My New Yashica Camera, 1984

On April 23, 1984 my brother Dave and I walked into our local photography shop, Camera Kingston. I walked out with a brand-new Yashica FX-3 SLR. A necessary $184.59 purchase due to the demise of my trusty Hawkeye in preparation for my western trip aboard VIA Rail a month later. For a few days in April and May, I tried out the new camera on various Kingston-area rail subjects that presented themselves. I recorded f-stops and shutter speeds in my notepad, beside my train observations while I was on the lensy learning curve.

My first frames trackside: CN 3662 switched Queens (top photo). Venerable CN eight-foot door boxcar 434073 (above), likely in aluminum ingot service to nearby Alcan. Any serious modeller of Kingston needs to include lots of limestone, weeds, and chopped-up ties, all staples in this area in the early 1980's! These photos show the comparatively pristine right-of-way maintained by CN section forces at the time. A far cry from today's trackside train-brushing shrubbery shmozzle!

On a gloomy April 28, I was at the gate marking the limit of the former CN Collins Bay station property, just off Station Street. All-MLW eastbound (above) at 1330: 6773-6785-616-5719-Empire Club-5534-5504-2505-5499 was followed by an all-GM nine-car westbound led by 6542-6637 a mere seven minutes later! 

A trip west of Kingston on May 2, 1984 was under overcast skies. Newly-painted insulated boxcar CN 290416 was in a westbound train at 1608 led by CN 9558-9509-9625-2505 with caboose 79228 (below). (Shop forces had righted the wrong of painting the wet noodle on the left side at the dawn of the Allan Fleming logo era, thus obscuring dimensional data when the plug door was open.)

Ten minutes later, CN 2332-4349-4117 were eastbound at the same crossing, near Mi 191 Kingston Sub, just west of Bath with a carload of wheels on the head-end and caboose 79235 on the tail-end.

May 5 found me north of the mainline at the Amherstview Golf Club at Mi 183 Kingston Sub. My Yashica stopped this VIA westbound 'dead in its tracks' at 1/500 of a second at 1204: 6787-612-3229-108-3241-Saint James's Club:

Just after lunchtime at 1315, this westbound freight was coming alongside Bath Road just west of Frontenac Secondary School, around Mi 178.5. CN 9607-9560-2539 provided a typical locomotive consist of the time with a mix of GMD and MLW products:

The fourth unit, ex-GP38-2 5553 converted to hump unit 203:

At the same mileage as the VIA above, but on the south side of the tracks at 1851, this westbound CN freight looks like maid-of-all-work 317 led by CN 5330-9316. The latter was a high-geared 'Fast Forty' GP40 renumbered from 4016 in 1981, and was often leased by VIA Rail for passenger service with its 58:19 gear ratio.

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On May 7, an evening at the Kingston VIA station found FPA4 6781 basking in the low, evening light as it stopped at the station at 1915 with an eastbound: 9664-5546-3219-126. Notice the influx of ex-CP baggage cars and coaches on Corridor trains.

Still two of my favourite photos of VIA, westbound VIA No 1/55 smokes it up departing Kingston for Toronto around 1940, with most of its cars destined to Vancouver. VIA 6775-6863-617-3229-108-5649-760-123-3228-Thompson Manor-Edgeley. The Skyline, most sleepers, diner and Park car were now being serviced at Spadina, so did not make the trip through Kingston to Montreal.

Immediately after, at the other end of the platform, VIA 6914-3312-3313-3307-3317 paused eastbound.

On May 9 at 1317, westbound VIA 6788-6869-616-5729-Union Club-5534-5584-2513 were just east of Mi 183 Kingston Sub, fencepost and all:

 

My very first frames: a Brazeau Transport semi-trailer parked along Dalton Avenue (above) and an Ontario Hydro line truck at the Lasalle Park Plaza just off Days Road (below).

I made good use of the Yashica for several years. I later added a 200 mm zoom lens. A pain to change but great for distant subjects. I lost one lens cap while in the vestibule of the Canadian. It's probably still trackside in the wilds of Saskatchewan. Then, a succession of point-and-shoot and digital cameras. My present Canon SX620HS fits in my shirt pocket and has a zoom capability equivalent to 25-625 mm - and I'll never have to change, or run out of, film!

Running extra...

To honour Truth & Reconciliation, Ontario Northland repainted GP38-2 1808 in this eye-catching orange paint scheme (CTV News photo). This shows more effort than the mere lip service many politicians have offered in such efforts. Clean drinking water would be a great start!

