Off the main line

This July, I was in the Sarnia area to visit family and was treated to some great train watching around Sarnia's CN yard. Granted, many of my images from this spot were a bit drab as the scenery was lacking. I have tried in past years to incorporate interesting scenes in my railway photography, instead of just focusing on the train itself.

So for this latest post, I wanted to incorporate some of the other shots I took while I was in Sarnia, which were a bit off the beaten track. As I mentioned in my last post, I did get to see quite a bit of main line freight trains roaring through the yard, but there was also plenty to see in the yard itself, not to mention in other spots.

Just a short drive from the CN yard, CSX still maintains a small local operation, at the foot of Clifford Street, tucked away behind the Imperial Oil refinery. The old railway station is still standing and has been renovated over the years. It once housed passenger operations, back when the railway was the Pere Marquette, but those operations ended nearly a century ago in the 1930s, if my research is correct. 

But CSX still serves its industrial customers in the Chemical Valley and along its Sarnia Subdivision south of the city. At one time, you'd have seen 4-5 locomotives in Sarnia. Now, there are just these two refurbished geeps.

 

These geeps are considered Dash 3s, as they have incorporated a number of new features, including remote control operation (hence the beacons), newly enlarged cabs, inset lights on the hood and a number of other improvements. I have to say that I don't really like the look of these geeps. They seem overly boxy and not in an endearing, quirky GP30 kind of way.

I took a few other shots, but didn't want to wander onto private property. so I did the best I could from the end of the street, where I could legally take photos. The shot below gives you an idea of how far I was from the power. 

 That track in the bottom of the photo once used to extend all the way beside the station. I often saw covered hopper cars stashed on that track with manual feeders beside them. See the shot below for an example of how it was once used.

In the CN yard, the yard power of choice is still GP9s as well as some GP38s. The old SW1200s are long gone, although a few linger near the Lambton Diesel Specialists roundhouse facility, but they are units for lease in LDS colours. 

The curiosity among the yard power was a lone BNSF geep that had been sandwiched between two CN geeps when I was there. Local railfans told me it's been in the yard for quite some time, so it's either a leased unit or possibly a purchased unit that has yet to be repainted. I didn't see a CN stencil on the engine, so I'm guessing it's a leased unit.

In the image below, you can see the crew heading into the yard from the fuel pad, to get going on some switching duties. 

Truthfully, the unit was a bit hard to catch, as it was mostly hidden behind long strings of cars in the yard. I had to get creative to catch a glimpse of it a few times before it finally came out in full view.

 

There were many other cool sights at the yard that I was lucky enough to capture but I will save those for other posts.

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.

Random photos from a random year

Last year was an odd year for my railfanning activities. There were some great moments where I was able to capture lots of images and material and then there were moments where high expectations met flat reality. In other words, it was a year of highs and lows. The challenge I always face as a blogger from Ottawa is that there isn't nearly enough going on here for me to maintain a weekly blog. You can only photograph Via Rail trains so many times before it gets old and before you run out of things to mention on a blog. I suppose if I had focused my blog on passenger trains exclusively, then I would be in better shape, but I never intended for this blog to be so narrowly focused.

Bloomington, Indiana, USA

Naturally, whenever I get out of Ottawa, I have high hopes of capturing something to share. In September, my wife and I travelled to Bloomington, Indiana, to attend a wedding. I was excited, as Bloomington was situated along the Indiana Rail Road's Indianapolis Subdivision, south of the state's biggest city. Sadly, in my research, it became apparent that this part of the railway's subdivision saw sparse traffic, with much of it passing through at night, mainly coal trains. Our hotel was within walking distance of the rail line, but it was quiet for much of my time there, except for a weekly local, which passed by on Friday evening. I only know this because I heard it while eating dinner in the city's downtown.

