Say hello to Belton

Over the course of my travels this summer, I was able to take photographs at many of my favourite spots, including the Sarnia rail yard and the Stratford rail yard. What's rare is when I come across a new railway find and properly capture it for the sake of discussion on this blog. After all, my trips to see family are usually quite busy and they don't leave a lot of time for wandering. 

In July, as my family made its way to London to visit our family there, we drove through a wide swath of countryside, which is when we came across a small farming hamlet called Belton. North of London, Belton is a tiny community that is home to the Agromart Group fertilizer storage and distribution site. It's a large facility with various storage domes. The site is used as the company's administrative centre as well as a storage and distribution hub for farming customers throughout southern Ontario. In total, 25-acre site can house 80,00 metric tonnes of "urea, potash, SOP, MAP, DAP, ammonium sulphate, MESZ and NitroK." 

If you know what some of those abbreviations mean, let me know. I took it directly from the company website. Most importantly for our purposes, this facility is served by an interesting loop track near milepost 106, off CN's Guelph Subdivision.

 

This was a shot I took from the passenger seat of our car as we made our way back to Stratford from London. As you can see, the track serving the facility is a long loop. I would think this would be the domain of GP9s, GP38s or other more nimble engines. The tight radius would not accommodate the larger motive power.

 

Here's a closer look at some covered hoppers parked beside one of the storage domes, behind which stands a very large feeder. I don't know that I have ever seen an industrial rail siding with this type of radius in real life. I've seen a few on model railways, but that's it.

 

Belton is just a short jaunt south of St. Marys, which is also on the CN Guelph Sub. I can't imagine that Belton is served by CN's Kitchener operations, which serve St. Marys. I would assume this facility is served out of London's CN yard, on the Dundas Subdivision. But I stand to be corrected, as I am not familiar with CN's operations in this area.

 

I had to do a little searching to figure out what railway served Belton, as I had no idea where it was relative to nearby CN and CP lines when I passed it by in the car. I assumed it was CN served, and was proven out when I consulted the geography of the area using the Railway Association of Canada's online Canadian Rail Atlas. It's a handy resource if you are unsure about railway geography. I was surprised how much I was able to drill down on the interactive map to see the loop track in Belton. It's a really handy resource.

 

Speaking of surprises, here's a shot below that I was able to take that I would not have thought possible without a little luck and some great information from people who know about the movements of trains in Stratford. As I mentioned in this previous post, I was able to stay at an AirBnB in the city that was close to the GEXR Sub. Since I had already visited the Stratford rail yard and took photos of GEXR assembling its train, I was able to drive back to my place and wait by the tracks to get a shot of the westbound freight train making its way over two overpasses as it headed out of town.

 

You can see the train snaking its way around a building as it heads over the first of two overpasses that take the GEXR northwest out of the city en route to its rural customers. I was surprised to get an image like this, as my timing was perfect and there was just enough shade to allow me to get a decent shot, even through the morning sun was unforgiving. If you don't believe me, look at the small patch of sky behind the train. The sky was blue that morning, but the angle of the sun in this shot meant that the sky was washed out, no matter what I did. I stayed off the tracks and found the best spot to take a shot legally and safely.  

 

Those were among the bigger surprises from the adventures this summer. I have a fair bit of material from this summer to share still, so I won't get ahead of myself and drop it all into one post. As I have not really been trackside in Ottawa of late, it's good to have a backlog from this summer.