Cabooses of Ottawa (2003-2022)

Since I began blogging in 2013, I have had a few moments where I was able to take in CN operations at Walkley Yard in the city. This is a tricky task, as the yard is largely inaccessible. At the end of Albion Road, there is a gravel access road where a few businesses retain civic addresses, which makes the road a grey area. I do not go down the gravel access road, as it seems to me to be trespassing. However, I have had occasions in the past to see that CN has made use of several cabooses, which provide for a little bit of interest in an otherwise dull railfanning city. 

The cabooses CN has made use of have varied in quality and origin. Given that CN largely stopped using cabooses by 1990-91, it makes the stories of the cabooses in use in Ottawa over the years that much more interesting. Mostly, the cabooses have been used for backwards movements or shoving movements, where the train's conductor needs a safe platform to observe what's ahead on the tracks as visibility from the engine is restricted at the rear.

CN 9106 (ex OCR 9106, ex Devco 9106)

In 2013, it was hard not to see this caboose from the end of Albion Road. It was parked in plain view, not far from the old maintenance building in the yard. It did not appear to be in active service.

By the time I started taking photos near Walkley, like this shot in 2015, the old caboose was a mess of graffiti and broken windows. You can just make out the marking of CN 9106 below the Devco Railway script above. But, upon closer inspection, the 9106 number was once followed by OCR, which is blacked out in this image. That means this caboose predated CN's operations and was used prior to 2008 by the former Ottawa Central Railway. I found this image online from 2003, which gives you an idea of how long it was used in the area.The Devco part had been painted over long ago, but the car retained its green and yellow Devco colours, if you don't count the abundance of graffiti.

This caboose is an AAR M930 class wide vision cupola caboose, which was a common van used by many Class I and regional railroads right up until the industry discontinued the use of these cars. This common caboose was built by International Car Co. from the early 1960s until the mid-1970s. They were in service until the end of the caboose era. CN also made a number of these cabooses at its shops in Montreal.

This caboose saw service on OCR and CN until it was taken out of service at some point in the early 2010s, at which point it sat in Walkley Yard and was left to the vandals. It's a shame that it was not preserved, as it probably saw a lot of service on the Devco Railway, the Cape Breton coal carrier that served the island's remaining coal mines and Sydney's interantional shipping piers between the late 19060s before that railway ended operations officially in 2001.

CN 79834 (ex Ottawa-L'Orignal 2000, ex OCR)

This caboose was in active service as late as 2013 in the city. It was a curiosity by any stretch, mostly because of its odd paint job and the even more curious inscription "Millennium" that was once stencilled onto the left side of the van. It disappeared from Walkley Yard years ago, but was used for shoving moves on the Vankleek Spur as recently as 2020, as per this webpage. The car was built at the CN Point-St-Charles shops under the same number it bore through its later years of service with CN.

The car was sold to the Ottawa-L'Orignal Railway in 1996. The railway, which operated between Glen Robertson on the Alexandria Sub and Hawkesbury, was then bought out by the Ottawa Central, which continued to use the van until 2008 when CN bought OCR and a host of other assets, which meant this old caboose was back with its original owner.

Here's a 2013 shot of an Ottawa crew assembling a train on a Sunday morning, with the old Millennium caboose behind the engine.

These days, the old warhorse is back where it started, used for shoving moves in the Montreal area. It's interesting to speculate what happened to this van. When was it repainted from its original CN colours to blue? How did that paint scheme disintegrate? To be honest, it looks like the paint on this car was applied with roller brushes. I would love to know the story behind its unique appearance.

The only mystery I managed to solve was that the caboose was numbered OLOR 2000 when it was owned by the Ottawa-L'Orignal Railway, which would explain why it was called the Millennium caboose. Maybe someone on the railway had a sense of humour? 

