Strathroy, finally...

I've written a lot about railways in southern Ontario over the years, mainly because that is where I grew up. One place that I've had precious little to share anything about is Strathroy, a small town at the southwestern edge of Middlesex County. The town lends its name to the Canadian National Strathroy Subdivison. Strathroy is amalgamated into the surrounding Caradoc Township. Located about 35 kilometres west of London, it boasts some small scale manufacturing operations, not to mention agricultural and food processing businesses, largely centered around turkey breeding and chickens. 

I've been asked in the past if I had anything to share from Strathroy and I've always said no, sadly. Until now. First, a bit of railway context.

Not far east from Strathroy in Komoka, you will find the junction between the CN Strathroy Subdivision and the Chatham Subdivision, a rail line that is now largely used by Via Rail for its Toronto-Windsor service. Also, you will find a junction nearby with the CP Windsor Subdivision. The point is, Caradoc Township, and Strathroy in particular, owe much of their development to the railways. 

Strathroy still maintains daily flag stop Via Rail service, as Via's Sarnia-Toronto trains call on the town's station in each direction once a day, upon request. The station is an unheated shelter now, which is common in small communities on this line. But the town once boasted a large train station, reminiscent of the station in Sarnia at the western end of the subdivision.

In my time on Via Rail trains, mostly in university in the late 1990s, I don't recall the train stopping in Strathroy very much, if ever. I suppose it would be hard to remember a tiny shelter on the side of tracks.

Earlier this month, I paid a visit to family on the Remembrance Day weekend, since I had family business to attend to in Windsor (more on that in a later post). 

Whenever I travel home, I leave Highway 402 at the Centre Street exit in Strathroy. I follow Centre Street until I reach Napperton Road, a county road that becomes the Confederation Line in Lambton County, which parallels the Strathroy Sub between Strathroy and Sarnia. 

On my way west on Nov. 8, I took a quick glance over at the tracks and saw a CN eastbound freight making its way toward Strathroy. I was able to turn my car around and head back east toward Strathroy, where I turned onto Pike Road, as the western edge of the town, to try and capture some images.

Given the very tight time I had and the restricted visibility at the crossing, I had to make do with less-than-ideal sight lines. I did, however, have time to get to the sunny side of the train before the crossing guards were activated.

I had a choice, as I was the first car waiting at the crossing, to get close and get a very tightly angled shot, or stay back a bit and get a shot with a more forgiving angle, but less of the train in view. I chose to stay back. The eastbound was led by CN ES44DC 2256.

CN C44-9W 2578 was next in line. Given I was in my car, I had to include my rear view mirror in the shot. It couldn't be avoided. I had no time and no place to set up a shot on the side of the road. Safety first.

Given the harsh late afternoon sun I was contending with, the going away shot was a little more forgiving, although that hydro pole couldn't be avoided. This was not an ideal spot to set up! But you have to take what you can get sometimes. 

This was the payoff for doubling back to Pike Road. This train was quite short and overpowered, as it only had about 20-30 cars. But at the end of the train, there were about five flat cars carrying these massive metal rings. Are they used for city water mains or pipes? Possibly they are used as braces when boring a tunnel or pipe? I'm not sure.

Whatever these rings were used for, I was happy to get a shot of some pretty rare cargo, not to mention a shot of a train in a new location. It was a cool moment for me on my way home to see family.

The last car in the consist was a heavily graffitied steel coil car, which made for another interesting image. As railfans today, many of the trains we see offer very little in the way of variety. This small train had a bit of everything. 

I managed to snag a lot of varied rail photography on my trip to southern Ontario, including a few shots in Windsor, some nighttime shots on the CN St. Clair River Industrial Spur and a rare shot of a CSX interchange train deep in CN's Sarnia yard. It was a great weekend filled with good times with family and a few really great bonus moments trackside. 

A nice break from this year's steady stream of Via Rail content.

Lament for a lost shortline operation

I’ve written a fair bit in this blog about a fascinating railway called the Goderich-Exeter Railway in southern Ontario. In recent years on family trips to areas where GEXR operates, I’ve tried to capture some activity on this shortline with little success. That changed in 2017 when I finally caught a little activity in Kitchener, including this train working the Kitchener yard.

… and this pair of engines that had just pulled up into the GEXR offices next to the Kitchener Via Rail station on Victoria Street.

Without getting into the history too much, the GEXR took over CN’s operations on its Guelph and Goderich Subdivisions in 1998 and, by all accounts, did a great job attracting more business along the line.

