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. 

On The Road Again

I'm pleased to be able to offer up something new, which is a little less heavy than my previous two posts. I thank those of you who reached out to me regarding my post about mental health and the situation my family and I find ourselves in at the moment. I'm happy to say that the situation has stabilized as the police have helped us restore calm for the time being. My mental health has improved and I am starting to feel more like myself again.

Recently, my family went on a short trip to Waterloo, Ont. for a music conference. This was a business trip for my wife, as she is the chair of a provincial music association. For me, I was giving a mental health presentation, but it was also a chance to get out of Ottawa and visit family in nearby Stratford. I have a pile of interesting pictures from Stratford, including some images from my summer visit, but I will save those for other posts.

I should also note that I had a chance to visit the Waterloo Central Railway yard in St. Jacobs and the CN yard in Kitchener, both of which yielded some cool, and even unexpected, shots. It was an incredibly productive trip for me as a train-starved railfan.

For this post, I wanted to share some images captured while my family was travelling to and from Waterloo. This has always been a fun game I have played while on Highway 401. In this case, we had incredible luck, as my wife managed to get some fantastic images of trains.

Our first meet was in Kingston, as we were approaching the Highway 15 interchange, where the CN Kingston Subdivision is visible from the highway. An eastbound local had made its way past the highway overpass (Ed note: A reader said the photo was likely taken near County Road 11A) when my wife captured this image. The train is being led by CN ES44AC 2933, with two boxcars and a long string of covered hoppers in tow. As we were going in opposite directions, I give my wife full credit for getting this shot. I have really grown to love these shots, which are from a distance and do not have any of the 3/4 wedge effect. It's almost a full-on parallel shot. I am of the opinion that a train image doesn't need to have the train as the dominant feature in the image for the shot to be compelling.

We didn't see anything else on our way, since we were driving fairly late and the darkness prevented any further shots. But I did get this shot of a fading western sunset as we were on the 401 in the Toronto area. I was in the passenger seat at the time, I should add. All these images, in fact, were taken from the front passenger seat. Safety first!

On the way home, we took the 407 toll highway, as we were leaving on a weekday morning and the traffic around Toronto was a major obstacle to our timely return to Ottawa. I'm glad we took the 407, since we were able to catch this image of three CN units resting near its Brampton yard. This is second time I've caught a string of units on this flyover. Unlike the other time I caught engines on this bridge, this time around, these are all heavy hitters. The last time, I remember catching an old GP9 warhorse. This image, again, is courtesy of my wife in the passenger seat.

A little further along, after we had rejoined the eastbound 401, we were travelling through Clarington on the east side of the GTA when we levelled up to an eastbound freight train that was moving at a pretty good clip.

My wife managed to snag a pretty decent shot of the DPU unit operating mid-train. Once again, I love that this shot captures more than just the train. The cloud bank in the sky and the scattered sunshine makes for a visually interesting image. You can see the DPU peaking out between some brush, as well as some lumber cars, a boxcar and a tank car. The DPU is CN 2222, an ES44DC.

Sadly, we were not able to successfully get the front end of the train, as the roadside brush and the differing speeds of the train and our car meant we couldn't find a clear line of sight, although I will say that the train was lead by a lone unit, possibly another ES44DC. I can't be sure, as I only had time to quickly glance over since I was driving.

As I have mentioned before, I always try to snag a few bonus train shots when I am travelling along the 401, as the CN mainline parallels the highway for a stretch in Kingston, as well as in parts of Toronto. We did pass by CP trackage a few times in our travels as well, but I was not able to catch any CP trains, which is a shame.

Much of my photography this year has been remarkably consistent in that the railways featured on this blog are predominantly CN and Via. In the coming weeks and months, I aim to change that, simply by sharing some great shots of the Goderich Exeter Railway in Straford and some shots of the Waterloo Central Railway in St. Jacobs. 

Stay tuned.

The old guy in the lead

On a trip back from Southwestern Ontario in July, I encountered this strange consist idling on an overpass over the 407, near CN's Brampton Yard. There are a few things about this consist that caught my eye after my wife snapped a few shots from the passenger side of our car, which was headed east.

I liked how the old GP9 was the lead unit of a three engine consist lashed together elephant style. The engines in the image are GP9RM 7029 followed by GP38-2 7509 and GP38-2 7512. Look closely and you can see the differences between 7509 and 7512. One noticeable change is the extended roof overhang on 7509, which 7512 does not have. Also, the placement of the horn on each is different, as 7512 has it mounted on the cab while 7509 does not, although it's hard to judge by the image. Also, there's the obvious difference in paint schemes between the GP38s and the GP9, which looks tired.

A shot from further back gives you a better idea of the size of the container train on the parallel track.

The noteworthy aspect of the image in my mind was that the GP9 is in the lead. This is not all that surprising at first glance, as I'm sure it just happened that this is how the locomotives lined up when they coupled them together.

