The ghost that haunts me (Part I)

I've called the weekly CN freight run to Arnprior the Ghost several times, and for good reason. It's a tricky train to catch, if you are so inclined. The Arnprior Turn, as it is commonly known, has changed a fair bit since I have begun to take notice of it with the advent of this blog in 2013. When I first started blogging, CN made two weekly trips to the west end of the city. It made a run out to Kott Lumber and SynAgri on the Smiths Falls Sub on Sundays (and sometimes Thursdays I'm told, depending on demand). The run to Arnprior was on Wednesdays, which continues to this day. 

Of course, the two runs out west have been combined into one run now, as CN 589 heads up the Smiths Falls Sub early in the morning before backing up to Federal Junction and then proceeding  west up the Beachburg Sub to what was Nepean Junction, where the now continuous line becomes the Renfrew Spur, which takes the train to Nylene Canada in Arnprior. This is the usual routine, if both runs are needed. If there is nothing to do on the Smiths Falls Sub, CN crews proceed directly up the Beachburg Sub to Arnprior.

To be honest, I don't pay as much attention to this train as I once did, because I have been branching out in my blogging a bit, trying new things, finding new subjects as well as thinking about new spots and angles to capture railway action in this area. That doesn't mean that I don't sometimes look out for it. Since I work from home, I do have opportunities to swing by trackside to catch this train, in theory. But, even breaking away on my break time is a difficult thing to do, which means I usually don't chance it, as my workday can become busy in an instant (like it did this week).

But as I find myself in the Colonnade Business Park every Wednesday evening, when my daughters go to dance class, I have time to keep an eye out for 589's return to Walkley Yard. Over the winter months, the timing hasn't worked out, as the daylight was nonexistent. However, I did see the train twice over the winter months. It got me to thinking that, once the time change happened and I had daylight, I would start bringing my camera each Wednesday, just in case I got lucky.

For the most part, the timing hasn't worked out, as the Arnprior Turn has been unpredictable. There are shifting factors that affect this train's timing. The most obvious is the switching that needs to be done in Walkley Yard before 589 prepares for its trip west. The next factor is whether 589 needs to make a run to Kott lumber or (rarely) SynAgri in Twin Elm, which isn't always the case each week. Depending on its timing on the Smiths Falls Sub, there is the Via Rail Toronto-bound trains that CN needs to accommodate, as they have the right-of-way usually. 

Add all those factors together and it can be hard to predict when this train makes its way to Arnprior and back to Walkley Yard again. There's also the factor of how many tank cars of caprolactum that Nylene Canada requires. There have been weeks where I saw a single tank car in tow on this train, while other weeks see as many as 6-7 cars. The unloading process is not terribly straightforward, I'm told, as caprolactum isn't like unloading a tank full of petroleum gas.

So, long story short, it's anything but predictable, which means you always need to be ready. Case in point was a few weeks ago when I was bringing my daughters to dance class and nearly left my camera at home. I was having no luck catching this train and I was getting a bit discouraged by my bad luck. At the last minute, I decided to take my camera anyway, just in case. I'm glad I did. The railway gods finally smiled on me.

This is a shot of the train heading east back to Walkley Yard on a flyover. Since traffic was at a standstill on Merivale Road, I quickly snapped a few shots through my windshield as the train trundled by. I would never attempt this otherwise, but I knew it was relatively safe as the cars around me were not moving. For once, I was thankful for an unusually congested Merivale Road, which is a nightmare of outdated urban development, with retail plazas tacked onto each other in seemingly endless links.

This shot shows two GP38s in a somewhat faded safety scheme. There were four tank cars in tow being brought back to Walkley. This shot came out surprisingly well, as it fits with my newfound desire to get some different shots of trains this year. You can see the hydro towers that follow the Beachburg Sub in this part of Nepean. You can also see the billboard for a local store on Merivale, which is a strip mall nightmare. But, I like that all these elements came together in this lucky shot.

As I followed the train, I tried to get a few more of the tank cars in the shot, but the glare and reflection from the windshield killed a few shots. The shot above was the best I could do. 