But the city has some fascinating railway history that is visible and accessible. Although Bloomington hasn't seen regular Amtrak service in many years, the town's former passenger station is still standing next to the rails, although it wasn't clear to me if it was a private residence, art studio or business. It looked like it could be any of the three, although there was no signage to indicate what it was used for. I decided to confine my photographs to shots taken from a small winding road that led to the station on the hill.

It looked to me like the station once housed a restaurant, where the station had an addition added on the left. The originals stone structure appeared to be a residence. Interestingly, the station sign still hangs on the side of the building. It would be a good thing, in my opinion, if some civic-minded person saved this sign, cleaned it up and housed in a local museum. I am always fascinated when I see old station signs and relics in local museums. They are a part of a community's history.

While in the city, I also came across what locals call the freight station. The building is a fairly nondescript maroon wooden building, which has an elevated main level, which is your first clue that it served the railways. Since the building served only freight purposes, it really doesn't have the architectural flourishes you would see on a passenger station. Still, the building was significant enough that it was declared a national historic site. After closing in the 1960s, it served as a restaurant at various points. Today, it is an office building.

The building has an interesting history. It was built by the Illinois Central Railway in 1906 in response to a local effort to attract a railway to compete with the Manon Railroad, which was the sole railway serving the city at the time. The IC depot was built after the IC finished its railway line through the city. The presence of the depot spawned economic growth in its immediate vicinity, which sustained the city for decades. It wasn't until 1963 when it closed, due to a decrease in demand for rail service. 

Still, as you can see, the elements of the building have been well maintained, including signage on the side of the building, indicating its original purpose. You can also read about the building's importance on the plaque amid the hostas. This was the rail line that connected America from north to south through its heartland, from Chicago to New Orleans. You might recall the famous Willie Nelson song, City of New Orleans. That song is about the train of the same name that rolled through Bloomington for decades.

Corunna, Ontario

This shot below could have been something special, had I been just a bit quicker. I was in the middle of a visit to my sister's house. My sister's property backs onto the CSX Sarnia Subdivision, just south of Corunna. I was caught in a bad place when an unexpected CSX local rolled by carrying a string of gondolas destined for the the old Ontario Power Generation Lambton Generating Station power plant, which is in the process of being demolished. I have meant to get a shot of one of these trains, which are a rarity on the CSX line, since this operation deals almost exclusively with tank cars and covered hoppers for petrochemical customers.

The biggest issue at this moment was I was in the middle of a conversation with one of my sister's neighbours and didn't want to be rude by bolting for the tracks. So I politely turned around and got this shot of a CSX local poking out from between the trees. There were two GP38s with the new CSX scheme pulling a load of about 10 AIM gondolas. A big missed opportunity, but at least I got something, right?

Earlier in the year, I was visiting family on the March Break when I passed by the Nova Corunna refinery on the Highway 40. Its rail operations have expanded a great deal in recent years, as the facility has undergone an immense multi-billion dollar expansion. The problem with getting a shot of rail operations here is you need to shoot overtop of the earthen berms. That means getting a shot from the highway overpass, which goes over a spur connecting Nova to the CN St. Clair River Industrial Spur. This can only be done if you are on the highway when it is empty or when you are in a passenger seat. In this case, I was riding shotgun in my brother's car, which made the shot easy to capture.

These are not easy shots to get, so any time I can capture Nova's old SW switcher, it's a win. I like the colours of the sky in this shot mixed with the smoke from the stacks. As I have mentioned a fair bit in the last year, I am much more interested in train photos that incorporate the surrounding landscape. I could have zoomed in on the switcher, but I wouldn't be getting the old story behind the shot. I will be doing a deeper dive into the SW switcher, as I have a few cool shots of these old beasts. They are rapidly fading from railways. Most of the survivors are in use on short lines or industrial operations. 

