Kitchener Railfanning

I was in the Kitchener-Waterloo area in mid October to see my son Nick graduate from the University of Waterloo. It's hard to believe he's old enough to graduate from university... sheesh.

Anyway, there were trains. Here they are.

CN En Route

As I was driving west on highway 401 on October 19th, I spotted a pair of CN locomotives doing some industrial switching. I exited quickly and found CN 4710 and CN 4136..

CN 4710 in the Guelph area?

Note the numbers under the cab... CN 4710 was originally built as CN 5510 and the two "5" digits are showing through. It's a GP38-2.

CN 4710 turning back into CN 5510 again

The second unit was GP9RM CN 4136 in sergeant stripes as well.

CN 4136 with sergeant stripes

Both of those locomotives were "new" to me. I've seen a lot of CN Geeps but not many in the 47xx or 41xx series.

Kitchener At Night

I checked into my hotel, and decided to take a stroll... a fairly long walk, actually. I was staying at the Comfort Inn on Weber Street North in Waterloo, and the train station in Kitchener was a good 3 kilometre walk down Weber Street. Google Maps says it takes 38 minutes to walk that but it clearly hasn't seen how fast I walk.

As I approached the train station, I saw there were two Goderich and Exeter locomotives parked there. LLPX 2236 and QGRY 2008 were on one of the two back tracks (See lead photo).

There is a fence on that side of the tracks so I was shooting over the fence, hand-held at some pretty low shutter speeds. The joy of digital is that I could take a lot of photos and toss the ones that were blurry. The above was shot at 0.3 second, f/5.6 and ISO 100.

Here's an example of two photos I took, one blurry and one that was pretty sharp. See if you can tell which is which. ;)

The first one is a good example of the many photos I deleted.

I took 162 photos that evening, and kept 35. This is something you would never do with film.

While I was photographing the units, a crewman came out and started them up.

LLPX 2236 and the H.R. Krug Furniture Company

For the above photo, I was standing on the station platform shooting toward where I was standing when I took the first photo of this post. Note the historic H.R. Krug Furniture Company building in the background. I don't know the age of this building but it has clearly been there for a while!

VIA 87

VIA 911 in Kitchener, Ontario

At 19:11, VIA 911 pulled train VIA 87 up to the station. This was my first time seeing 911 and it was nice to see it in a "Canada 150" wrap, advertising Sarnia, Vancouver, Ste-Foy and Sackville.

They didn't linger long... a quick stop and they were off, with VIA 913 on the rear. They had a "Canada 150" wrapped coach in the consist, VIA 3355.

At 19:21, the pair of GEXR locomotives pulled out. They headed down the Elmira Spur, which goes through Waterloo, St. Jacobs and terminates in Elmira, Ontario. The line terminates at Canada Colors and Chemicals, which makes sulphuric acid, oleum and sodium bisulphite. (read more about the Elmira Spur)

I thought that was it for trains that night, since there were no more VIA trains scheduled until 21:42. I packed up and started walking away from the station when I heard a train...

GO 289

GOT 326 in Kitchener, Ontario

I didn't really have much of a chance to set up, so this was the best I could do.

GOT 326 was the cab car in the lead. I didn't catch the number on the locomotive pushing on the rear.

Smear

Not a great photo.

Inside the Station

I took a few photos inside the (pretty much deserted) Kitchener VIA / GO / bus station.

Inside the Kitchener train station

Inside the Kitchener, ON train station

Outside, a GO bus sat apologetically...

That was it for me, so I walked back up to the hotel for the night. I resolved to return in the morning to catch the morning VIA Rail train 84.

Kitchener Station in the Light

The Kitchener, Ontario VIA Rail / GO station

The train station is an impressive sight in the day.

It was built by the Grand Trunk Railway in 1897. At one time it had a clock tower but it was removed by CN in 1966. The station was designated a railway heritage structure on February 15, 1994. At one time it hosted the VIA-Amtrak International Limited. Recently it has started hosting GO Transit trains since the start of GO service to Kitchener.

VIA and GO service are due to be relocated to the new King-Victoria Transit Hub aka Central Station a few blocks west of this station. It will also serve the new ION light rail system that is starting up in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. I don't know what will happen to the GTR station, but since it is protected it should continue to enjoy some public use after the railway moves out.

I should mention that the freight shed portion (in the foreground of the photo above) is used by the Goderich and Exeter Railway (GEXR).