The interesting thing here is that, given the speed restrictions on the Beachburg Sub, I knew I would have time to proceed to Prince of Wales Drive ahead of the train, since it was in the direction of my daughter's dance class on Colonnade Road. Since we were early for class, I passed by the dance class on Colonnade Road and headed for the Prince of Wales flyover, which sees Via corridor trains every day, as well as this weekly freight train. I knew it was going to be tight, but there was a parking lot where I could safely park and a grassy hill next to Prince of Wales Drive, with a great view of this rail bridge.

I have been experimenting with shots from this vantage points recently, as Via's Train 59 passes by at the same time every night. It's a great spot to get a different image, if you're so inclined. I will be sharing shots from this spot in the comings weeks and months. Stay tuned for that.

Something different: Challenge accepted!

You might recall that in a recent post, I declared 2023 as the Year of Different, where I challenged my fellow rail enthusiasts to get creative and capture different railway images this year. A good friend of the blog Keith Boardman accepted the challenge and shared this shot from near Fitzroy Harbour, a picturesque community in the extreme northwest edge of the amalgamated city. Fitzroy a spot where the old Beachburg Sub crossed the Ottawa River into the Pontiac Region of western Quebec, before crossing back into Renfrew County before reaching its terminus in Petawawa. Of course, before CN dismantled its Northern Transcontinental line through Algonquin Park, this was once a busy rail line with regular freight trains. Even after it was truncated, the old Ottawa Central regularly serviced customers in the Pontiac and even as far as Petawawa, before the economic recession in 2009 led to OCR selling its assets to CN. That was it for the Beachburg Sub past Nepean Junction.

But, even though the rails are gone past Nepean Junction, there are still reminders of what once was in this area. I'll let Keith pick up the story. Here's what he wrote:

I happened to be travelling on Galetta Side Road where you'd turn north to go to Fitzroy Harbour a couple weeks ago. I've been on this road many times over the years, always wondering what the scene would have been like had the Beachburg Sub still been in use. As I passed by where it crossed, this little structure caught my attention. It was interesting in that it's still painted and lettered with the CN logo. Pretty sure nobody has bothered going in it now for several years, but it still stands.

Thanks to Keith for sharing this shot of an old CN utility shed, which seems to be near a telecom tower, which might explain why it's still in place. You can even see the CN 8231 numbering on the side of the shed. 

I was thinking of Keith's shot the other day and I figured it fit thematically with this post. As I looked at the shots of CN 589 making its way over Merivale Road, I wondered how many trains used to ply these rails in their prime? How many trains did people see each day on their commute? It's funny how many rail fans talk about these days with fondness, when a generation of Ottawans probably couldn't even tell you anything about this rail line at all. Many think it's abandoned and they'd be forgiven for thinking that.

You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone, as the song says.

By the way, the title of this post is a play on the 1991 album, The Ghosts That Haunt Me, by Canadian band the Crash Test Dummies. I was never a huge fan of theirs, but they had their moments. I appreciate their devotion to their craft. Their music was anything but dumb.

Notes from Sarnia

On a recent trip to visit family in the Sarnia area, I was able to get away for a few minutes to see if there was anything going on in the rail yard. It was very quiet when I arrived there. Most of the engines near the old roundhouse were idling, still waiting for the day's work ahead. I did manage to spot something odd among the diesels. That switcher back there is Nova SW1500 2450. You will recall that, earlier this year, I snapped a few shots of the Nova Corunna refinery near Corunna where this diesel was parked. You can read about that operation in this post.

Here's a wider shot of the yard diesels idling, including a few slugs and an old geep in the safety scheme.

While we're on the topic of Nova, I did notice when I was passing by the Corunna plant that the railway there is now operating with two units, including a very similar SW model switcher, likely a sister unit to 2450. The railway also appears to have a genset like the one below operating again. I'm not sure if it's the same unit as this one, shot several years ago. I was driving by quickly and could only steal a glance.