Ottawa, Ontario 

Most of what I captured in Ottawa in 2022 was shared in my posts. I only made it out to Via's Tremblay Road station once. When I was there, I got a quick shot of an O-Train on the Confederation Line heading west toward Tremblay Station. It was not a good year for the O-Train as its operations were disrupted a number of times by various mechanical issues, accidents and even a lighting strike. I don't generally like to shoot these operations, as I don't find them all that compelling from a photography point of view, but I made the exception on this turn, since the sunlight made for a quality image at that moment.

There are a few more odds and ends from last year that I considered throwing into this pot pourri of a post, but I have plans for those shots in some upcoming themed posts, so they will have to wait. I can't really complain about my adventures trackside last year. There were definitely more hits than misses, which you can see in this year-end post. But I am always taking shots trackside, no matter what. You never know when those random shots will come in handy.

Real life inspiration for a fictitious branch

The good news for my model railway in my basement is that the main line works and three spurs are essentially operational. There are rough spots causing derailments and the wiring is about 90 per cent complete. I have a rough idea of a piece of my town and a plan for a railyard and interchange track.

The bad news is I need a tonne of supplies and time (which I don't really have) to complete some of the important next steps. I'm trying to decide what next steps I can take with what I have. But I will share a few details of things I have done so far and give you an idea of where I found the inspiration in the actual railway operations I have photographed over the years.

A bit of context. I am not modelling any actual part of the CSX Sarnia Subdivision. Instead, I am taking elements from both the north and south ends of the line (Chatham had a number of rural agricultural customers while Sarnia had the industrial and petrochemical customers). There were points on the old Sarnia Subdivision that had both the agricultural and industrial customers. I am modelling what I would imagine to be a branch off the main sub that would include many of the elements one would have seen along this operation in the early to late 1980s.

One thing I am proud of is my maintenance-of-way spur that sits next to the mainline near the station.

One half of the MoW consist has an old Canadian Pacific baggage car, which was not an uncommon thing for railways to use during this time. Since the Sarnia Sub intersects with the CP in Chatham, I took the liberty of blending both railways. You will also notice an old wooden TH&B boxcar. Some of these old wooden boxcars lived well into the 1990s as MoW cars. The photo below from the Sarnia end of the the CSX operations gives you an idea of my inspiration. I would love to one day put together a detailed C&O MoW boxcar like the one below, but the TH&B boxcar will have to do for now. It was once part of the CP empire, so it's a stretch, but I am not one for strict adherence to prototypical operations. I like to freelance a bit.

Here's the other end of the MoW consist. It features an old Cotton Belt gondola and a CP flatcar, which I built from an old Ulrich kit. I had to look up this company to see what it was. When I bought this car, I had never heard of this model train maker before. You can see the rooftop of an industrial building in the shot as well. I'm not sure what it is going to be yet. You can also see a short train on the mainline with AT&SF, Bangor & Aroostook, RF&P and a green PC boxcar trailing a set of F units. All of these boxcars, except the PC, were given to me last year by a friend who had them in his basement collecting dust. What a gift!

Here's a closer shot of the CP flatcar. It took a lot of work to put this 60-year-old car together and get it operational. The couplers that it came with I had never seen before. I had to put in a conventional coupler and modify the car a bit to get it to fit properly.

Here's a shot of a MoW gondola I saw once in Sarnia, which gave me the idea that I needed one on my own maintenance track.

Here's a final shot of the mainline train and the station spur, below. You can get an idea of the developing town from this angle. There are a couple of things to note in this shot.

One is I bought an extended platform kit for my train station but found that it wasn't needed for what I was modelling, which is essentially a small town. So I used the extra platform for a railway themed park across the street from the station.

The next thing is the Chessie System F unit. You will see that it is mated to an old vintage Canadian Pacific unit, which needs a lot of work to make it look a little more realistic. Again, the old CSX Subdivision from my youth did not include shared power, but there were instances in Southern Ontario, particularly in the case of the CASO Sub near Windsor, where shared power did happen. So, it's another liberty I am taking. To be honest, I was just testing the old CP dummy to see how it handled the tracks. It has a temperamental coupler in the back, but it's working really well so far.

