Throwback Thursday 14 TH B GP7 77 at Guelph Junction July 18 1984

The CP/TH&B Goderich Turn pauses while switching with TH&B 77 &401 at Guelph Juntion, near Campbellville, ON, on July 18, 1984. Reg Button photo, author's collection.

Today’s Throwback Thursday takes us back to July 18, 1984; it’s late in the day at Guelph Junction, located 39.2 miles up the Galt Sub from Toronto. Guelph Junction is an interesting place on the Galt Sub, and is the location where the Hamilton Sub joins the Galt Sub (from the south) and where the Goderich sub branches off northward to Guelph (cut back from Goderich in the late 1980’s). What remains of the Goderich Sub is owned by the city of Guelph (the only municipally-owned common carrier railway line in Canada) and now operated by shortline Ontario Southland Railway. Interestingly, the two branches are not directly connected to each other, but a pair of wyes (facing north and south) are used to bring trains on or off the Hamilton/Goderich subdivisions. Guelph Junction also marks the end of CTC territory originating in Toronto, and where OCS track warrant territory continues another 74 miles to London (except for CTC islands at Wolverton and London). A GO transit storage facility was located here for a number of years, used to store GO commuter trainsets used on the Milton line in the evenings or on weekends. Discontinued a few years ago when a new layover facility was constructed in Milton, use of the yard is now confined to OSR/CP interchange to the shortline. At one time, the Goderich sub featured a daily-except-Sunday passenger train from Hamilton to Goderich, usually powered by one of the road’s quaint 4-4-4 Jubilee engines, and included an unusual reverse move at the junction to cross the Galt sub (northward train would pull around south wye, back down the Galt sub, and carry on northward around the north wye and onto Goderich). If a Jubilee wasn’t available, or if the regular engine broke down, a spare engine stationed at the junction would be used to power the local passenger train. Often this was a P-1 or P-2 Mikado, which made for quite the interesting little passenger train! Additional passenger service was provided by a CP gas-electric doodlebug based out of Guelph, and often made several round trips between Guelph and the junction (about 15 miles) per day.

Through the viewfinder, we observe a pair of TH&B geeps, GP7 #77 and GP9 #401. The subject train (though apparently absent of cars this day) is the Goderich Turn, operated north out of TH&B’s Aberdeen yard to its’ namesake port on Lake Huron. An interesting operation, the train commonly operated with TH&B-supplied power, often with just a single unit. This is especially interesting considering the steep descent down the Niagara Escarpment from Guelp Junction and the TH&B units’ lack of dynamic brakes. The pair of units on today’s train is an interesting anomaly, considering TH&B’s common practice of using borrowed engines to power its’ own trains. It appears that the train is making a switching move at the time of this photo – note the conductor with his large shoulder-slung radio appears to have just lined the main line switch back to the normal position. Most of what is visible in this photo is now gone – the CP Chevy van undoubtedly disposed of after years of service, and the station demolished to make way for additional GO Transit storage tracks, the TH&B geeps, and even the train order semaphore, a Guelph Junction landmark for decades. But for at least a moment back in July 1984 we can imagine what the geeps’ 567 engines sounded like while switching at the Junction.

‘Til next time,

Cheers,

Peter.

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Throwback Thursday 26 CN Plow Run at Hamilton ON March 1984

A late-winter storm has called for a plow extra on the Grimsby sub. Here CN RS-18 #3624 pushes plow #55219 eastbound near Parkdale on March 1, 1984. Reg Button photo, author's collection.

Tonight’s Throwback Thursday takes us back to March 1984. We’re at Hamilton, ON on the first day of the month, where we find an eastbound plow run on the CN Grimsby sub near Parkdale. As if that’s not interesting enough, the power for this plow run is RS-18 #3624. Plow runs on the CN in Ontario were synonymous with CN’s bastion of F7Au’s, some of which specially modified for this purpose. As the F’s aged, however, backup snow-fighting power was facilitated by modifying a number of RS18’s and GP9’s with distinctive “snow shields” which stymied snow incursion into the fans and radiators. Interestingly enough, CN 3624 wasn’t one of them. Even more unusual is a plow run on the Grimsby sub – far more typical on CN’s branchline network north of London, the sight of a snowplow on the double track Grimsby sub mainline is indeed unusual (I wonder if CN had any double-track plows left in 1984?). Hamilton is not typically affected by winter storms to the same degree as the Toronto area or southwestern Ontario, but the Niagara peninsula does have a habit of attracting some pretty major snowfalls. So it was likely that somewhere farther east this unusual movement would encounter a bit more resistance than the trip has already dealt the plow. Any way one looks at it, however, it is quite an interesting occurrence – one of “if it hadn’t been photographed, I wouldn’t believe it” trains! Interestingly, the photographer noted “first time on the Grimsby sub” on the slide mount. I don’t know whether that’s accurate or not, but it almost certainly hasn’t been repeated since. CN 3624 itself had a fairly long career, having been built in 1957 by MLW. Aside from a repaint from the CN noodle scheme to the zebra-stripe scheme, it seems that the unit lead a generally uneventful life, reaching the Moncton deadlines by 1990, and likely scrapped shortly thereafter. But for a least one day, it must have been pretty exciting to have been at the throttle in that engine…

‘Til next time,

Cheers,

Peter.

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