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

HLCX 913 in Saint John

I was in New Brunswick on business recently. After I landed at YSJ I headed into Saint John for a bit of railfanning before heading to St. George for my workplace. I found HLCX 913 and CN 7060 heading out to Irving Paper / Irving Refinery, so I gave chase. I managed to catch them in the fog just before they crossed under Bayside Drive.

You can see that Helm had tried to cover up the Union Pacific livery on this unit, with only limited success.
I drove around for a while and had some supper. When I returned, they were back in Island Yard. CN 7060 had been taken off and was doing some work, and HLCX 913 was sitting in the fog. I used my circular polarizer to try to cut through the fog a bit.

It was nice to finally see one of the NB Southern leased units with my own eyes! In the next two weeks I was able to see a couple more.

More NB Southern Leased Units Arrive

The second pair of NB Southern leased units arrived in Saint John yesterday. HLCX 917 and HLCX 913 were nose to nose behind CN 5723 and CN 2280 on train 406 out of Moncton on Wednesday. CN #406 did some work in Sussex, and arrived in Saint John at 16:18.

HLCX 911 has been out on the main line a few times, and I believe it went to St. Stephen at least once, on July 21.

HLCX 906 has been working in Saint John but no one has spotted it on the main line yet, to my knowledge.

Hat tip to Wendell Lemon, DC, and Danny McCracken for the information.

Gary Lee has posted some videos of HLCX 911 in McAdam. Thanks for those, Gary!

More on New NB Southern Power

The second pair of Helm leased units, HLCX 913 and 917, were seen at Bayview Junction in Ontario.. yesterday?



Meanwhile, HLCX 911 was spotted in McAdam and Harvey. Danny McCracken shot HLCX 911 as part of the eastbound freight that featured NBSR 9802, 911, 008, 2318, and recently arrived 2612 from the St. Stephen subdivision. They left at 16:20.





Brian Barchard caught the same train rolling through Harvey Station. I see the depot has been repainted since I last saw it!

"New" NB Southern Power

The NB Southern Railway will be leasing four GP38-3 engines from Helm Financial. Since NBSR will be operating the Northern Maine lines, it will need more power. The units are HLCX 906, 909, 913 and 917. They are all ex Union Pacific units. Apparently one of those was a GP40 but was rebuilt into a GP38-3.

NB Southern has leased locomotives before, but it has been a number of years.

The rumour mill says they will arrive in New Brunswick before mid June. They are currently in UP yellow but will be repainted to NBSR green after they arrive.

I look forward to seeing pictures from out East soon!

Dorval Railfanning

After seeing a little NB Southern action last Friday, I hopped on a plane for Montreal. I was to make a connection there to continue on to Winnipeg, but I had almost three hours to kill in between. On a previous visit to the lovely Dorval airport, I had noticed that the Dorval train station was in easy walking distance of the airport. It was time to take a stroll over and see what I could see.

There is no direct walking path between the airport and the train station. You would think there would be one, but you really feel like a trespasser tromping across parking lots and on-ramps to get to the station.

Anyway, I arrived at the station. There are actually two stations, the VIA Dorval station and the AMT Dorval platforms. I figured I would get hassled less at the AMT platform so I stayed there. On the double track CN line, a CN maintenance truck waited. Shortly after I arrived, an outbound VIA train stopped at the station, then headed out.

You can see the CN truck right at the start of the video. VIA 6426 pulled a short train of HEP 1 cars.

Shortly after that, the CN truck left, then another outbound VIA train came, stopped, and carried on. This one had VIA 913 and three LRC cars.


After that flurry of activity, things settled down for a while. There were a few passengers drifting around the platform but not a lot of activity. The sun was beginning to go down but there was enough to see an outbound AMT train come in and depart. AMT 1320 was pushing on the end pretty hard as they left the station.


Right behind that train was another set of headlights. It turned out to be a CP intermodal rolling through the station. I like the sunset reflecting off the sides of the containers.


I figured my time was up, and the light was fading, so I walked back to the airport and caught my flight with plenty of time to spare. I might have to arrange future flights to have a little layover in Montreal again!

PS it turns out there is a shuttle bus between the station and the airport. Who knew?