Ex-CN hogger Mark Perry is back in the UK for another trip searching out all things railway-related. He and travelling companion Glenn Courtney post photos nightly - preserved steam, riding trains in Scotland, and a lot of fish & chips and beer photos. Glenn photographed a place I'd like to visit - one of several churches in Inverness. This one has been made into a bookstore. Who says you can't read in church?

The Wreck the Day Before the Turbo Wreck

December 10, 1968 was a momentous date in the history of press photography, Kingston history and Canadian railway technology. On that day. the press run of the CN Turbotrain struck a truck full of meat at Division Street level crossing near Mile 174 of the CN Kingston Subdivision.

Much less well-known was a train-vehicle collision the day before - Monday, December 9! Talk about a twofer! The first derailment had the potential to just as deadly dangerous, though there were many fewer press photographers around! 

A 49 year-old dumptruck driver, Alfred Manuel of RR2 Kingston was driving across the Montreal-Toronto CN mainline when a westbound Rapido train struck his truck. The time was 1430, and his truck was totalled, sustaining more than $9,000 damage. Though protected with gates, lights and bells, the Division Street level crossing had long been known to be dangerous, with trains moving at high speed, especially accelerating out of the severe curve at the CN Outer Station just to the east. Another complication was a single-track CP Kingston Subdivision crossing of Division Street just to the north of the CN, protected by a wig-wag signal!

An overhead view of the derailment site, with the CN alignment marked in a parallel blue line, CP in red, yellow arrow showing direction of travel and yellow starburst the approximate collision site. Note that the Division Street overpass was built out-and-around to the west of the existing straight alignment of Division Street.

What the engineer saw! A January, 1969 photo showing initial construction of the overpass, with the CN line disappearing to the east on a curve under the CP Kingston Subdivision flyover. The Rapido would have been coming out of the background on the north track (the left-most track in this photo). With visibility poor, accounts don't mention why the truck was on the crossing, even with electronic protection!

Black and white photos in this post are from the Queen's University Archives' Whig-Standard Fonds. The following photos, taken by a Whig photographer, they show the aftermath of the December 9 crash.  An account, along with only one photo (top photo), appeared as a twofer in the December 10 newspaper, along with the Turbo crash. The beauty of these archival images, which are held in the form of negatives, is that there are many more than what you might find perusing old newspapers. The job of the editor was to select the minimum number of photos that would tell a story, closely-cropping them, and leaving lots of room for other stories and of course, advertising!

Most of these views look 'timetable-west'. The photographer was taking advantage of the sunshine from the south side, as well as access from the level crossing.

The stopped Rapido, possibly Montreal-Toronto No 65, is clearly visible, marker lights and all. At times, the on-board crew appears at the rear door. The interesting variations in the photos include the various operating crew, section crew and officials that variously appear in each of the photos.

The dumptruck looks like an International Loadstar:

At left background is the Topnotch Feeds mill located just west of Division Street, along Counter Street.

The driver is questioned by police. An ambulance driver is close by:

Shortly thereafter, construction began on an overpass over CN at Division Street. This is the only view that looks southeast toward what would be the location of the Division Street overpass:

February, 1969 views of the overpass construction:

In just a few years, two passing tracks would be added just west of Division Street, to be known as Queens. The curve east of here, to Montreal Street, would be realigned. The Outer Station would be closed, and CN passenger operations in Kingston moved to the new CN (later VIA) passenger station on Counter Street.

Running extra...

The Queen's funeral was as awe-inspiring for the sheer spectacle as it was the precision and preparedness of those taking part in the military parade. The most remarkable image is the broadcaset screen capture above, showing the colossal colour of the Queen's Company, Grenadier Guards entering Windsor Castle ahead of the Royal Hearse as the Queen's funeral procession makes its way uphill on the spectator-lined Long Walk. 

I'm trying out Postcrossing It's a long-established postcard exchange website, where Postcrossers send and receive cards all over the world - 68,000,000+ so far. Fun facts: my first received card travelled from India, taking 29 days and covering 8,215 miles. The sender is a professor at the University of Madras, and has used Postcrossing in his Journalism and Communication teaching and research. This just might be addicting!

Streamlinermemories hosts a large number of scanned railway passenger documents. Here is the link to the CN page. It's one more online source - an alternative to going down to the dusty ol' archives!