I have also mentioned in this space that I once lived in Kitchener and often saw the railway in action, but I never bothered to photograph it, since I was not in the habit of taking rail photos at the time. When I was working for the Kitchener-Waterloo Record newspaper, I planned to do a business magazine feature on the GEXR right around the time when I was laid off. What might have been…

So it’s with a little bit of sadness that I learned recently that CN resumed operations along the Guelph Subdivision last year once GEXR’s 20-year lease on the rail line expired. I’m only mentioning it now since I recently travelled in the area where GEXR still operates.

The good news is that GEXR still maintains operations between Exeter, Goderich and Stratford, which is one of the areas where I was recently (closer to Stratford, actually). However, I can’t help but wonder how much of the railway’s revenues were derived from this stretch of track. To my uninformed eye, I would imagine that the Guelph Subdivision accounted for the lion’s share of the revenues. It makes me wonder if GEXR parent company Genesee & Wyoming will be terribly interested in maintaining the old Goderich Subdivision as a standalone operation. I hope so.

The bad news is that I have seen first hand what happens when CN takes back shortline operations. Now, I won’t get into what happened to the remnants of the old Ottawa Central operations, since there is a massive difference between OCR and GEXR, but I think it’s still a fair comment. CN is great at being a mainline transcontinental railway. As a local service operator in smaller centres? Well, I can’t imagine many people would think that service will improve along the Guelph Subdivision. I hope CN maintains the level of service and finds ways to keep expanding, but I am skeptical. Does any major railway know how to do carload business effectively anymore?

I also wonder what will happen to the Waterloo Central Railway, which operates on part of the Elmira trackage in north Waterloo. That rail line’s freight operations, such as they are, have been handled by GEXR for years on an as-needed basis outside the hours where the Waterloo Central would operate. I'm not sure what the fate of this line is, as it is, generally speaking, not essential to CN's goal to use the Guelph Sub as a through route.

It should also be noted that CN also took over the majority of the operations of the Southern Ontario Railway, which operated in the Hamilton-Caledonia-Nanticoke area. That was another line I recently saw.

It’s an interesting trend that flies in the face of what we typically see today. Most Class I railways are not in the habit of taking back their former operations on secondary lines from shortline operators, but CN is the exception. I suppose an optimist would suggest it’s a good sign that the economics of operating on these lines has attracted a big player like CN again, since that obviously speaks well of the regional economy.

Truthfully, I worry about this move, purely from a railfan point of view. I think freight railways have an important role to play in moving goods in an environmentally friendly manner at a time when we are looking to reverse the effects of climate change. Railways also help maintain the economies of towns that otherwise cannot attract big business. Ask Renfrew County or the Pontiac Region in Quebec how their efforts to attract big business are going now that they have no rail access.

Here in Canada, there is no turning back from rail abandonment. We have no effective legislation to preserve rail lines as they do in many jurisdictions in the United States.

So this summer, I was pleased to finally see some GEXR activity when I was in the Stratford area (stay tuned for that post). I have always been a fan of the underdogs, which is why I had a real affinity for the GEXR. I hope CN treats these operations better than it did to the old OCR operations in Ottawa.

One can only hope.

My first great chase

Lambton County 2017 Part III

I've read about so many chases in other blogs over the years, but realized recently that I've never really had a good, long chase with a happy conclusion. Until now.

Recently, my family travelled to Southwestern Ontario, where we were visiting family. I decided to travel from a spot in rural Perth County, where we were visiting grandparents, to my hometown of Corunna using nothing but country roads. I did this with good reason. One of the roads that would lead me toward Corunna paralleled Canadian National's Strathroy Subdivision from its namesake town all the way to Sarnia. That drive would offer me a good chance to get photos of a freight train, since the road I was on (named Napperton Road in Middlesex County and Confederation Line in Lambton County) is not only close to the Strathroy Sub, it is also traversed by a number of intersecting country roads that lead to the tracks. Easy enough, right? Wrong.

I had just checked out two level crossings in Strathroy before I headed out onto Napperton Road, as I was convinced a meet was not going to happen in that town. I was about five minutes outside of Strathroy when I noticed the tail end of a freight train thundering its way west toward Sarnia, and at quite a clip. Clearly, I was going to have to drive for a while to catch up and maybe dart down a road (safely, of course) to catch this train. I managed to reach the head end of the train after about 10 to 15 minutes of patiently trying to catch up. I fired a few blind shots with my camera, being sure to keep my hands on the wheel and my eyes on the road. Needless to say, very few turned out, especially considering how far the track was from the road at this point.