I didn't venture off the old station platform on my trip to the yard, since I was tight for time. I did notice that one crew was already assembling a train on the east side of the Indian Road overpass, as it shunted autoracks into place. I was not able to catch this train as it made its way west to the tunnel, since my time had run out.

Here's another shot of the train being assembled, framed by a line of tank cars and a buffer car at the front of what will likely be a petroleum train headed somewhere east.

 

All in all, it was a quiet and disappointing morning. But for me, something is better than nothing. I have not been able to venture out in Ottawa for any train watching in a while. Such is life sometimes. 

More relics on the rails

My travels to southern Ontario this summer resulted in some interesting sites trackside, including a few run-ins with railroading history. It's always a good day when you capture a piece of the past, especially when these relics are becoming rare. I managed to snag a few notable relics. You can read my first entry about relics in this post.

The first relic I shot was located at the end of the line on CSX's Sarnia Subdivision, along the shores of the St. Clair River. This antique maintenance-of-way crane car was quite far from the parking lot where I was standing. There was no way to legally get close to the car, so I had to rely on my camera's zoom to get what I could. But the lighting was good and the view was mostly clear, minus a hydro pole.

As you can see, the zoom was stretched to its limits, judging by the look of the tracks leading up to the old car. This old Burro crane is still clad in Chessie yellow. I have seen this car tucked away here a few times, but this was the first time I had a fairly clean view of the car. You can see the St. Clair River in the background and Michigan on the other side. This car is pretty close to where the old CSX rail ferry was located. This ferry service ended right around the same time the CN ferry stopped its operations. What's interesting about the old CSX ferry is that I didn't even know it existed until recent years.

Later on the same day (August 18th), I made my way to CN's Sarnia Yard and was able to catch the CN/CSX interchange as a string of cars was being delivered for pickup by two CSX GP38s in the yard. This train contained the second relic. Below is a long shot of the interchange making its way into the yard. Can you see the relic? It may not be obvious.

Here's a closer look. It's an old Family Lines System hopper car, still fully clad in its original livery. It may not be all that significant to some, but for someone like me interested in the convoluted history of CSX, it's an interesting holdover from the merger era. You can see a second hopper with the same paint, although it has been re-lettered for CSX.

You can see the Louisville & Nashville lettering on the hopper and the all-encompassing logo to the right. Here's a closer look at the logo, below.

Family Lines System was one of the precursors to CSX. It is important to note that the system was itself not an actual railroad, but a common marketing scheme adopted by a number of allied railways, including the Seaboard Coast Line, Louisville & Nashville, the Clinchfield Railroad, the Georgia Railroad, the Atlanta & West Point Railroad and the Western Railway of Alabama (these lines were known as the West Point Route). You can see that all the railroads are represented in the logo. This entity was created in 1972 and lasted until 1982, when the Seaboard System was created. The Seaboard System itself lasted until 1986, when Seaboard and Chessie System were combined to form CSX. That's the simplest explanation. Technically, Chessie was brought into the CSX umbrella in 1987. I'm not sure I understand the specifics of how CSX, as we know it, came to be in 1986-87.

This next shot below isn't necessarily a relic, but more of an rarity or oddity. This is a manifest freight heading west toward the St. Clair River rail tunnel (I will have more to share about this train in another post). The middle unit pulling this train is CN 5550, an SD60F cowl unit. I only ever snagged one other cowl unit in my exploits around this yard. You can read about the other cowl unit I saw, a Bombardier HR616, here. This unit looks massive, with six axles and six safety stripes.

The final relic I found along the CN Strathroy Subdivision in Wyoming. Whenever I visit this area, I visit the tiny Via Rail station and wait for a passing freight train. I didn't end up catching a train but I did find this old loading ramp in the weeds. It appears that this ramp has not been used in some time. Still, it's interesting that pieces of the old track leading to this ramp still remain. You can see the main line to the left of the photo.

I was quite happy with some of these catches over the summer. As I mentioned already, anytime you can shoot some history, it's a good day.

