in the world right now. I think sometimes we need to remind ourselves of how liberating it is to be grateful for what we have. Trains make me feel that way.

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.

Updated: New life for Windsor terminal?

This year, I'm trying to focus the blog on a little bit more rail history, and I wanted to research a few posts on the crossroads of Eastern Canada, Windsor, Ontario. Windsor is a town not unlike Winnipeg and Chicago. It has a long history of being a major junction for all kinds of railroads, much like Winnipeg and Chicago continue to be. 

It might surprise some people to know that the following railways once called on Windsor: Great Western, Wabash (through trackage rights), Norfolk and Western, Norfolk Southern, Pere Marquette, Chesapeake and Ohio, Chessie System, CSX, Canada Southern, Michigan Central, New York Central, Penn Central and Conrail. Some of these railways are, of course, one in the same (CASO, MCRR, NYC) and some are successor roads (Wabash, N&W, NS as well as NYC, PC and Conrail). Still, that's a lot of rail activity for a city with an urban population of 300,000, including suburbs. 

Today, the Canadian Pacific (CPKC for the less sentimental), Canadian National and Via Rail still serve the city, alongside one of Canada's oldest short lines, the Essex Terminal Railway. 

There are many reasons for Windsor's heavy rail presence throughout its history, not the least of which is Windsor's longstanding status as a major automaker. 

Car ferry on the Detroit River in the 1950s. Photo from Library and Archives Canada

 

But when you think of Windsor's rail history, you might be missing an important piece of the puzzle, which is Hiram Walker, the man who founded a distillery in what was then the independent town of Walkerville. The historic community, which was annexed amalgamated into Windsor in 1935, is in the northern* part of the city, the oldest area of which contains the Hiram Walker distillery, which dates back to Hiram Walker himself, who founded the business in 1858. The Canadian Club brand lives on, although it is owned by Suntory Global Spirits now.

 

(* - On a map, the tip of Walkerville is indeed in the northern part of the city next to the Detroit River, but as my friend from Windsor points out, locals do not use the term North Windsor, rather they describe the city more on an east-west axis. Walkerville, it should be noted, also extends quite far from the city's northern boundary with the Detroit River.)

 

Long story short, the distillery created a town, which eventually began to attract the automotive industry, and the railways were there to serve all industry, of course.

 

Photo from the Southwestern Ontario Digital Archives at the University of Windsor. Photo is meant for research purposes only and should not be copied or used in any other way.

Walkerville should be a familiar name to rail passengers, as the city's station was commonly known in Windsor as Walkerville. To the unwary traveller unfamiliar with Windsor, the dual names might have been confusing, much like Fallowfield in Ottawa might be today.

The first railway to have a major passenger station in Walkerville was the Pere Marquette, a Michigan road that was eventually folded into the Chesapeake and Ohio. Its station in Walkerville, like the city's other stations, was impressive.

Photo from the Southwestern Ontario Digital Archives at the University of Windsor

 

This shot above shows what the station looked like in 1957 before it was torn down. By this time, passenger service had long since vanished. C&O's predecessor Pere Marquette stopped most of its passenger service in Canada in the 1930s, including its operations from Sarnia to Chatham and its operations in Windsor.

 

I won't get into all the permutations that followed among Windsor's many railways, as that can be shared in subsequent posts. For our purposes, Walkerville once again hosted passenger service a little way down the line from this C&O station when CN ran its passenger operations out of its station, beginning in 1961. That station served CN and its successor, Via Rail for many years, until the city's new station was built in 2012.

 

This shot above, courtesy of blog reader Kevin O'Neil, shows what the old passenger station looked like in the early 1980s. Kevin helped me sort through the many bits of Windsor rail history, which was helpful in putting this first Windsor post together.

The new station for Via Rail was completed in 1012, at a cost of $5.3 million. It acts as the western terminus of Via Rail's operations in the Quebec City-Windsor eastern corridor. Here's a shot I took when I visited the station last November, as an eastbound Venture set was ready to begin its trip to Toronto. This shot is from the west end of the station.

In what might be a full-circle moment, the Via Rail Windsor station might once again host through trains, as Via Rail and Amtrak have discussed resuming cross-border passenger service between Chicago and Toronto. The initial plans called for a 2027 startup of service, pending the appropriate customs procedures are in place and track upgrades between the Michigan Central rail tunnel beneath the Detroit River and Walkerville Station. At one point, Via and Amtrak enjoyed popular demand for their service between Chicago and Toronto. I rode the Amtrak from Sarnia to Kitchener once, when I went to visit my sister at university. It was the only time I rode a Superliner.

It will be interesting to see if international passenger service could resume, as this service once enjoyed great success. Windsor Station still boats steady business. It is one of Via's busiest stations, given its multiple trains going to and from Toronto each day.

In a way, it would be a full circle moment for rail activity in the Walkerville neighbourhood. It's not as if things are necessarily quiet, but they are certainly not what they once were. Maybe some international rail service could spur additional rail investment in this historic part of Canada's rail network.