Waiting for CNR 6060 at Collins Bay, 1976

On May 14, 1977 CNR 6060 was heading a fantrip from Montreal to Toronto. We went out to Collins Bay, four miles west of Kingston's VIA station and two miles east of our home in Amherstview, plunking ourselves between the [future] grocery store [now flea market] and the postal station to await its passage. My brother, my Dad and I were there from 0930 to 1315, catching the six trains shown in this post (L.C. Gagnon photos). The venerable Mountain Type was likely on its way to Toronto prior to the summer excursion season that was to begin June 25. At 1034, CN 3114-4509 led a westbound freight with caboose 79594 (top photo). I often didn't bother to record Turbo times and numbers, but the CN logo was firmly in place on the nose of this [likely eastbound]:

At 1212, VIA 6763V (V=VIA paint and still a novelty) also bore the red CN nose logo it received with its first VIA paint (60-degree yellow nose slant) on December 10, 1976 trailed by 6865V (below). This location would give us a long view of the fantrip approaching from the east along Bath Road toward Collins Bay, but it put us on the shadow-side.

Following 13 minutes behind the passenger train, CN 5051-3129 hustled an eastbound freight with ballast cars on the head-end:

Another 18 minutes later at 1253, a westbound VIA train behind 6531-6617V-6520 crossed Hillview Road crossing, still double-whistling for the Collins Bay Road crossing. The proximity of both crossings to each other, the limited sight-lines and pending construction of Bayridge Drive overpass led to the former's closure in December 1995. Your humble blogger stands at left, preserving data for this post, perhaps not knowing it wouldn't be published in print form until 34 years hence or in this post for another 46 years!

At 1314, 6540V-6871 lead this eastbound VIA past the back of Beckers in the Collins Bay plaza:

Shortly thereafter, the speedster star of the show appeared, smoking sufficiently. There were problems on this trip that not only delayed it at Belleville but also leading to a detour making it six hours late into Toronto.

Our '76 topaz VW Beetle also waited patiently with us (above).

This is Feb24 OOF (One-Off February) Post OO1. Each post during the month will centre on an event or a piece of equipment that was unique, happened only once or was a one-off. And who knows what I'll come up with for Leap Day, February 29th!?

Running extra...

Folks, I spend so many, many hours each week tippy-tippy typing up my plethora of prolific posts on railway subjects of today and yesteryear into a snow-topped evergreen Eldorado, a tree-lined treasure trove of trivia, an overstuffed bespoke comfy couch of Canadiana, some would say a fact-jammed cilantro special sauce slathered over my beefy baconator everything-burger of bedazzlement with all the fixin's, carefully crafting each one into a meringue-topped, comme-ci comme-ca cornucopia collage, a chef's kiss of a pastry pastiche panoply (sprinkled with photos to sweeten and enrich your day) with a curated, finely-crafted je-ne-sais-quoi quanlity of ooey-gooey goodness that Trackside Treasure has become known for...

...but sometimes, sometimes, I let my stray thoughts devolve down, down to this spiralling bottom section of clap-trap conundrums, mashed-up morsels of meaningless media scrapings, papier-mâché pieces of non-sequitur subjects, scandal-laced stories from the worlds of infotainment and prominent politicos, where washed-up what's-its of wonderment wallow among the dangerously sharp shards of stories I sweep into a rusty dustpan with an old Oral-B toothbrush with frayed bristles seemingly chewed by a squirrel, before I grind them up with a mortar and pestle found in a decommissioned, police-taped meth lab, filtering them through a sweat-stained Adidas sports sock, before smearing them with my now-bleeding, bandaged hands across a cinder-block wall of meaningless mediocrity then spray-painting them chartreuse with an sputtering aerosol can of unintelligibility that is my segment known as...Running Extra.

[My ISP has just notified me that due to the rambling nature of my Colbert-esque intro, I've run out of bandwidth and the real information I was going to present here will have to follow in the next post.]