DAWX 79872 (Ex CN 472000 boxcar)

This caboose, which was a former CN caboose, was in storage in Walkley Yard for years. The company that owns it is D.A. Walmsley and Company. It was attached to an RDC9 unit, also owned by DAWX. Sadly, both of these cars were subjected to arson, the RDC unit just recently. There isn't a lot of information about DAWX online, although a picture from locomotive and railway car rebuilding company IRSI in Moncton, New Brunswick provides a clue. This photo shows an old CP RDC, owned by DAWX, being rebuilt at the facility. The company clearly has railway holdings. I have not been back to Walkley Yard in a number of years, so I'm not sure what is to become of its torched RDC unit here or what happened to its previously torched ex-CN caboose. The only information I could find about this caboose is from the Bytown Railway Society, which lists some of its history in this document. From this document, I learned this old caboose was actually a converted boxcar. That's about all I could find. How these cars came to be stored in Walkley Yard is a mystery. I can imagine there would be better places to store cars where the security was better.

GTW 79047

The most recent caboose to ply the rails here is this relatively fit looking Grand Trunk caboose, which has been used on the Arnprior Turn of late. You don't have to look too hard online to find photos of this van in various CN yards across its system in Michigan (ex-GTW territory), Ontario and Winnipeg. It has seen a lot of yard duty, judging by the photos I have seen in various rail photo forums.

Since crews here have to do a fair bit of backward moves on the Smiths Falls Sub to Federal, not to mention on the Vankleek and former OLOR, it's not surprising that CN would want to have one of these old warhorses around to make things easier for the local crew. It certainly has provided a fair bit of excitement among railfans in the area who are making the weekly run to Arnprior a regular spectator sport of late.

Many of us bemoan the lack of variety on today's modern railways. CN's continued use of cabooses in this region certainly gives local railfans one tiny thing to brag about that those along the mainlines cannot claim.

A rare find: CN diesel still sporting the North America scheme

As I mentioned in a previous post, my brother has been busy taking photos in and around Sarnia with his son in the past few months. We here at The Beachburg Sub have been the happy beneficiaries of his contributions. I have a number of shots of tunnel trains, including one series taken from the Port Huron, Michigan side of the tunnel. These will appear in a future post. There was one photo that Marc sent my way that really caught me off guard recently. Here it is below.

That's right. That is the CN North America scheme still logging miles on a Grand Trunk SD40-2. You can read about the CN's subtle red-white-and-black paint scheme tinkering in this post here. The number boards on the top and side of the cab look a little different as well. Now check out this 1990 shot of the same unit. It looks like this diesel has had a colourful history. It was clearly a Union Pacific unit at one point before being repainted in the CN North America scheme, like in the 1993 timeframe. How this unit has endured in this scheme for so long is likely an interesting story. I'm always fascinated by engine that carry old colour schemes far past their best before date.

His find reminded me of the day when I took a bunch of shots of CN diesels at the old Sarnia roundhouse and ended up capturing a few units in the North America scheme. I never cared much for this logo, since I felt it was needlessly complicated. I can't imagine that those who had to paint these logos were terribly enthused with it either.

Here's a shot taken near the Sarnia roundhouse in the summer of 1993.This one is another SD40-2 with a wide nose. This unit has since been converted to the current CN scheme, as you can see here.

And here another shot of 5324, and another unit in the North America scheme, right around the fueling station in the Sarnia Yard.

SUGGESTED READING

Those readers who might occasionally glance at the right-side tab on the main blog page will notice some changes. I have added a few blogs that I think will interest you as well. One will be familiar to many of you who have drifted over here from Trackside Treasure or Confessions of a Train Geek. CP Rail Manitoba and Minnesota Subdivision is one of the better model railroading blogs I have come across. It also adds in some excellent posts about big-time railroading. It is definitely worth checking out.

The second you might not know. However, I can tell you that the future of railroad blogging is in safe hands, if this blog is any indication. I first came across Nathan O'Neill in this article in the Toronto Star. I encourage you to check it out and read up on what this 7-year-old rail fan has already accomplished. He sounds like an amazing kid. I have linked to his blog because it will no doubt remind many of us where our passion for railroading started. I encourage you to read his blog On the Rails and send along an encouraging word to Nathan. I did. He returns messages.

Finally, for my Ottawa readers, I am adding Ottawa Rewind, an absolutely fascinating blog about Ottawa's history. The author focuses on a number of lost pieces of Ottawa's history, including this post about the Prince of Wales bridge. I would invite you to check this blog out as well, especially if you are interested in this city's history like me.