Thanks for reaching out

I posted my email in a previous post and was happy with the messages I received from readers. I was happy to know that I have a good following from various points in Ontario and around Canada. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you may have at hammond.michael77 AT gmail.com. One reader has reached out and will be featured as a guest blogger in the near future. He has already showed me some of his material and I am excited about sharing his photos and experiences. Stay tuned!

A rare site: Bombardier HR616

The Summer of 1992 was a prolific time. Looking through my older prints, I noticed quite a number of interesting shots from that summer that are among my better catches. It was a good time for train watching in Sarnia, since the new St. Clair Tunnel had yet to be realized, meaning a number of trains and engines idled in Sarnia Yard. This was due to the bottleneck of oversized rail cars in the yard that had to be ferried across the river and the limitations of the old St. Clair Tunnel.

During summer, I made sure to check out the parked CN units outside the old roundhouse on the western edge of the yard. During my visits to this area, I took lots of photos of a variety of CN units, some with the CN North America scheme, some with the old safety scheme, some on their last legs and others that were shiny and new.

Then there's the unit below.

I came across this photo recently and uploaded it to my computer, almost as an afterthought. I initially didn't like the shot, since it was taken on the shady side of the unit. The print required a great deal of touching up, just to get it looking like this. I forgot about the print until a little while ago when I started searching for information on this odd-looking unit. It turns out, I had a picture of a rare bird.

CN 2105 was a locomotive of particularly rare vintage. It turns out, this was a Bombardier HR616 unit (six axles, 16 cylinders, 3,000 horsepower). Finding information on this cowl unit was tough, since its number now belongs to a C40-8W. To makes things tougher, I had no idea this was a Bombardier unit. I assumed it was an EMD model.

After some research, I discovered that 20 of these units were built for CN at Montreal Locomotive Works in 1982, a few of them leased to the Canadian Pacific and renumbered in 1983, before being returned. Some refer to these units as MLW HR616s, due to where they were built.

Sadly, these units were terribly unreliable, even though the HR was supposed to stand for "Highly Reliable." This must sound like a familiar story to those familiar with Bombardier's other big foray into heavy rail locomotives around this time, the LRC locomotive. The shape of this CN locomotive reminds me of the "red barn" SD40-2Fs that CP rostered. For a comparison, here's a shot of one of those units taken by Steve Boyko in his blog, Confessions of a Train Geek.

This CN unit, 2105, was the first to be retired, after it was damaged in an wreck in 1993 in London, according to Wikipedia. Here's a shot of the unit when it was newly delivered to CN. You may notice how this unit has black paint around its front windows, which is a slight deviation from the CN paint scheme. Also, in this picture, you will notice that the ditch lights had been added to the front of the unit.

You will also notice an old Alco hitched up to 2105, to the right. I should have grabbed a shot of that one, but I guess I didn't.

But the shot of this cowl unit, a throwaway print by most measures, turned out to be a gem. Glad I hung onto it.

 

 

One is the loneliest number

Maybe 589 is even lonelier than the number one. 589, of course, is the number of CN's local that operates throughout the week in Ottawa. On Sundays, the local heads west on Via's Smiths Falls Subdivision as it makes its way to two local industries on the line. I am in the habit of trying to shoot this local, such as it is, on Sundays since the Smiths Falls Sub is fairly close to where I live.

On June 1st, I waited at the McKenna Casey Drive crossing, just outside Barrhaven, to shoot 589, which is usually preceded by Via Train 643. It was a brilliantly sunny morning when I waited for the Via corridor train and the CN local freight. I wondered how many cars it would have in tow, since the last time I had shot it, it had three hoppers in tow.

After the Via 643 rushed by, I waited a few minutes before I noticed the headlights of a plodding diesel making its way to the crossing. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by what I saw, which was nothing, essentially.

CN GP38-2 4806, in its faded safety scheme, made its way solo to Kott Lumber, just beyond milepost 8 and the Moodie Drive crossing. This was the extent of the local. It had no cars to deliver, just one lumber car to pick up at Kott. Needless to say, I was quite disappointed to shoot just a locomotive, especially considering the early morning light was surprisingly generous in the shots I was getting from my vantage point.

