Trackside observations in Toronto

So our house is packed and the waiting game nears an end. We are officially ready to move, but we don't have possession of our new home yet. I'm at my work desk in the basement and there's a lull in my day. I figured it was a good time to go over some of my observations from Toronto on June 1, when my family made a quick visit to the city to take our kids to a Blue Jays game (they lost) and the Ripley's Aquarium. You can read about the westward rail journey to Toronto in my previous post.

In that post, I detailed some interesting observations from our train journey from Ottawa's Fallowfield Station all the way through to Cobourg. Our ride included a meet with two CN freight trains, a westbound container train parked in Belleville and another westbound mixed that had stopped for us around Brockville. This was the best shot I could get of the front end of that train from my small window in the ex-CP HEP car. I think the clouds and the trees make this image more interesting. I would have liked to get more of the cab, but this is what you sometimes get when you take photos while in motion.

But let's focus on Toronto. As our train pulled into Oshawa, I was able to get a quick shot of a parked GO Train with the power facing east. Oshawa is usually a busy station, with a yard that holds autoracks for a nearby automotive plant and other freight cars on any given day. I like the fact that these are images I could not otherwise get trackside.

As we headed west, we passed the Metrolinx GO Train maintenance facility in Whitby. It was not easy to get a proper image of the yard, since the glare from my window and the narrow vantage point made it a challenge. I had to touch up this image quite a bit to account for the glare and reflections on our window. I like how this one turned out. There are a lot of trains visible.

This shot also had to be touched up to account for the fact that it was taken behind a narrow window in our passing HEP car. I liked how this one turned out as well. Most of the quick shots I took passing by didn't turn out. But it's always cool to get a behind-the-scenes look at railway facilities from a vantage point that you could never get from public property.

When we entered the home stretch of track leading to Union Station, I didn't expect to see much, but I still kept an eye out for anything. I did make sure to get a shot of this trackside building on Cherry Street. I remember always seeming to notice this building when I rode the train in my university days. It brought back a lot of good memories seeing it again. It's nice to know that, despite all the changes in Toronto over the last few decades, a few old vestiges of its gritty past remain. You can see some light rail (street car?) right-of-way in the bottom right corner of the image.

The tracks leading into Union Station are the exclusive domain of GO Trains, Via Rail intercity corridor trains and the Union Pearson Express. But once in a while, you might catch a few freight cars that are being used for maintenance of way purposes. This was an unexpected catch.

A few ties were on this flat car, but I wasn't sure if they were old ties that had been removed or new ties that were awaiting placement on one of the lines. My guess is they are old ties, given they seemed to be thrown onto the car without any thought to organization. I would expect new ties to be in a neat bundle.

End of the line for us as our train pulled in under the now brightly lit platforms of Union Station. This is quite the contrast with Montreal's platforms, which I was also able to see later in the summer on a quick trip to Montreal with my daughter. The windows and lighting makes for a better first impression of Toronto than travellers had from the old platform. A gleaming GO Train awaits its next run east as we pulled in.

In my brief time in Toronto, I managed to get a bunch more material but I will save that for another post. It has been a really rewarding summer for me as a railfan, as I have taken three trips and acquired a fair bit of new material. It's always good to have too much, for a change.

Something is better than nothing

I've made the trip from Ottawa to the Sarnia area on Highway 401 more times than most people. Being from Sarnia originally and having lived in Ottawa most of my adult life, the trip is unavoidable as much of my family remains in the Sarnia area. While it is a long, often boring drive with very little in the way of scenery, it at least gives me the opportunity to get a glimpse of the busy CN, Via Rail and GO Train operations along the CN mainline through the Greater Toronto Area.

Recently, my family spent part of our March Break in Toronto, as we visited the city's zoo. On the way into Toronto, I was able to get a quick shot of what appeared to be an eastbound local freight as it made its way east around the General Motors office building in Oshawa.

Of course, it wasn't much of a shot as it was taken from the passenger seat of our car, which was travelling west on the highway. The train was lead by a solo unit, which I believe was CN 2334, which is an ES44DC. I got a few shots where the number was almost legible, so this is my best guess. The train was about 50 cars long, with two buffer cars behind the power and another buffer car at the rear.

This was about all I saw on my travels, with the exception of a freight I glimpsed in Kingston as it passed below the highway, but I was not in a position to capture a proper image from the eastbound lanes across to where the train was.

Oshawa is an interesting place.When I was a reporter at the Peterborough Examiner, this city loomed large in the Central Ontario economy. Many people commuted into the city to work at the GM plant, or for the industries that fed the plant. I recall being assigned a series of stories about downtown revival in a number of cities, including Oshawa. At the time (2003), the city's downtown had seen better times, although efforts were afoot to create housing in the core and take advantage of the creation of what was then known as the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (OIUT), now known as Ontario Tech University.

Given the waxing and waning fortunes of the city's automotive industry, Oshawa had certainly seen changes of fortunes over the years. It still maintains a robust economy, given its commuter town status that feeds into the City of Toronto. Oshawa's GO Train service remains steady, which insulates the town from economic busts, as many people have the option to work in Toronto and live in Oshawa. I'm not sure how much of this has changed amid the pandemic, when many people ditched their daily commute to work from home.

As you can see, the Oshawa Via Rail/GO Train station is a busy place, with frequent GO Train service, not to mention a steady presence of autoracks. It's tough to photograph from the 401, but I tried. It's a modern, well-equipped station with a massive park-and-ride parking lot for commuters. Ottawa would love to have the same type of ridership for its troubled O-Train as GO Transit enjoys in cities like Oshawa.

As we were heading east, we passed by the GO Transit maintenance facility in Whitby, which is a train facility I would like to visit. You can just make out the GO locomotive at the left, parked in front of the building.

Here's another shot of the maintenance facility, with a few cars parked in front near the paint shop.

As I as preparing this post, I remembered that I had taken a quick shot of the Union-Pearson Express at the Pearson International Airport last September when my wife and I were returning to Ottawa from a trip to Indiana. This shot was taken from inside the terminal, but I liked how it turned out, even with the window frames in the shot. You get a clear idea of the size of these trains as well as the UP Terminal at the airport. There's something about the look of these trains that I like. I can't put my finger on it. I like them, though. I suppose anything is better than Ottawa's hideously ugly O-Trains.

I often mention on this blog that travelling along the 401, or anywhere outside of Ottawa for that matter, is an opportunity to capture an image of railway activity. I realize that many of these shots are not all that riveting and most don't show you all that much, but for me it's part of the challenge of capturing something when travelling through southern Ontario. 

Once in a while, you get something. When you never see mainline action, something is better than nothing.