Try as you might, you will not find any real world example of a Chessie-painted F unit. I looked into it and discovered that the Chessie System did not retain any F units for revenue service, so this F unit is someone's idea of what it would have looked like if the railway had saved any of the covered wagons from its predecessors' long gone passenger service. The closest thing I found was that the old Seaboard System retained a set of F units long after it gave up its passenger operations.

You will also notice that the station is sitting on a block of wood. It will, of course, be elevated from the town, much like the Guelph Via Rail station is situated well above that city's downtown. The station is a common kit from Atlas. I like the look of it, since it reminds me of the old C&O station at the foot of Clifford Street in Sarnia, nestled behind the Esso refinery. The station looks different these days. Back in the early 1990s, it looked pretty rough. My station is a bit more tidy, for sure.

So that's one part of my set that could be close to getting some scenery in the near future, since it is pretty much set from a functional point of view. There is another part of that spur, which will serve a small farming operation. The building itself (you can see a piece of its power in the second last shot) is an old lumber mill, but it's generic enough that it can double for just about any old industrial building. I'm hoping to convert it into a feed mill, so I can use my hoppers and cylindrical hoppers there. That's a topic for another post.

Takin' it to the basement

The trackside time has pretty much dried up for me, since there is so little happening in Ottawa to begin with, but with the stay-at-home orders, it's even tougher. I've been thinking of things to share in this strange time. I have a model railway in my basement, which doesn't receive a lot of attention in busy times. But it's seen a little bit of love in the last few weeks.

I have been trying to figure out how to take a decent shot of the set, which is far from finished. The walls of my den are also adorned with pictures and framed copies of some of my old newspaper stories from my journalism days. It makes photos pretty tough. There's also a lot of bare wood still showing and a lot of unfinished track work, particularly in my rail yard.

So, I decided I would content myself with a few shots of a few test trains that I have been operating, just to ensure my main line is somewhat operational. So far, my operations have gone quite smoothly, with almost no derailments. That's a real step up from my days of model railroading back in my teens, when persistent operational problems were enough to make me quit the hobby for long spells.

Here's a shot of my test train, led by Chessie System SD40-2 7614. It is passing by a spur that will serve some sort of plastic or petrochemical customer in the near future. I have a storage tank, tankcare unloading platform and a general purpose industrial building.

Right now, I have some intermodal cars parked there for no reason at all. Possibly my railway is relying on car storage fees before its official start-up. Those container wells were actually given to me. They don't really fit in with what I'm doing, but they look okay parked.

The covered hopper I picked up used a few months ago. Someone tried to apply their own West Virginian livery on the car alongside the Chessie cat, but I was able to get rid of the hand-drawn logo for the most part. What's left looks like old graffiti, which is okay by me. I used to see these hoppers an awful lot on the Sarnia Sub when I was a kid.

I should mention that the SD40 was an engine which did not prowl the Sarnia Subdivision, but I like to use it anyway, as it was a Christmas gift from my parents many years ago. I am not one to strictly follow prototype rules. I'm not sure what part of the old CSX Canadian operations I am modelling, but I am trying to blend a few of its operations in and around Southwestern Ontario.

My diesel roster also features a B&O GP35-2 and a Seaboard GP38-2. There was sometimes a blend of pre-CSX power on the Sarnia Sub before the CSX units began to take over. The Seaboard units were exceptionally rare, but they were not unseen, in my experience.

I also recently finished a secondary spur that ends at my station. The spur now houses an old Canadian Pacific baggage car, a wood box car, a flat car and a gondola, which will act as a MoW consist, if I ever feel the urge to operate one of these trains.

It reminds me of this MoW consist I once captured in Sarnia. In fact, this photo below was my inspiration.

I would be happy to share some thoughts about my model railway endeavors, but rest assured that I intend to continue my focus on real world railways when the world opens back up.

