Book Review: Faces and Places Along the Railway

Faces and Places Along the Railway

I recently found Elizabeth A. Willmot's book Faces and Places along the Railway at a used book store here in Winnipeg. You can consider it a sequel to her better-known book, Meet Me at the Station, and continues the same theme of an affectionate look back at railways in Ontario during the steam age.

The book is copyright 1979, so it is a little out of date, but since she was writing about the early days of railways it doesn't matter a lot.

A little over half of the book is devoted to photos and stories about 17 railway towns or topics, from Amherstburg through Kingston and Owen Sound and featuring locations like the Hog Bay Trestle and the Brockville railway tunnel. Each town or topic gets at least one photo and a few pages of history and stories about the railways that went through the town and the people who worked on them.

The latter portion of the book is more photo-heavy, with photos of "Faces From the Steam Era" with short captions, and 12 railway stations in the "Meet Me at the Next Station" section with full page photos of each station and a one or two sentence caption for each.

I freely admit that I don't know much about railways in Ontario, so this book was a great introduction to towns I have never been to. It also helped draw together the little bits and pieces I have learned about Ontario's railway history into a more coherent story. I have been to Amherstburg, Ingersoll and Woodstock, but I still enjoyed seeing the photos of those stations from the 1970s.

All photographs are in black and white.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in Canadian railway history, and especially to those interested in Ontario's railway history in particular. It's an easy read.

Find Faces and Places along the Railway on Amazon.ca, or on Amazon.com.
Disclosure: If you buy the book using the Amazon links provided, I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

See all my book reviews

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

London Town

VIA 905 in London, Ontario

Think what that money could bring / I'd buy everything
Clean out Vivienne Westwood / In my Galliano gown
No, wouldn't just have one hood / A Hollywood mansion if I could
Please book me first class to my fancy house in London town

- "Rich Girl", Gwen Stefani featuring Eve

When I was in southern Ontario in early August, I planned my route from the Leamington area to Waterloo and realized I would pass right by London, Ontario. A glance at the VIA Rail schedule showed that there was a good chance of catching at least one VIA train at the time I would be near London - VIA 73 at 14:23.

Not knowing the area at all, I decided to get downtown to the station and see what angles were possible there. The tricky part was that although London is basically right beside the 401 highway, the downtown certainly isn't and it took some time to get downtown.

I found the station without trouble (thank you Apple Maps) but parking was a problem. As I drove around, a VIA train slid into the station from the east. I decided to park in the Impark lot across York Street, paid my fare, and sprinted across to try to get any kind of shot before the train left again.

Richmond Street goes under the tracks, and I grabbed this quick shot to record the engine number if nothing else.

Not my best work

VIA 6457

I was on the "wrong" side of the sun so I jogged under the tracks to get to Bathurst Street on the south side of the tracks. I should mention that it was a hot day and of course I had no water with me.

I felt it was a good thing I did jog, because 6457 pulled ahead about 90 seconds after I took the above photo.

VIA 6457 and friends in London

VIA 6457 had coach VIA 8112 and galley business car 4004 in tow.

"Whew," I thought, "glad I caught them before they left."

I turned my attention to the station platform, where I could see a train with a P42DC "Canada 150" unit was waiting.

From where I was, it was very difficult to get any kind of shot. I should mention that there is a chain link fence between Bathurst Street and the tracks.

There's a train there, somewhere

I took all of these photos by holding my camera up above the fence and shooting more or less blindly in the direction of the tracks.

I shoot in manual almost all the time, so I already had the right exposure, but the focus and composition were a bit "hit and miss". This led to tossing about 40% of my photos and a lot of cropping. You do what you have to do!

As I stood there, wondering whether I should move to a new location or stay where I was, I heard the ding-ding-ding of an engine bell. Here was VIA 6457 coming back... on a different track, I presume.

VIA 4004 leading the way

Note the person in the end of 4004 keeping an eye out.

They headed east, and I never saw them again. I'm not sure where they were going, backwards.. I know there's a wye in town so maybe they were going there to turn the train around.

VIA 905

Right after VIA 6457 and friends rolled by, the "Canada 150" train in the station left. It turned out to be VIA 905 leading, the same locomotive I saw two days earlier at Jeannette's Creek.

VIA 905 in London

In fact 905 had the same cars on the train, too, just in a different order. 905-4007-4006-4110-4113.

I'm pretty sure that was VIA 73.

I told you I was shooting more or less blindly by holding my camera above the fence line. Here's an unmodified photo showing some of the "interesting" compositions I was getting.

A little horizon leveling might be in order

Not my best work.

In less than a minute, they were gone.

Gone, baby, gone

Wrapping Up

I can't 100% explain why VIA 6457 and those two cars were there. My theory is that they came with VIA 905 from Toronto as a "J train" (two trains together) to be prepositioned to be a train to Toronto later in the afternoon.

Any other ideas?

Here's a view of the VIA station from across the street.

The VIA Rail station in London, Ontario

I left right after that and headed toward Waterloo... with a side trip to Salford to see the Ontario Southland Railway shops.

Both CN and CP have yards in London but I didn't see any of CP's and very little of CN's. Michael at the Beachburg Sub blog has written three blog posts on London to date, focusing on CN and CP, so head on over there!

I see London has one model train store, Doug's Trains - or is it Pete's? My model train directory has it as Doug's but the Google Street View shows it as Pete's. Who really owns the store???

See Also

• Chasing the Ontario Southland Railway Woodstock Job
• Found in the Rail Yard (London freight) - part 1, part 2, part 3

The Ontario Southland Railway Woodstock Job - Part 2

On August 17, 2017 I chased an Ontario Southland Railway from Ingersoll to Woodstock. In part 1 I followed the train from their shops in Salford to Ingersoll, where I promptly lost the train and eventually found it again. Here I describe the chase to Woodstock and the switching operations in Woodstock.