Their sign is on the end of the station and there were a few GEXR road vehicles parked in the lot when I was there.

The GEXR operates the former CN Goderich and CN Guelph subdivisions, serving many local customers. It interchanges with CP in Kitchener and Guelph and with CN in Toronto.

Anyway, I was there to see VIA...

VIA 84

VIA 911 and the Krug factory in Kitchener, Ontario

I set up just past the station to try to photograph the train with the Krug factory in the background. I didn't know where the train would stop so I had to guess a bit. I think it worked out OK.

There were a LOT of people boarding, so the train sat for about 5 minutes while the passengers got on.

Passengers boarding at the Kitchener train station

This gave me a couple of minutes to photograph a bit of the train and get in position to capture them leaving.

VIA 911, up close and personal

Darn those long shadows.

VIA 911's "builder's plate"

I photographed the train leaving and caught a little reflection of VIA 913 trailing as they headed out of town.

VIA 913 reflecting on the GO shelter

So that was VIA.

That was almost the end of my railfanning in Kitchener.

The ION Depot

I met up with my son Nick and had supper with him and his girlfriend, then we paid a quick visit to the new depot built to service the ION light rail equipment.

ION light rail depot, Kitchener, ON

Everything looked very nice and new.

ION will eventually have 14 Flexity Freedom light rail vehicles, with the option to buy up to 16 more. The first vehicle was undergoing testing on site in Kitchener in November 2017. The service has been delayed due to delivery problems from Bombardier, and it is now expected to open in early 2018.

That was it for my railfanning in Kitchener. Nick graduated on the 20th, his girlfriend graduated on the 21st, and I made my way to Toronto to fly out. I did a bit of railfanning on the way... I might write about that another time.

I'll leave you with another bus, GO Transit #2448. This is a Motor Coach Industries D4500CT bus.

GO GO TRANSIT

See Also

• The Beachburg Sub visits Kitchener
• London Town
• The Ontario Southland Railway Woodstock Job
• How I Got the Shot: VIA 78
• VIA 78, Several Times

CN 347 And 199

I shot CN 347 and CN 199 in the past few days. First, here's CN 347 heading out of Winnipeg, throwing a bit of snow.


CN 8930 was the sole unit on the train, which consisted of a lot of empty centerbeam flat cars and some miscellaneous freight. I think their speed was being restricted, because I was able to leapfrog them a couple of times as they rolled along the Rivers subdivision. For the third photo opportunity, I decided to try a few panning shots. This was the best of them.


The next day, I managed to grab CN 199 passing by Carman Junction.


Someone today said that trains have grown more boring with the endless procession of containers. In some ways I agree but there is something fascinating about a two mile moving wall.


CN 2236 was the DPU (Distributed Power Unit) engine on CN 199, only the second time I've seen a DPU on 199.

Clusterf... pack?

I went out at Thursday noon to try to shoot the Canadian near my favourite spot, Diamond. Just after noon I saw my first train, an eastbound intermodal with CN 2679 and CN 2436.



I headed west to set up near Diamond, only to find a container train parked there. It was CN 199, stopped at a red signal on the south track just east of Diamond. The train had CN 8023 and CN 8956 and was completely blocking highway 334 / Hogue Road.



I was a little concerned about seeing the Canadian with the freight in the way, so I waited at the head end for VIA... and waited.  After a bit, the conductor cut the train at the crossing and the head end pulled forward a bit  to clear the crossing. They completed that... and then they got the green light. I'm sure that was frustrating for them. They stuck the train together and took off.

I headed back east, hoping to see the Canadian even though I had not heard anything about it on the scanner. Instead I stumbled across CN 803 heading toward Diamond. They had CN 2236 as the sole power on this train.



I understood they were going to meet CN 112 so I tried to get the meet as close as I could.



CN 112 had CN 8915 and CN 2449. They weren't going very fast so I jumped in the car and got ahead of them before the Perimeter, then shot them there.



By then I was tired of waiting for the Canadian, so I resolved to head out. On my way east on Wilkes I saw one more train, so I took the shot. I don't know the train number but it had CN 2623 and BCOL 4609 on it. I guess I missed that meet with CN 112.



All of these trains were sighted in 40 minutes. I never did see the Canadian. I heard it left about an hour late, without a Park car on the tail end. Obviously they had some kind of issue with it and had to set it off.