An Interesting Phone Call

I get the occasional email or phone call out of the blue. People do a web search and stumble across my web site and/or blog, and then contact me about their question. I usually enjoy getting these contacts!

Last night I took a call from a woman named Nikkie who was looking at a house in Ontario that was near some tracks, and wondered how heavy the rail traffic was. I was curious how she decided to contact me, in New Brunswick, about Ontario rail traffic. It turned out that she knew the line was a Canadian Pacific line, and was searching for CP timetables and came across my site. As it happens my site is #1 on Google for Canadian Pacific Timetables. (try it yourself: Google)

I told her I didn't have any idea what the traffic would be, but I knew where to find out. I took down her address and contact information, then posted a message to the Yahoo groups C-P-R mailing list. Within a couple of hours I was told that the house was on the CP MacTier subdivision, CP's main line between Toronto and Vancouver, and that traffic would be quite heavy. I called her back and left a message to that effect.

One poster pointed me to the Proximity Issues web site, run by the Railway Association of Canada, that has maps of different regions of Canada showing which railway owns which line. That's a useful resource!

Ain't the Internet great?