---

The Chase to Woodstock

By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere was a song and a celebration
- Joni Mitchell

When I had driven into Ingersoll earlier in the chase, I had noted a spot along highway 9 where the Ingersoll railway sign was located indicating 1 mile to the station sign. I thought that would be a good location for a photo. Now that I was racing east, this was the time to stop there.

I pulled off the road and walked across the road, in the rain, and waited by the guard rail for the train to come. I was about 90% sure I was in the right spot, but the other 10% of my brain said, "you're standing by the wrong tracks, and nothing will come."

It didn't help that I heard the roar of a train going by while I was waiting. It must have been a CN train on the Dundas sub, but my confidence was diminished a bit more.

Fortunately, I was by the right tracks and OSRX 1820 came around the bend.

I took a few photos as the train approached. I'm not sure which of the following two photos I like more, so I'm sharing both of them.

Two Ingersoll signs, one photo

One Ingersoll line, a closer crop

That Ontario Southland paint scheme is pretty sharp. I know it's inspired by the old Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo scheme but it looks nice no matter where it came from.

The light was low so I was using a low shutter speed, and I did a pan of the locomotives as they went by. I really like how this photo of 1400 turned out.

Pan photo of OSRX 1400

I don't know what the speed limit on the St. Thomas subdivision is, but they were not crawling - nor were they doing 60 MPH.

I hopped in my rental car and gave chase.

Next Spot?

OSRX 1620 leading the way

Not knowing the area, I wasn't sure where to catch them next. I thought about the highway #6 crossing - easily accessible as it's just off highway 9 - but as I approached it I saw there was construction in the area and I didn't want to get involved in that. I took the next left, which turned out to be Domtar Line.

I liked seeing the train come through the foliage, but in retrospect, I probably should have been on the other side of the tracks. I used my "long lens" (70-200mm) and on the side I was on, I couldn't get a really long view without standing in the crossing, which is not safe.

As I waited for the train to pass so I could get back to my car, I noted a railway bridge in the underbrush nearby that still has rails on it.

I think this was part of the track that used to connect the nearby Domtar facility to the CP line. There is still track near the CN line but I don't think the facility that's there now gets any rail service.

Abandoned bridge off Domtar Road

I shot video at the next two spots. The first was a very quick clip and at the second location, I made sure I got enough ahead of the train that I could get into position to record the entire train. The video's at the bottom of this post.

Crossing CN

After the two video spots, we were approaching Woodstock, another town I had never been in. I knew that CN and CP/OSRX crossed and the highway goes right by the diamond. I decided I had enough time to grab a quick shot, so I crossed CN then quickly parked and ran over to get the shot.

Ontario Southland crossing the diamond at CN Carew

I've seen photos of the OSR at CN Carew by many railfan photographers. Now I have my own!

As I wrote above, I had never been to Woodstock so I didn't know where to go. My vague memories of looking at the map told me that the Ontario Southland went north-northeast along the west edge of town. I followed the train as best I could and caught it at Dundas Street / highway 2.

Ontario Southland in Woodstock

After the train passed, I kept going and got to the CP yard in Woodstock at the corner of Ingersoll Avenue and Tecumseh Street.

They pulled up beside the (ex?) CP station there.

OSRX 1620 and 1400 by the CP station in Woodstock

Switching in Woodstock

Without much of a pause, they started to do some switching. There are a series of tracks south of Ingersoll Avenue and they started drilling those tracks, putting autoracks away.

Drilling for autoracks

A longer distance photo of them at work. The CP main line curves off to the right. There are a few storage tracks behind the locomotive that they were stuffing cars into.

Switching autoracks

The photo below might give a better indication of the operation.

Stuffing autoracks into storage tracks

I took a lot of photos - probably too many - of the switching operations. That's probably enough to give you a flavour of the operation.

After watching them switch for half an hour, I decided to duck out to see the VIA Rail station in Woodstock.

Exploring Woodstock

I asked my phone to take me to the VIA Rail station, and it did so with no fuss or misdirection. Thank you!

Woodstock has a very unique looking VIA Rail train station.

This station was built by the Grand Trunk Railway in 1885. Unlike the Ingersoll station, the Woodstock station is protected by the federal Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act.

There are three boxcars across from the station that are supposed to depict the past, present and future of railways in Woodstock. They are faded and have been defaced by the usual vandals so their message is a little unclear.

Three boxcars in Woodstock

There is an overpass near the station which would be a great place to view passing trains on the CN line.

If you'd like to see a map of Woodstock, there's one in this Trains article about Woodstock from 2014.

The Video

Here's a little video I put together - a bit at the Salford shop, two clips between Ingersoll and Woodstock, and some switching action in Woodstock.

Wrapping Up

I went back to the CP station / Ontario Southland track and they were wrapping up shunting for a bit. I took this one last photo and then they tied the train down.

My last Ontario Southland photo... this visit

The conductor said they needed to get a clearance from CP before they could go on the main and continue their work. I had to clear out to meet my son, so we shook hands and I went on my way.

It was a great little chase and the Ontario Southland Railway is a great shortline with a great reputation, both with customers and with railfans. Highly recommended. As always, be safe and respect private property.

Back to part 1 of this series

A darn good burger

PS - I met up with my son and his girlfriend in Waterloo and we went to an early supper at The WORKS "Gourmet Burger Bistro". They make fantastic burgers - definitely worth visiting one of their many restaurants in Ontario.

See Also

• Part 1 of this two-part series
• My Ontario Southland Railway page
• The Ontario Southland's official web site
• All my Ontario posts