Take care. Stay healthy.

My railway happy place

I’m tired. Tired from renovating my basement after a flood and tired of rehabilitating my property after we had a new pipe connected to our house, which destroyed our front yard and landscaping. So yeah, I’m tired from that. I’m also tired of this wet spring and cool temperatures. This spring has not been great and much of my time has been spent as a cut-rate Mike Holmes wannabe.

So the blog has suffered a bit. I was thinking of new things to talk about and there is no shortage of newsworthy items from Ottawa. Our new LRT is still not ready and doesn’t appear to be, even though it is more than a year behind schedule. Did I mention that one of the new electric trainsets derailed just outside of Belfast Yard recently? Okay, maybe this topic is not your cup of tea. How about the uncertainty over CN’s desire to pull out of Ottawa? How about CN’s recent (and vague) advertisements alluding to some sort of celebration they are organizing for Ottawa next year? I’m wondering if they’re even going to be here still.

I am not going to write about any of this. I’m bored with reality, tired of light rail and full up with day-to-day headaches. I want to think back to when I was young and just liked watching trains go by; a time when I simply admired them for the mechanical marvels that they are.

With that in mind, here are a few small anecdotes and observations from the railway of my youth, CSX’s Sarnia Subdivision. In many ways, this rail line is an anomaly that you don’t often find anymore. I was looking through some photographs of this line the other day when I noticed some interesting things that I hadn’t seen before.

1. In this shot, can you see the old telegraph pole? I never noticed it before and with good reason. They are pretty small, compared to the old poles I’ve noticed along other rights-of-way. Just a single pole and two measly wires leaning away from the roadbed.

As readers of this blog know, this line is actually quite old. It has changed hands a number of times and reads like a who’s who of CSX predecessors. It was the Erie and Huron Railway when it opened for business in 1886. It changed hands once and was renamed before becoming part of the Pere Marquette Railway in 1902. From there, it became part of the Chesapeake and Ohio in 1947, and then the inevitable mergers brought in the Chessie System group of companies before finally becoming CSX Transportation.

Unlike many other railways, this line shed its passenger service in 1933, much earlier than other lines. It’s a shame that none of the passenger stations have survived, other than the old Mooretown Station, which is located on the grounds of the Moore Museum.

But that little telegraph pole, barely noticeable as it is at the back of my sister’s property, which extends to the tracks, is a witness to the history of this line and its importance in connecting a very large and scattered group of settlements in Lambton County.

2. This is something I’ve noticed before but it was particularly noticeable behind my sister’s house. Usually, a railway’s roadbed is elevated a fair bit above the surrounding landscape for many reasons, not the least of which is to prevent washouts from floods. In many areas along this line, the roadbed is actually not elevated all that much higher than the surrounding area. I really noticed it in these images. It made me wonder if this was a factor of neglect in that the railway has not bothered to bolster its ballast in a while or if it was a factor of the line’s design. Did the elevation in this area suggest to the line's builders that it did not require that much of an elevation? I wonder.

3. I’ve shared this shot before, but I like the fact that this line still has concrete mileposts, like this one near Emily Street in Mooretown. I’m not sure how many are actually left but I like the fact that some of them are still around. I recall as a kid seeing concrete W signs as well, but as you can tell from this shot below, some of them have been replaced over the years.

4. I didn’t realize this until I was older, but this rail line has no speed or occupancy signals, and for good reason. The line, even in its heyday, connected with CN in Sarnia and CP in Chatham. The trackage through Chatham-Kent is now finished, of course, and the Sarnia connection is used only for once-a-day interchanges between CSX and CN at CN’s Sarnia Yard. CSX also connects with CN’s St. Clair River Industrial Spur at Terra Industries, south of Courtright, but this connection seems to be lightly used or unused at the moment. The point is, neither of these current connections require signals. The Chatham connection did have signals but I think that was it for this line. Up until the 1950s, the line also connected with the former Canada Southern St. Clair Branch in Courtright, but I have not seen any images of whether it was governed by any signals. A real throwback. I imagine the line was (and still is?) governed by OCS.