Industry Profile: DuPont's Whitby Facility

The DuPont of Canada polyethylene film facility in Whitby was built in 1958 at 201 South Blair Street. Served by CN, the facility always caught my eye from aboard VIA Rail - after passing through CN's Oshawa yard with its panoply of paint schemes adorning hi-cube boxcars and open auto racks, then the LASCO steel plant and a wetland, there was always the hope of seeing a Sclair covered hopper or two there. Today, passengers would likely have their attention grabbed by the GO Transit/Metrolinx East Rail Maintenance Facility on the north side of the CN Kingston Sub, its 500,000 sq.ft. dwarfing the discretely diminutive ex-DuPont facility!

Switch points face west, diverging from the Whitby south service track. Several spurs' worth of covered hoppers were visible, as in this June, 2016 view from aboard VIA (top photo). Note fresh excavation and ballast on the newest spur at right. I am no performance films expert, nor chemist. The exact nature of the manufacturing processes and product lines and uses are well beyond the scope of this blog. But the fact that it was rail-served makes it of special interest. The plant sat in 160 acres in the Port Whitby district, expanding 11 times in its first 28 years. 

Due to increased use of plastics in daily life, the plant continued to add new product lines (product name and type, initial year of production, end uses):

• Sclair Film linear low-density polyethylene film, named for its Sarnia production site along the St. Clair River (for coffee, cheese, medical instrument and paper packaging)
• Vexar plastic netting (1960 - for produce packaging and fencing)
• Herox nylon monofilament (1967 - for brush bristles and thread)
• Dartek nylon film (1972 - for meat and cheese packaging, industrial applications)

Up to 25% of the facility's production was exported. New product lines at the facility were often the result of work done at the Kingston Research & Business Development Centre, built in 1955. Sclair, developed by Du Pont's research facility here, was the base product for several other products. Sclair was shipped to the Whitby facility where it was extruded into a film and then formed into flexible plastic tubing. Some employees also came from Kingston to staff expansions.

Two July, 2017 views from aboard VIA Rail (above and below). I usually made a point of noting the number of cars present on the various tracks. These are all plain-jane grey covered hoppers, though -  these notes don't go as far back as the Sclair car era, unfortunately:

• Aug 19/10 7 total
• Dec 16/10 2-2-1
• Mar 8/11 2-2, 1 off-spot
• Aug xx/11 2-2, 5 off-spot
• Sep 22/11 1-2-2-4
• May 15/12 2-2-2-0
• Jul 17/12 3-2-1-2
• Sep 27/12 1-2-2-2
• Feb 25/13 2-2-2
• Sep 18/14 1-2-2-3
• Nov 1/15 2-1-1-3
• Jun 5/16 3-2-2-4
• Mar 28/17 2-2-1
• Jul 21/17 1-3-2-2
• Oct 30/17 2-3-2-3
• Dec 12/17 2-1-2-3
• Jul 6/18 2-2-2-2-4
• Oct 2/18 1-1-2-3-4

With modern technology, we can explore the site from the comfort of home, without wandering about on private property or booking a VIA ticket! A Googlemaps view shows the CN main at left with Whitby south service track, the lead at centre and the facility's five spurs and silos at right. The covered hopper car unloading tracks from bottom to top in the image below (west to east):

• WS34 - 250' added <2014
• WS32 - 393'
• WS31 - 570'
• WS30 lead - 1220'
• WS33 - 710'

CN 1329 was in charge of No 546 at Whitby in September, 1986 (below) including three covered hoppers for DuPont. The switcher appears to be on the switch to the DuPont facility, with the photo taken looking east near the South Blair Street level crossing. The crossing was replaced with a multi-track underpass begun in 2014-15 and completed in 2016.

Ross Wakefield kindly shared this photo of CN 4208 with several gondolas for LASCO and a few DuPont covered hoppers on its train, taken in 1985:

CN 1232 has a Sclair covered hopper in tow at Pickering, about seven miles to the west, circa 1980 (below - kindly shared by Mike Lindsay). Perhaps this is a transfer heading to Don Yard.