But given that CN has only 29 of these old units left on its system, any sighting of these engines is worth noting these days, before they disappear forever. Over the years, I have come across a number of GP9s in action in Windsor, Sarnia, Lambton County and even here in Ottawa in recent years.

The GP9 is a survivor, many of which were built in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Although CP's fleet has disappeared and morphed into the GP20 ECOs, the CN roster continues to toil in its yards scattered throughout its system, but for how long.

I have been thinking about these old warhorses in recent months and thought that this image taken in late July might be a perfect opportunity to do a little retrospective on these engines and my encounters with them over the years. 

That will wait for the next post.

Postcard from Vaughan

This is the latest installment of an occasional series where I take a single photo and share some thoughts about it. You can read the other postcard posts by clicking the links below.

Postcard from Chemical Valley (2015)
Postcard from Saint Laurent Boulevard (2015)
Postcard from Twin Elm (2016)
Postcards from Alberta (2016)

Somewhere between the time when I was young and now, railways have become a lot less friendly. I don't mean to make this sound like a gripe, but merely an observation. I remember kids walking through my hometown on the CSX tracks all the time when I was young, even though the rail line was much more active than it is today.

Even here in Ottawa, I love to see the old images of Walkley Yard and other rail installations around this city from decades past. It is obvious from those images that people could walk onto railway property and take photos of trains at just about any time. Go to any rail history blog or website and you're sure to come across tales of people who made friends with railway workers and took photos on their railway's property at will.

No more.

Railways have become much more serious about their property in the last two decades. There are a number of reasons why this has happened, not the least of which is the heightened concern over security. When I was young, I often walked along tracks and wandered onto railway properties. I'm sure many people of my vintage will say the same thing. Try that today and you're sure to get yourself into a lot of trouble (in other words, don't try it).

This summer, as my family made its way to Southwestern Ontario to visit family, I kept my camera nearby in the passenger seat of our car, just in case we got lucky and saw a train along the highway. Sadly, I had no luck in Kingston, where the Kingston Subdivision parallels Highway 401 for a lengthy stretch.

However, as we were making our way through Toronto on the 407, I readied my camera near CN's massive Macmillan Yard and hoped there might be something worth capturing. In fact, there was. Barely discernible above the concrete highway barrier  was a CN unit marshalling a long line of autoracks.

I tried to clean up the image a bit, but there's only so much you can do as your car is passing by at 100 km/h. But it did get something, which is better than nothing. Especially for me.

I've said this in posts recently. As much as I liked going to rail yards when I was kid, I really try to stay away from them now, given the choice. I find I'm much happier out there near a busy main line (when I am near one) finding a good piece of landscape to frame a passing train.

But I remember being mesmerized by the thought of seeing this yard when I was young. I suppose if I find myself in Vaughan in the future, I might seek out the one small viewing platform on the edge of the yard at the side of a busy road. It would no doubt be fun to capture a bunch of trains all at once, provided there was activity in the yard at that time.

I guess I'm so used to the thrill of the chase along a main line and having to work extremely hard for my shots that the allure of something easy doesn't excite me like it once did.

Maybe I like this shot because it was so hard to capture.

On the road in London and Toronto

Recently, my family travelled to London, Ont., which allowed me once again to get a look at some railways outside of the Ottawa area. The weekend proved to be filled with a wide variety of railway scenes, including this shot taken from Highway 407. We were on our way home when we decided to take the northern bypass through Toronto, to avoid the 401. We were lucky to catch this long CN intermodal train heading east over the Humber River on the Halton Subdivision. The shot below shows you the mid-train DPU locomotive. We were a little too far off to identify the unit, but I think the shot has so many more interesting elements. This shot was taken by my wife from the passenger seat of our car as we made our way east on the 407.

I really thought the sky was the best feature of the shot. I worked with my photo program to convert this into a black and white shot, which I thought would work since the train was pretty far off and was bathed in shadow anyway. I like how this shot turned out as well.

Here's one final shot, where my wife zoomed in a bit to capture a bit more detail. Years after beginning to photograph trains again, I can now say I have captured a grand total of two DPUs in my travels (well, my wife has, but I was there!). Considering how little time I have to actually see trains, I think this marks some progress.

While in London, I had a little bit of time to sit trackside and am happy to report that I did see some action on Canadian Pacific's Galt Subdivision, which goes through London. I will share those photos and observations in an upcoming post. But, I thought I would share a few more general observations about London.

Here's a piece of trivia to start. Do you know which Via Rail station is the fourth busiest in Canada after Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa? Yup, it's London. On a way to a wedding through the city, I snapped a quick photo of London's downtown train station, which is quite a good looking structure, especially compared to the institutional and sterile station that it replaced. After seeing some of the other Via Rail stations that have been built in Ontario recently, I have to say this one is probably my favourite. From the outside at least, it's a good mix of a modern train station and a classic rail station. If you look closely to the right of the shot, you can see some beautiful Via Rail streamliners parked and ready for their next run.

Since London finds itself as a key point along Via's southwestern corridor, this station sees a number of trains each day between Toronto and Windsor, not to mention the two daily trains between Toronto and Sarnia.

