Welcome aboard this year-long retrospective series celebrating my Fifty Years Trackside - watching trains and taking numbers. This is the Second of a year-long series celebrating those five decades - each month's post is a time capsule; a five-year slice of those fifty years. Following the inaugural post covering 1976-1981, this month, it's That Early Eighties Show! Retrospectively looking ahead on the steps of Hawker-Siddeley CN caboose 79295 parked at the top of the CN Cataraqui Spur at Kingston's Gardiners Road (posed L.C. Gagnon photo - above). The caboose was accompanying Burro crane 50408. My brother David's wedding to Susan on May 16, 1981 was a major family event, immediately followed by a major train watching event. Having read the TRAINS magazine article on Hamilton's Bayview Junction, Andrew Makepeace and I had to travel there.
Since I didn't have my driver's licence yet, Andrew would be driving his parents' Chevy Caprice station wagon up Highway 401. We photographed our first train from the Royal Botanical Gardens' parking lot, then did most of our train watching from the 'railfan lot' in the triangle of the CN Oakville and Dundas Subdivisions junction. The light-blue wagon is parked behind the shed (above). We photographed the anticipated parade of trains and ate fast food. One example: ore train with 9442-9481-5518-9591-9617 on June 22, 1981 (above) arriving in Hamilton.
That summer it was time to head west to Portage again, timing the trip around my summer job. My 1982 trip west (June 8-26) was on the CP route through Northern Ontario once again. A school band exchange trip to PEI included this stop for the ferry at Borden. Andrew rides the footboards of CN 1751 that was tied down nearby:
In July 1982, my Dad and I made a trip by train to that sacred site of CN passenger operations in Toronto - Spadina Shops. Signing the required release form and donning our yellow hardhats, we were free to roam the ready tracks. Preparing to begin my final year in high school - Grade 13, I later received my acceptance letter from St Lawrence College on April 2, 1982. We toured the KGH labs on November 24, 1982 to get a glimpse of our futures.
On September 18, I was back at the Amherstview sports field to photograph this golden-hour westbound behind CN 2113-2015-2338 over the CN right-of-way fence:
The following year, 1983, was the only one in my teen years that didn't include a Portage trip. My parents did get there, however.
For my third year at the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority, I was the foreman at Gould Lake Conservation Area north of Sydenham. This required a driver's license to drive my crew of...one....around! No Driver's Ed classes for me. No, it was Dad's Ed. On our practice sessions, he had a habit of alerting me to hazards some distance away, increasing his volume as we came closer. For instance, 'Eric, there's a dog on the road up ahead. Eric! There's a DOG UP AHEAD! ERIC!! THERE'S A DOG UP AHEAD!!"
I enjoyed a Canrailpass vacation travelling the Corridor extensively in March, 1984. I finally got my 35 mm camera on April 23, 1984 after the demise of my trusty Kodak Hawkeye during those trips. For $184.59 I walked out of Camera Kingston with a Yashica FX-3. I had a month to experiment with it before heading west on VIA No 1 for a May 26-June 9 trip. I added a Kiron 80-200 men telephoto lens for $200 from Camera Kingston on June 13, 1985. This was to celebrate the completion of the third of three days of CSLT exams, after a celebratory lunch with classmates, now colleagues, at Mino's Restaurant.
While this was my era of educational enlightenment, it was the dark ages of train watching. My note-taking took a back seat, and documentation is scant and sketchy. There was much memorizing and fraternizing to do. A classmate's wedding changed the course of my life thereafter. I had been hired right after my third year, and was working across from a certain medical stenographer in the secretarial pool. (Is it too much to say she was a fine specimen?) My date for that wedding became my fiancée and then my wife. Karen never professed herself to be a train enthusiast, but she was a good sport if we ended up trackside on a 'date'! We're at Napanee with the tail-end of an eastbound freight led by 9634-2547-2583-9588 and caboose 79555 in 1986:
From September 16 to October 3, 1985 I took my first vacation from work - to Manitoba on VIA Rail. Karen, too, travelled west by air to visit family in Saskatchewan. In the era before direct flights, a stop in Winnipeg necessitated blankets distributed to passengers while her plane sat on the tarmac!
VIA trains were an interesting mix. VIA was implementing its LRC and would deal with the technology's teething problems for years. With an armload of gold bars, this conductor who likely started his railway career in clouds of steam directs passengers aboard a jet-powered Turbo at Kingston, in the spring of 1982. VIA's Turbos were removed from service in October, 1982 while its cab units limped along until the new F40's arrived in December, 1986. On October 7, 1985 I rode an LRC to Ottawa on a day trip to Parliament (David J. Gagnon photos):
On a cold December 2, 1985 I treated my parents to a trip to Montreal also aboard VIA. My Dad snapped this photo of me at the east lookout of the Camille Houde Parkway atop Mount Royal:
Thanks for being aboard this year-long train of thought as we retrace, remember, and yes, wallow in nostalgia these fifty years trackside. Watch for an upcoming third part as we enter our third decade - the 1990s.
Running extra...
Speaking of the '80s, VIA Rail Canada released a social media reel showing the Vancouver open house celebrating The Canadian's 70th anniversary. Sartorially snazzy Mark Sampson, who knows a thing or two about the train's history, gets a brief video VIAntage vignette:
Ontario Northland's first Siemens set is testing at night west of Toronto, where it resides at VIA's TMC with rescue unit ONR 1802.
First past the post...
It's so nice to start talking finances with your financial advisor before shifting into family matters, the sandwich generation, the school system, organized religion and many, many other topics. Oh yeah, and finances. And free coffee. And a free note pad. The Royal Bank, years ago, gave me one Timbit. One. Oh yeah, and a calendar that was so boring and cheap that all it had was monthly date blocks. No pictures. My garage used to give out nicer colour calendars, and the garage had A LOT less of my money than the bank did!