Some significant dates in this facility's history:

• 1958 - construction of the DuPont of Canada plant begins.
• 1981 - $3 million expansion for polyethylene film production.
• 1983 - $2 million expansion for a new plastic film line.
• 1984 - 43,000 sq.ft. warehouse was added on the plant's 25th anniversary. Employment had grown from an initial 75 to 300, with 14 original employees still on staff.
• 1986 - $4 million expansion included a packaging technical centre, offices and laboratories.
• 1987 - the plant's footprint was 215,000 square feet.
• 1994 - DuPont's Sclair technology and polyethylene business was acquired by Novacor, though the Whitby plant was not part of the deal.
• 2001 - the Whitby operation is rebranded Enhance Packaging Technologies Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of DuPont Canada producing performance films.
• 2002 - Enhance Packaging Technologies acquired US-based bag-in-box manufacturer Liqui-box, thereafter a DuPont Canada company Liqui-Box Canada, Inc.
• 2007 - DuPont Liquid Packaging Systems sold the Whitby facility to South Carolina-based Exopack Performance Films. At the time of sale, Sclairfilm and Dartek were the main product lines and employment stood at 129. Exopack continued to supply Liqui-Box with products from Whitby.
• 2013 - Exopack is rebranded as Coveris High Performance Packaging.
• 2018 - the age of consolidation sees Montreal-based Transcontinental Packaging acquire Coveris, owner of 21 packaging plants, with Whitby its sole Canadian property employing 140.

The photographer just missed the CN spurs, just to the left of this 1964 photo :

Before and after Metrolinx views of South Blair Street at CN:

Lots o' links:

• Throwback! This 2018 photo taken at Whitby, ironically shows a Sclair car on CN No 376, likely destined for Brockville, not Whitby.
• CN 4601 at the South Blair Street crossing in 1988, with the DuPont lead to right.
• There are several albums of 2014-15 photos posted to Metrolinx' Flickr page, the first one showing the closing up of the South Blair Street level crossing.
• A pre-overpass 2010 Thomas Blampied photo showing the switch to the DuPont lead.

Running extra:

A fascinating blog post about this long-forgotten stamp collection reads like a thriller! The author takes us through his family history, wartime service, and back to the true value of this long-lost philatelic find.

                                             

Best wishes to CN engineer and loyal Trackside Treasure reader Steve Lucas as he makes his last trip of a 35-year career with CN and VIA this weekend. Steve put it well when he posted, "Money + not working for it can = happiness."

Stop the presses! Rapido Trains Inc. is releasing a new run of VIA coaches, including the "D&H" scheme. Stop stopping the presses! Rapido has released their final pre-production sample of the CPR D-10. All that's missing is the "Spirit of Sir John A." lettering. Stop talking about nothing about Rapido! But first, read this Q&A where Jason admits that Kingston is his greatest modelling success! (Fortunately, the necessary amputation of part of the completed model is not mentioned!)

CN Kingston Sub Daily Freights and Times

What train is that? Who cares? These are two questions often asked by railfans. There are some of us who want to know all the details. There are others content to watch or photograph the passing trains. I have asked both questions during my years of railfanning. 

I'm currently in the 'what train is that?' camp and have been since the 1990's, though my brother was in this camp in the 1980's when, armed with a scanner and spending time trackside, he could confirm to me that the passing train was 393 or 318. 

KEEPING CURRENT - WHAT TRAIN IS THAT?

That's the reason I maintain a current list of  CN Kingston Subdivision Daily Freights and Times (above) in the right sidebar of this blog, and have done so since its inception. It's sort of a public service. It's nice to know how many trains traverse a given line we might want to railfan. Fortunately, the line that passes near here maintains a healthy number of trains, is in no danger of abandonment, and just might be one of the busiest stretches of track in the Canadian system. Oh, that's CN No 149 approaching Belleville (top photo).

CN'S PASSENGER TRAIN NUMBERING

CN has been through various iterations of train nomenclature in its various eras and management eras. Passenger trains used to be very logically numbered: 20-series Montreal-Quebec, 30-series Monreal-Ottawa, 40-series Ottawa-Toronto, 50- and 60-series Montreal-Toronto, and 70- and 80-series Southwestern Ontario. Within each series, the lowest-numbered train departed earliest in the day. It made sense! Now, VIA has completely bunged it up by running trains Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto, sticking 6's in front of some numbers (formerly used to denote Railiner services) and running J-trains combining two symbols. 

CN'S FREIGHT TRAIN NUMBERING

If you've read your Bytown Railway Society Canadian Trackside Guide (abbreviated CTSG by most, although the CTG title is a registered mark!), you can see that CN had a fairly robust numbering system for its freight trains. CN doesn't publicize this information, so it's up to observant railfans to document and keep this information current in various forms. 