I couldn't help but notice that, unlike Ottawa, London's busiest rail lines are not all sealed off from the city's major arteries. Many busy roads, including downtown roads, intersect with railway tracks at level crossings.

The city is served by Canadian National, Canadian Pacific and the Goderich Exeter Railway, not to mention Via Rail. This makes London a great place to see trains, if not the most convenient city to get around in when a train comes through. And make no mistake, this is a busy railway town. The trains that make their way through the city are long.

London has lost a great deal of its manufacturing and production in recent years, including the old GM Diesel, McCormicks and Kellogg's plants, to name a few. As we drove through some industrial parts of the city, I noticed a fair bit of trackage snaking its way through old rail served plants, but I couldn't see a whole lot of places that appeared to be using local rail service. Of course, there are still a number of rail-served customers in the city, but it's obvious that much of the railway action you will see in this city will be long haul freights making their way between Toronto and Chicago or Toronto and Windsor/Detroit.

For a railfan, this city offers a lot. There are a number of level crossings, rail flyovers, embankments and other features that give you lots of choice if you decide to do a little railfanning. Up until recently, you could even have dinner at the city's historic railway station on Richmond Row in the downtown, but the restaurant there just recently moved out. Still, the old station is worth the visit.

Stay tuned for some shots of my meet with a westbound CP freight, which produced a few surprises.

No such thing as too much of a good thing

Most people in Ontario dread having to travel Highway 401. I look forward to it. I have created a game for myself where I try and get decent shots of trains at places along the highway where tracks parallel the freeway. I do this almost out of necessity since there are so few opportunities to shoot railway action in Ottawa, outside of Via Rail.

I first tried this game when my family was coming home from our Christmas visit to family in southwestern Ontario earlier this year. You will recall from this post that the results were less than stellar. But this time around, there was no shortage of trains to shoot. It was an embarrassment of riches.

On Aug. 15th, my family headed southwest from Ottawa en route to Petrolia, Ont. to visit family in the Sarnia area. I was determined to be prepared, so I asked my wife to drive the first leg of the trip from Ottawa past Kingston. I knew Kingston had a couple of spots along the 401 where the tracks parallel the highway. As luck would have it, A CN manifest freight was making its way west, so the hunt was on. I took this first shot below and was quite happy with it, thanks to the complexion of the sky and the variety of rolling stock. I noticed that we were closing in on the front of the train, so I readied my camera to try and get a shot of the lead units

What a surprise. The train was being led by two CN units and an oddly painted former BC Rail unit, in dark blue and yellow. I didn't know what I had captured until I uploaded the shots to my hard drive and took a closer look at the unit. I thought I had captured a former Illinois Central unit, but I ended up capturing BC Rail 4546. I looked around for more on this unit, but didn't come up with anything (Update: fellow blogger Steve Boyko pointed me to this shot of  a similar BC Rail unit in dark blue). The highway barrier snuck into the shot, which is a hazard of shooting along the highway, but I was happy I just barely caught this locomotive. You can see some glare from my passenger side window. Another hazard.

This was another shot of the train as it crossed under the highway. I like the pastoral view. Sure, it's just a string of tank cars and part of the highway barrier is in the bottom corner of the image, but it still works for me. You will notice that summer in Eastern Ontario has been good for all things green. This train proved to be a lot of fun to watch and shoot while our car made its way down the 401. I should mention that a Via Rail corridor train was also passing by at this time, but I couldn't snag a shot of it.

On the way home on Aug 23rd, we decided to take the 407 across Toronto, to avoid the endless construction and traffic on the 401. I didn't know what to expect, since we rarely take this toll highway. But as we crossed through Vaughan near CN's MacMillan Yard, there was some action to shoot, including this intermodal train led by CN 2288 and two BNSF units, 6649 and 4821. This shot is my first image of BNSF units, so I considered it the highlight of my highway adventures. This scene is far from perfect, as hydro poles and some transmission towers got in the way, but this is part of the challenge of this game.

A little further east, another intermodal was making its way toward MacMillan yard (below).

We made our way back to the 401 as we continued our way east. Of course, a patch of construction and an accident brought our car to a stop. It worked out for me, though, since a GO Train was making its way west toward downtown Toronto with MP40PH-3C 611 doing the shoving. Again, it's not a great shot, but I considered it to be a decent shot from our vantage point. I looked through my images and realized this is the first shot of a GO Train I have in my collection.

During our vacation, I managed to get all kinds of shots at the CN Sarnia Yard as well as a few shots of CSX action in the same area. Our family also made its way up to Goderich, where I was able to get some shots of the Goderich Exeter Railway and a few of the local railway artifacts in the town. The trip will no doubt feed this blog for months, so stay tuned for all kinds of railroadiana.

As mentioned a little while ago, my main laptop has been sent back to its manufacturer for a repair, which has prevented me from sharing photos that will form the third part of my series about Bedell Ontario. Stay tuned for that in the next little while.