5. One more way this line was really different. I remember watching a competitive baseball tournament one summer when I was young and then hearing the rumbling of a GP38 (like this one pictured) on the adjacent rail line (this line in my day was the exclusive domain of this geep). Well, didn’t the engineer stop the engine next to the ball field so he could watch some of the action? How many rail lines have this type of casual attitude these days? It reminds me that numerous blog readers have told me that they see CN 589 stop at the March Road railway crossing in Kanata so the crew can pick up a Tim Hortons coffee on their way to Arnprior.

You know, I feel better now. It’s been a tough couple of weeks of hard work for me. And my commute to work has been changed by bridge closures, due to flooding. So, not a lot to cheer about, but I have plans to have a trackside day in the coming weeks. This was the same trackside day I planned a year ago. So, things are looking up.

What about you, fair reader? Where is your railway happy place? Or where was it?

One of these things is not like the others

I've been sifting through my years of photos and trying to put together some thematic posts in the last little while. This week, I came across another idea as I was driving to Drummondville, Quebec (don't ask, long story). After I had finally made my way past Montreal, I found myself heading east on the Autoroute 20 around Saint Hyacinthe when I came across one of the more bizarre sites I've seen in my years observing railways. There, in the middle of a 100km/h stretch of a four-lane divided highway, was a single track level railway crossing. I was amazed that a railway would cross a major highway in this way, as it seemed to me to be a very dangerous proposition. As I was driving by, I noticed an "Exempt" sign, which I have generally understood to mean that the crossing is longer in use. Still, at one time, it was and as I was driving by, I noticed a CN GP9 switching local industry not far from the highway, errr, autoroute. 

That got me to thinking of some of the strange things I have seen in my time trackside, so here is a small sampling of random disorder.

In the early 1990s, I came across the experimental Bombardier HR 616 freight diesel in the Sarnia Yard. It was hitched to a string of idle locomotives. At the time, I thought nothing of it, but realized years later that this unit was quite rare indeed. This model of diesel was even loaned to CP for a while, even though it still sported the CN safety scheme.

More recently, I was trackside in Bedell and about to leave, when I spotted a long tank train barreling west toward my spot. The train was an ethanol train, which meant each tank car was exactly the same. 

Well, not quite. What's that white tank car doing in that consist?

I've often seen some strange consists at the Ottawa Via station. Usually, Via Rail corridor consists are made up solely of LRC coaches or stainless steel Budd streamliners, but Via sometimes mixes it up. Sometimes you see a rare P42-F40PH-2 lash-up, usually when a locomotive needs to be bailed out. Whenever you see an outlier in the consist, it's a treat.

Then there's the rare single carload that you might see on a freight train. This used to be much more common. That's what makes it so special these days when you catch a single car that stands out on a long train. Here's one of my favourite catches, which happened in Wyoming in 2017. I should mention that this train had five diesels leading the way, which is itself an outlier these days.

This one is from a freight heading west on the Kingston Sub. My wife caught this load of axles right behind the power. Makes me think that would be an easy thing to replicate on my home layout, once I get back to working on it.

Here's another oddity I found when I caught a CP mixed freight westbound on the Galt Sub at Industrial Road in London in 2016. A single load of untreated telephone poles. Who said carload freight was dead?

This one might be my favourite. When I chased trains as a kid in my hometown, there was always the potential for something special on the CSX Sarnia Sub, like this very rare B&O clad GP38-2. This one lasted well into the 1990s, surviving a Chessie and CSX repaint. I have a HO scale version of this type of unit on my layout (although my Ho scale version is a GP35).

I can't wait until I find my next outlier. When you rarely get to see trains, it's the oddities that are the rare prize. I wonder what's next.

What's to become of CSX in Canada?