100-series high priority, 200-series priority, 300-series manifest, 400-series regional, 500-series road switcher, then unit trains in the 700- and 800-series. Recently, they've used letters to further delineat train numbers such as M for Manifest, L for local, Q for intermodal (now adding Z - what is this, the Santa Fe?), U or G for unit, X for extra and even P for passenger (below). (How can you give a freight train number to a passenger train?) The Q versus Z nomenclature for intermodals has sparked some lively debate, especially among the younger generations of railfans. The entire CN train symbol is an alphabet soup including type of train, number, originating region, start per day, and date of origin, but that's another post for another blog.

On Trackside Treasure, you'll notice that I stick with an earlier format for train numbers that goes back to the UCOR/train order days. CN No 305 Eng 2296 as an example. Though this format used to be heard on the radio, most trains are identified by rail traffic controllers by their leading locomotive number now, or by the alphabet soup symbol when dealing with written documents. Crews still use the train numbers occasionally! It all depends who's talking.

WHO CARES?

So what does it all mean? Well, somewhere up in the ivory tower of CN headquarters, there are people who design services, or as CN calls it on their webpage, "We Connect the Dots" which I suppose means map dots. They "innovate, create and implement solutions" for their customers, broken down to four steps for customers: Plan, Ship, Trace and Pay. Obviously, a train doesn't leave a terminal with one car like a taxi with a fare aboard. There are cutoff times and train blocking instructions that guide how each train is built, where it runs, and when. CN was one of the first to implement Precision Scheduled Railroading, under the Tellier and Harrison management eras. I'm not going into PSR, those mens' legacies or the relative success of either, because that's another post for another blog.

CN's customers don't necessarily care which train their cars are on. They just want to know when they're getting cars, when they're getting lifted, when they're getting to their destination, and when they're getting more cars.

All we need to know is that there are reliable, predictable train pairs operating across the CN system because cars go empty one way, loaded the other way. So, each city pair needs two trains. It's not good enough for a railfan to ask, "How many trains go through Kingston each day?", and be told, "Well, that all depends...". That's a facile answer that skips over the true, detailed answer. 

It's safe to say there are ten pairs of trains operating each day over the CN Kingston Sub. Every day. Yes, we can add in extra 'sections' of a given train, long-distance unit trains that happen to pass by on a given day, or special moves like maintenance, dimensional, and who knows what else?

CN'S CURRENT OPERATING SCHEME FOR THE KINGSTON SUB

CN has actually become more boring over time when it comes to nimble, creative operations for its Kingston Sub trains. When I first started tracing cars in the late-1990's, prior to a widespread 1998 reorganization, CN had some neat online operations. CN No 335 (Garneau, QC to Buffalo, NY Frontier Yard) would swap blocks with Joffre, QC-Toronto No 361 at Belleville, taking some of the latter train's cars directly to the US via Niagara Falls, bypassing Toronto. Also in Belleville yard, CN No 149 would also stop to lift a block of hot metal traffic from CN No 369. So some trains would bypass Montreal Taschereau and Toronto MacMillan hump yards. Not any more. Boring. 

The other interesting information available from car tracing was discovering the service profile for each train. Except for trains that are entirely classified (I think 306 to Moncton may be one) at their destination, each train has predictable blocks built in for their online journeys. Online switching on head-end, through cars at tail-end.

Today, most manifest freights enter CN's Montreal and Toronto yards, in Montreal some only swap blocks. Most entering Toronto are broken down and rebuilt for subsequent trains to destinations south, north or west. CN No 395 (Monteal-Chicago BNSF Cicero Yard) used to be chock-full of Burlington Northern cars going straight through to Chicago. These days, with so many shipper-leased, not railway-owned cars, it's quite hard to superficially predict where those cars are coming from or heading to!

Hotter intermodal trains often bypass Toronto, coming direct from Western Canada and sometimes refuelling or recrewing along the Kingston Sub. Cuts of grain and potash traffic are sometimes tacked on (above), a practice CN seems to have learned from the ever-thrifty CP. It's all about decreasing the operating ratio (expenses divided by revenue) and providing profits to shareholders. 

SO REALLY, WHAT TRAIN IS THAT?