Despite my disappointment, I liked this shot below, because of the colour of the sky, the jet's contrail and the brilliant green foliage around the track. (Now contrast this shot of 4806 with this shot taken a few years ago.)

I followed the local to the Moodie Drive crossing and took a few shots, which are a little harder to get now that the trees and brush have sprouted their summer greens, which obstruct the view of the Kott lumber switch. I attempted to follow the train to Twin Elm, where CN serves the SynAgri feed mill, but an earlier visit to the mill showed that there were no hopper cars to pick up. That meant the local quickly geared up and headed for points south before I could get a shot of it at one of the two rural crossings at Twin Elm. Getting shots at Twin Elm will be my next mission, since the area has a rustic feel, which I think will make for great shots.

 

Programming note: John Marginson, former COO of Via Rail, has been active in the city in recent weeks as he leads efforts to fix Via's level crossings in the Barrhaven neighbourhood. John has generously agreed to provide The Beachburg Sub with a full update on what the railway is doing locally. Stay tuned for John's report. 

The wet noodle, the safety scheme and beyond

One thing I've noticed about Canada's two major railways is their consistent appearance. Their looks have both remained largely unchanged over the last half century. CP has not deviated from its choice of red on its locomotives, although its more recent decisions to adopt the gold beaver and then the new Canadian Pacific script for the side of its engines stand out as the biggest changes to the CPR's looks since it adopted the modern red and multimark look in 1968 (I'm leaving out the 1993 decision to adopt the CP Rail System Flag scheme, which was short-lived).

CN has been even more consistent since it first developed its wet noodle logo in 1960. Along with that decision came the radical transformation of the look of its locomotives, cabooses, freight cars and passenger coaches. Amazingly, after 50 plus years, one could put a 1960s vintage CN diesel next to a modern diesel and easily make the connection that the two belong to the same road.

The first, and longest-lasting version of CN's modern look, was the so-called safety scheme, which featured slanted white stripes against a black backdrop and a red cab. The wet noodle was plastered on the front of the engine. When you look at the modern paint schemes of North American railroads, CN was definitely an anomaly in that it did not have its corporate logo on the side of most of its diesels when it changed its look in the early 1960s.

CN F7A 9162 in Edmonton, Alta. in 1973 (Photo from the Canadian Science and Technology Museum archives)

However, there were some exceptions to the rule when CN went modern. Over the years, a number of its locomotives were painted in a nearly all-black scheme. These units had the CN logo on the side and red fronts and backs. I've often wondered why some units were given this scheme.

CN GP9 in 1967 at an unknown location (Photo from the Canadian Science and Technology Museum archives)

Another notable exception to the safety scheme was CN's fleet of workhorse SW1200s, which prowled rail yards and local spurs for decades. These units were given a mainly black scheme with the CN logo on the side. Unlike the GP9 above, the SWs were given red cabs and red trim on the front panels. This grunt and mate 1215 are pulling a load of autoracks to the St. Clair rail ferry in 1993 in Sarnia Yard.

These schemes changed in the early 1990s when CN finally decided to make a change to its look by adopting its CN North America logo, which featured the grey continent image beneath the CN logo. This look coincided with CN's first major marketing foray into the US. You can read about this paint scheme in greater detail by checking out this post in the Trackside Treasure blog. This scheme was around for a few years and it really did suggest what was to come for CN after it was privatized in 1992-93.

CN SD40-2 6002 in Sarnia in 1993

The CN North America logo didn't last all that long and was soon replaced with the look that CN locomotives sport today, like these two brutes below, shot in Markham on Aug 10, 2013. When I was looking through photos in government archives, like the two at the top of this post, I was struck by the consistency of the CN paint schemes over the last 50 years. Compared to the era before the modern logo was adopted, which was marked with constant image tinkering, the wet noodle and red/black/white scheme have been remarkably stable. It's hard to think of a railway that has had such consistency over the same period.