The CSX I knew seems to be disappearing right before my eyes. First there was the upheaval when Hunter Harrison took over and then there was his untimely death. Say what you want about the man, he got results. For my part, I’m not about seriously question his methods, other than to say that I think there is an extreme lack of long-term thinking among publicly traded companies, especially railways. There has been a lot of debate over the fixation over quarterly number. As a former business reporter, I understand how the game is played, but I have to wonder how much is enough? How long can you slash, burn and defer for the sake of making a quarterly target, even if you’re sacrificing your long-term profitability? I’m not necessarily saying this is the case with CSX, but you look at the scale of the cutbacks the company is considering and you wonder what will be left when the hedge funds are finished with this company.

April 1991 - A northbound CSX mixed freight waits on the Sarnia Subdivision, just south of the St. Clair Boulevard crossing. That empty field behind the train is now a subdivision.

For me, CSX has been a lifelong fascination. The railway’s Sarnia Subdivision passes through my hometown. For how much longer is anyone’s guess. When I was younger, CSX operated from Sarnia all the way to Chatham, where it interchanged with CP. At one point, the rail line went all the way to Lake Erie, terminating in Erieau, but that was before my time. Now, the railway switches a few refineries in Sarnia and maintains a scant presence between the Chemical Valley and its remaining customers south. CSX only goes as far as Sombra. South of that, the line’s service has been discontinued through Port Lambton, Wallaceburg, rural Kent County and Chatham.

This past summer, I caught a short local returning to Sarnia from Sombra. At the time, I wondered if that meet might be the last time I saw the CSX passing through my hometown. I’m thinking it was.

August 2017 - Perhaps my last meet with a CSX freight near my hometown

I can remember back when the railway was much busier, often shuttling long trains of interchange traffic between Sarnia and Chatham, with countless autoracks, auto parts high-cube boxcars among its usual tank cars and hoppers. In the 1980s, nearly all the GP38s were painted in the Chessie scheme, a scheme I didn’t like at the time but have grown to appreciate. There were even a fair number of B&O and even C&O painted geeps plying the rails. At some point in the late 1980s, the drab silver and grey CSX scheme popped up. By then, the writing was already on the wall. The trains were getting shorter and less frequent. By the time I moved away for school, the interchange traffic from Chatham was largely gone and the railway’s customer base in the Valley was shrinking (Dow Chemical left in the mid-1990s, Ethyl closed and a few other operations left the area afterward).

Summer 1991 - Autoracks and cabooses? This was back when CSX linked the CP in Chatham with CN in Sarnia.

Although there is optimism that small-scale industry is on its way back to some of these old refinery sites, I don’t think the CSX will want to wait around for an economic rebound. Its Sarnia Sub is already disconnected from the rest of its network.

As some continue to speculate, the Ontario Southland Railway might be a prime candidate to pick up the trackage from CSX and assume operations. The one wild card I’ve heard is that the City of Chatham-Kent owns the south end of the line and has been searching for an operator to resume rail service for the mainly agricultural customer base on the south end of the line. That process has dragged on for years with no success.

One has to wonder whether the addition of the lucrative switching business in Sarnia would make such an acquisition more palatable to the colourful shortline. I would love to see those old OSR F units and vintage locomotives in my hometown.

But I think I might raise a glass to the railway of my youth – the old Chessie System. It’s the railway that often woke me in the middle of the night when its freight trains would announce their presence by the two long, two short, one long horn blasts all the way through town. Even when I was young, I always found the sound reassuring and comfortable.

The CSX was the railway that used to distract me from my soccer games in the summer in Parkdale Park.

The CSX was the railway that produced countless summer chases as I raced to the tracks with my bike in the hopes of snapping a few shots.

The CSX is the railway whose old MoW cars were used for climbing on a tiny spur Port Lambton, where I went to school. Despite the open access to the old cars, they were never vandalized or damaged. How times change.