Railfans often wonder how they can find out about individual trains. Again, the facile answer is, "Listen to your scanner, read the Trackside Guide, you'll get it". Very unhelpful. A better answer might be to look for what I'd call key cars on a given train. For instance:

• Irving Lumber loads moving west are likely 305
• long strings of packaged lumber and TBOX's are likely 369
• intermodal trains without CN or domestic containers are likely 148/149 (below)
• Distributed Power units on the tail-end of trains are usually trains originating in Western Canada.

When we travelled on the Canadian from Toronto-Edmonton in 2019, I was struck not only by the huge number of trains we met west of Winnipeg, but the look-alike nature of many of them. Cuts of lumber, sand hoppers, tanks. Next train, the same. How could I possibly tell what train that was? And who cared?

Fortunately, CN maintains the highest percentage of carload freight among the Class I's, much more than the mostly-intermodal Western US railroads. If you like boxcars, you'll love CN, especially here. Sure, there are huge amounts of covered hoppers and tankcars heading to and from Montreal (like CN No 376, below), the south shore of the St Lawrence, and places like Saint John. Power is largely interchangeable, though the number and placement of locomotives may denote a particular train.

I would suggest documenting (no surprise there!) what you see and piecing together trends and patterns in what you see. Freight schedules may vary plus-or-minus a few hours on those 10 train-pairs from day to day. Late departures, work en route, unforeseen incidents and recrewing can delay trains. But they will eventually pass by. Perhaps just after you get in your vehicle, go home, and close the front door behind you!

That's where this guide will come in handy to know the possibilities of what trains you're seeing here. I should note that I won't be updating this list in this post. It's just a snapshot as of July, 2022. CN has recently been adding some new intermodal symbols, even using their Valleyfield terminal to serve Montreal. Check the sidebar for my periodically-updated daily freights list.

**147 Montreal-Chicago Intermodal Overflow/Autoracks 1100

**271 Montreal-Flint 0930

**Not currently operating

*Current as of Jul. 2022

*Times approximate and subject to change

*Times OS at Kingston

105 Montreal-Vancouver 0600

106 Vancouver-Montreal Variable

108 Vancouver-Montreal Variable

109 Montreal-Vancouver twice weekly Variable

120 Toronto-Halifax 0100

121 Halifax-Toronto 0500

122 NEW Chicago-Halifax Intermodal xxxx

123 NEW Halifax-Chicago : Halifax to US and Montreal Intermodal + Auto Traffic West of Mtl xxxx

148 Chicago-Montreal 2200

149 Montreal-Chicago 0930

185 Montreal-Prince Rupert

186 Prince Rupert-Montreal

305 Moncton-Toronto 0900

306 Toronto-Moncton 2000

309 Joffre-Toronto As Needed 0140

310 Toronto-Joffre As Needed 2330

321 Southwark-Toronto 2130

322 Toronto-Southwark/Joffre 1900

368 Toronto-Montreal 1500

369 Montreal-Toronto 1200

371 Montreal-Toronto 1100

372 Toronto-Montreal 2230

373 Montreal-Toronto 0500

376 Toronto-Riviere des Prairies 1100

377 Riviere des Prairies-Toronto 1900

516 Toronto-Brockville As Needed

517 Brockville - Toronto As Needed

518 Belleville-Kingston 1000EB/1300WB

730 Potash Saskatoon-Saint John Variable

731 Saint John-Saskatoon Variable

874 Grain Saskatoon-Limoilou Variable

875 Limoilou-Saskatoon Variable

HAVING SAID THAT, THE DISCLAIMER

You'll notice that there is lots of wiggle room in what I've posted. There are asterisks and 'variable', for instance. As my Dad used to tell me, factories are often closed on weekends, so early-week trains are usually shorter and late-week trains usually longer. Many locals that collect those factories' cars don't operate on weekends (like CN No 519 at Mi 179, above). Unit trains of potash, grain or intermodal that cross this country can be delayed in many different provinces, so the schedules once they come east into Ontario are anybody's guess.

As I've already mentioned, this is a dynamic operational environment, where lots of things can and do go wrong, causing delays. Nobody should think therefore, that just because I post that CN No 369 passing at noon, doesn't mean that even 50% of the time, that is reliable. Or it might be. 

Just get trackside and see what comes along! That's the fun of railfanning, unless you hope to pursue Precision Scheduled Railfanning!

Running extra...

After a long reign of devotion and service...

...the Queen is dead. Long live the King.