Through the Work Zone

Eastbound BNSF freight at Galesburg, IL, August 2007.

End of the line!

The picture shows the remains of the old ore terminal at Michipicoten Harbor on Lake Superior. Here, the Algoma Central Railway trans-shipped iron ore onto lake boats from the mine at Wawa, a few miles to the east. However, the mine closed in 1998, and the Michipicoten branch was abandoned.

Looking in the other direction (below), we see the right-of-way, its rails now lifted. There's not much left now at Michipicoten -- just a few cottages and a gravel pit.

A few miles inland from Wawa is Hawk Junction -- where the branch met the ACR mainline. Obviously, Hawk is no longer a junction, but there is still a small yard, and the passenger train pauses here for a little while. The place looked empty the day we drove up, just a few strings of lumber cars parked in the yard:




















Also, one item of possible modelling interest: flat cars mounted with propane tanks. For what? Thawing switches in mid-winter, perhaps?

Catching up to the train at Schreiber

Yeesh -- five months since I've blogged here AND a whole new vacation come and gone, before I've even finished last year's railfan pictures! Without further ado, here's a dump of a bunch of stuff from the tail end of the September 2006 trip.

Camping at Rossport, overlooking Lake Superior, on a drizzly day we hiked up the hill to the CP line, in time to catch this freight coming through:


Then we drove into Schreiber and found the same train doing a little switching:







































The town seems to be putting together a small railway museum on the edge of the yard, with this retired S3 and other equipment:

























From the old to the new: these AC units came through hauling a westbound stack train, and paused at the depot.































Leaving Rossport and continuing east, we caught this train just off the Trans-Canada, near Terrace Bay (pity about the weather, but what can you do?):

Great Thundering Trains!


....in Thunder Bay, of course!
September 13: We started the day by heading to a Future Shop to buy a bigger CF card for the camera. At the checkout, we asked the clerk if she could recommend a good place for lunch. She replied that the old train station on Water Street had a nice restaurant in it.

Geez, is it that obvious? I mean, do we have "RAILFAN" tatooed on our foreheads, or something? (I don't recall that I was wearing a train T-shirt that day).

So here's where we had a pretty good lunch, on a terrace overlooking the park and marina:

The station is also home to a couple of shops, and to the Thunder Bay Model Rail Association (which unfortunately for us, is only open to the public until Labour Day) . As we were strolling around the park, a stack train came down from the north on the track behind the station -- and stopped, blocking most of the access roads to the park. Fortunately, there was still one exit open, so we left to commence our serious railfanning for the day.

Not knowing Thunder Bay at all, we adopted the strategy of just driving around wherever our map (a road atlas that includes pretty good street maps for just about every town in Northern Ontario) showed railway tracks. Here's a couple of the things we found:

Grain terminals, of course -- the waterfront is stiff with them -- and the accompanying grain cars.

At the Keefer Intermodal terminal, (below) this passenger car with an unknown logo on the side. What on earth is that, and who owns it? More cars for VIA, awaiting delivery and conversion?

We spent a good long while on the Central Avenue bridge, which spans the north end of the yard. Here's that stack train -- a good kilometer away from the depot -- headed by a SD90MAC and an AC4400CW:

Another pair of AC4400's popped out of the yard, apparently to confer with the incoming train crew:
This is a view looking south along the yard:

After this, we drove along the rail corridor, stopping again somewhere down the south end of town where we found several engines parked near a grade crossing that gave public access without trespassing on the property. Here's a brace of GP9u's:

Below are some interesting yard locos, which we saw in operation earlier that day. Each unit consists of a SD40M-2 (right) and a "control cab" (left) -- a SW1200 with the engine removed. I assume the idea is that the set can be driven from either cab, allowing the operator good visibility, whichever direction they are moving.

A little further along, we found this MOW equipment.

Snow plow:











OK, what the heck is this thing? Flanger? I'm not up on all the wierd-looking machines they use to maintain track.










Don't let anyone tell you that pre-fab sectional track isn't prototypical!











A couple of attempts to be artsy: I love the S-bends created by the crossovers, especially when fore-shortened by the telephoto lens.