This shot reminds me of some of the shots I took with a cheap camera in the early 1990s. It's blurry, but given the distance to the tracks and the movement of my car, it was the best I could do. This gives you an idea of where I was in relation to the Strathroy Sub.

The chase lasted far longer than I had anticipated because of a few wrinkles, mainly the fact that the road I was on passes through Kerwood, Watford and Wyoming before it reaches Sarnia's city limits. I managed to get ahead of the train by the time I reached Watford, but the speed limit near the Confederation Line-Highway 79 intersection fell to 50 km/h, which meant the train passed us, as it was maintaining a steady speed of about 80-85 km/h.

The train must have slowed a bit because as I pulled out of Watford and continued west, I found myself just about caught up with this massive train by the time I hit Wyoming. I was hoping to pull ahead of it and catch it at the Broadway Street crossing, just like this meet I had at the Wyoming Via station earlier this year.

But the slower speed limit in Wyoming (again 50km/h) ensured I would have to catch up to this train again. The slowdown in Wyoming was made worse by the fact that a tractor trailer took an unusually long time to turn from the Confederation Line onto Broadway.

So, after more chasing, I was finally able to overtake the train for a third time as it neared Sarnia. In fact, I managed to set up on Blackwell Side Road, the last road the Strathroy Sub crosses before it enters Sarnia yard. If you're keeping count, that means I had to cover about 60 kilometres before I was able to get proper shots of this train. It's a good thing I was heading in this direction anyway otherwise that's a lot of time and distance devoted to one train.

Here's what I saw.

The early morning sun washed out the sky beyond the limits of my photoshop program. However, I did like that I was able to frame the train against this farmer's field, which looked to be a soybean crop. Had I been given the luxury of a little more time, I would have been able to cross the tracks and set up in a more sun-friendly location although it was still fairly early in the morning (before 9 a.m.) so the sun would have posed a challenge from any angle.

Here it is a little closer. Note that the position of the sun was such that the sky began to reveal itself a little more in this shot. A typical cut of covered hoppers led off the consist, likely destined for a number of refineries, possibly in Sarnia or possibly farther afield in Michigan or Chicago, depending on where this train ended up.

Above you see the going away shot (with blue sky). Below is a shot of the power crossing Blackwell Side Road.

Now, staying true to my recent emphasis on rolling stock, let's see what CN ES44ACs 2875 and 2916 were pulling.

St. Lawrence Railway boxcar 163. Railfans love these. I often see them elsewhere.

A new railway logo for me. GACX 516123 Southern Illinois Railcar hopper.

Some of the more colourful hoppers out there today - Potash Corp. hoppers. It's always refreshing to see rolling stock on the rails that isn't just a blank sided car with the reporting marks of some leasing company.

Tidewater Grain Company  GRDX 7739 hopper looks like it's seen a lot of action and a couple of touch-up paint jobs.

Who says flatcars are boring? Steel a glance at this load! Reporting marks HJPX. Another first.

There were a lot of visual hazards near this crossing, so not every picture was distraction free. However, despite the pole, I was pleased to catch this BRIX-patched hopper, branded for Incobrasa Industries of Illinois. This company deals with soybeans and makes all sorts of products based on soy. So, through observation, it appears that this train had a definite Illinois flavor to it (there were also a few Wisconsin Central and Illinois Central cars). Of course, most trains rolling through Sarnia are headed for Chicago, so this is hardly surprising to see.

I made sure to take a quick couple of shots of long strings of freight cars just to serve as a reminder of how long this train was. With the exception of the trains with mid-train DPU, this was one of the longest consists I have seen pulled by two lead units.

Always a bonus when I come across a fallen flag (sort of). I used to have multiple photos of GT and Central Vermont rolling stock, only to lose those shots some years back. Now, I at least have one shot of a GT hopper. I wish the light was more forgiving, but still a great catch for me.

Also, it was great to catch a Cargill-branded hopper. As previously mentioned, anytime you see rolling stock with any colour, it's worth capturing. I have not seen many hoppers painted for Cargill, which has a huge grain and oilseed elevator facility on Sarnia Bay, served by the CN Point Edward Spur.

Finally, the end.

When I went to visit family in the Sarnia area, I didn't think I would have so many railfanning adventures outside Sarnia Yard, but it ended up that all of my adventures took place outside Sarnia Yard. It made for the start of a record railfanning month for me.