Thomas Edison on the rails

Thomas Edison was a railway man. Really. After a chance encounter with an old rail car this summer, I searched out the legend of the famous inventor and his connection to railways. This is what I discovered.

Across the St. Clair River in Port Huron, Michigan, Thomas Edison remains an immense source of civic pride. Although born in Ohio, Edison spent a great deal of his childhood in Port Huron, where his journey toward world fame began on the rails.

Let's back up a bit. The photo you see below is a restored 1800s baggage and passenger car, once belonging to a railroad with quite possibly the longest name in rail history. Care to guess what the C.D. & C.G.T. Jct. R.R. stands for? No googling, please. The initials stand for the Chicago, Detroit & Canada Grand Trunk Junction Rail Road. The line was built in 1858-9 to link Port Huron to Detroit and the rest of the outside world. As the GT suggests, this line was part of the Grand Trunk Western system, although the line was technically independent until 1928 when it officially became a subsidiary of the Grand Trunk. The Grand Trunk continues to operate in Port Huron, including on waterfront trackage that goes past this old rail car and its old rail station (you can the station and the crossing signal in the photo).

August 2014 photo of restored baggage and passenger car at Thomas Edison Depot Museum in Port Huron, Michigan. The museum is located along the St. Clair River waterfront, right next to the Bluewater Bridge (seen behind the station).

 

Back to Edison. The young inventor was a restless young man, even as far back as his pre-teen years. He was twelve years old when he convinced his parents to allow him to ride the train to and from Detroit each day in order to sell newspapers and candy to passengers. He was soon successful enough that he hired other boys to work as newsboys on the same line. One of the results of this venture was that Edison obtained the exclusive rights to sell his own newspaper, the Grand Trunk Herald, along the line.

 

The profits Edison reaped from his railway sales helped fund his early experiments. A few versions of a local legend suggest that Edison's hearing problems stemmed from a failed science experiment on a train. He once suggested a conductor hit him over his ears and threw him off the train after one of his experiments went awry. That story changed over the years.

 

There is even a Canadian connection to Edison's railway adventures. After his time selling papers and candy on the rails, Edison would go on to become a telegraph operator for the Grand Trunk in Stratford, Ontario. The story about this job holds that Edison saved a young boy from being struck by a train. The boy's father, a Grand Trunk employee, was so grateful to Edison that he trained him to be a telegraph operator. 

 

Photo from Port Huron Museum

 

Of course, there is so much more to the Edison story, but for our purposes here, I will stop there. Port Huron continues to pay tribute to the man. The restored 1800s rail car and train station comprise what is known as the Thomas Edison Depot Museum, which is perched beneath the Bluewater Bridge, linking Port Huron to Point Edward and Sarnia Ontario. The rail car has been restored, but many of its original furnishings inside the car have been replaced by what you see above. Look online and you will notice many complaints about this. The city also has a waterfront hotel, The Thomas Edison Inn, not far from the museum.

 

Information on the car was very hard to come by. Most references to it suggest it was an 1800s vintage car, but little else is out there, from what I can see.

 

ANOTHER CLOSE CALL IN BARRHAVEN

 

Via Rail Canada was busy reassuring residents in the Barrhaven neighbourhood that there are no public safety issues after the warning signals at two level crossings at Jockvale Road and Greenbank Road both malfunctioned earlier this week, resulting in the signals going into fail-safe mode. Via Rail said the problem was due to a mechanical malfunction, which has been fixed.

 

 

On Thursday morning, an OC Transpo double decker bus stopped beneath the crossing guards at the Fallowfield Road level crossing, in the midst of the morning rush hour. Although commuters on the bus told local news they were frightened by the fact that the bus was about five metres away from the train, the city transit authority insisted that the bus driver did the proper thing by stopping for a yellow light, even though the bus was sitting in the path of the crossing guards. The incident, of course, will likely raise new questions over the safety of these crossings, especially after the fatal bus-train collision at the Woodroffe Avenue crossing last fall.