Fall 1992 - These MoW cars were often parked in Port Lambton, where I attended school. I recall climbing these cars on occasion, back when a railway could leave cars parked on an unprotected spur in the middle of a town and nothing would happen to them.

You get the idea. I’m not so much mourning the disappearance of the railway that I know as I am mourning the loss of its legacy in parts of Canada, especially around my hometown, but also in Windsor, Essex County, Niagara, St. Thomas and parts of Quebec. Hard to believe that this railway once served so many areas in Eastern Canada. But there is no room for sentimental nostalgia for a publicly traded railway in 2018.

CSX brings in an interchange load into CN's Sarnia Yard in October 2016

I look at what’s become of CSX in the last year and it seems like there’s almost no room for nostalgia with this railway. It’s a shame because a railway with such a colourful history deserves better.

A year of firsts

I didn't get around to putting together a post about the best moments from 2017, although I did devote one post to the Via Rail highlights (and there were many!). So, although it's nearly February, I wanted to take a look back at some cool moments trackside from 2017. Although my time trackside was miniscule last year, I was happy to have some incredible luck this year.

The first instance of some good luck happened in May when my family made a trip to Southwestern Ontario to visit family and attend a family reunion over the Mother's Day weekend. I made my way to Wyoming and camped out at the town's tiny Via Rail station, hoping to catch a freight train on the Strathroy Subdivision.

After sitting for an hour, I was just about to return back my Dad's house in Petrolia when I saw something far off in the distance making its way west. The best part of this freight train was that it had five (count 'em) engines leading the way. This is a rare site in modern railroading, as most modern diesels are matched in pairs or trios on the head end of a freight train. This lash-up reminded me of watching trains when I was younger when four to five engines on the head end of a train wasn't all that uncommon. So, mark it down as the first time I have seen this type of locomotive line-up in many years.

Later in the summer, I was again visiting family in the Sarnia area when I caught my first train on the St. Clair River Industrial Spur near the Rokeby Line, south of Corunna. I lived near this spur when I was growing up, but I was never able to get a shot of any trains on this line. I managed to catch this rain switching near the Suncor ethanol plant. Check out the old motive power and the giant power lines. This might be my favourite shot from last year.

During the same week in late July/early August, I was able to stay at my sister's house south of Corunna. Her property backs onto the CSX Sarnia Subdivision, which is a pretty quiet line these days. I was hanging around my sister's backyard, as my daughters were enjoying an afternoon siesta when I heard a train approaching the nearby Rokeby Line. I was able to position myself near the tracks and get this shot of a short train heading back to Sarnia.

Later in August, I was in London for a family wedding when I was able to break away from the family events to get some trackside time in. I saw a number of cool things during my time at the CN London East yard and the CP Quebec Street yard. At the CP yard, I was able to watch a local doing some switching, which included my first golden rodent-clad unit.

At the London East CN yard, I saw a lot of interesting things, which you can see in this post, but the highlight was a CN container train rumbling through. I don't see these trains at all, since Ottawa had no mainline action of consequence, so it was cool to see my first container trains in years, especially from the Highbury overpass.

In October, I came across an idling mixed freight that was parked in between Wyoming and Camlachie Road. You can read about this meet here. This was a surprising meet for me, since it was the first time I have seen two cowl units on a freight train. It's always cool to come across these relatively rare units, but having two on the same train was especially cool.

And as you may have read from this recent post, I was quite happy to catch my first Goderich Exeter Railway action shots in Kitchener in November. You can read about my adventures in Kitchener in this post. For those who missed it, I caught a duo of GEXR units tying up at the Kitchener railway station, including this unit, LLPX 2236. I didn't share this photo in my original post.

There were a number of other firsts last year, but these are the ones that I feel are most significant. Last year was a year where much of my trackside time was condensed into a few jam-packed weekends. I'm hoping to get going on some photography this year. If I can check off half as many items from my to-do list as I did last year, I'll be quite happy.