CN Tie Gang, August 2019

Out for my morning walk in early August, camera-in-hand (of course), I came across this hi-rail excavator beetling toward me on the south track just west of Mi 179 of CN's Kingston Sub. This fellow is responsible for dragging the ties out of the ditch, where they may have been deposited by a work train about two months ago (top photo). This was the creosote-soaked precursor to the approaching system tie gang. The gang finally made their way here on the south track on August 16.

The gang comprises men, machines and vehicles (actually, at least two of the machine operators were women. Two of the accompanying trucks were a fuel and shop truck (above) and a non-hi-rail pickup truck (below).

I will not try to put these photos in exact order, or to know exactly what's going on in each photo, or what each machine does exactly. The overarching concept is...old tie out, new tie in. The old ties are piled beside the track for subsequent pickup. With all kinds of laser-guided mechanical monsters all in a row, it still comes down to guys with handtools:

 These guys were likely getting track hardware ready for installation and spiking:

Due to this gang being strung-out, passing trains did a lot of whistling. Approaching the working limits, approaching trains call the foreman for directions. Since safety is important, the foreman contacts all other operators and foremen within his limits and asks them to stop work to 'clear' for the approaching train. Some machine operators transmit the phrase 'Hot rail!' as the train gets close. The train is then given track and speed instructions and is asked to use bell and whistle past workers and machinery. This leads to lots social media questions about 'why the trains are whistling so much all of a sudden in Kingston??' Some track machines were dirtier than others.

 Some of the smaller machines lacked a cab:

 These machines were always in the biggest 'knot'. Spikers:

 Shaking in some ballast:

Tie cranes operated near the front of the gang, placing the ties located by the excavator next to the hole created by the old tie removed. Extra ties ride on the attached track cart.

Among the most mesmerizing was the tie injector, of which there were four. It's important to remember that not every machine works on every tie. Maybe every fourth tie. This keeps the gang moving along quickly and likely removes potential bottlenecks.

Star Wars. The ties are lifted, tamped and lined by these precision pieces of machinery at the tail-end of the gang. The last machine completely finishes the track profile - ties, ballast and all.

Since this is a 24-hour gang, they 'own' a work block between interlockings and work 12 hours on-12 hours off. The day shift is done. All the workers collect in one central location (here at Tim Hortons in Collins Bay - lucky!) to be transported back to the hotel. This is only about half of them. I'd never seen so many CN trucks at this little mini-mall! Likely a dozen. Then, the night shift would arrive and carry on. In this way, the gang spends zero time travelling to and from the work site on-track, and they know exactly where the previous shift left off. (Photo taken through car window while leaving the mini-mall parking lot.)

The gang changed ties on the north track a couple of days later. The Herzog MPM IV tie pickup train was operating on the south track on August 22 and 23. Interestingly, the grapple operator would 'tap' a grapple full of ties on the side of the (former) well call before dropping the ties into the well.

The ties will likely be taken four miles east for piling at Queens then loading onto scrap tie gondolas to be taken...wherever CN takes scrap ties!

As of August 30, the gang's machines were on flat cars in Belleville yard. The local Best Western still had several CN and OWS (Oil Well Service) contractor hi-rail trucks in the parking lot. CN No 518 behind CN 4789-GATX 2264 arrived in Belleville with four black gondolas of old ties behind the power, likely from Kingston: 

Running extra...

Summertime insomniac 24-hour read: Another Great Day at Sea - Life Aboard the USS George H.W. Bush by Briton Geoff Dyer. Nice short chapters as we follow Geoff under, over and through this city on the sea. To quote dustjacket reviewer Steve Martin (surely not THE Steve Martin), "Dyer stows himself away...with all his hilarious tics in place. A rare kind of non-fiction, with sentences that keep on giving long after your eye has sailed on." That there's some pretty good writing, too!

BTS stands for Back To School!! Also By The Sea, Bed Time Snack or some Korean boy-pop band.

Also in Belleville, VIA 901 is one of three original-paint VIA P42's - eastbound on August 30.

What's This? An Editorial?

Are you concerned about the future of blogging as a viable social medium? While entering Trackside Treasure's 12th year, I read this rather dismayed (but not defeated) post on Chris and Connie's Facebook page this week. Chris and Connie do a lot, see a lot, share a lot. They're committed. Their post is lightly-edited, with my thoughts at the end:

We're a touch worried...

We can't shake that feeling that this here Facebook page, and our HQ on the web BIGDoer.com, has run its course.

And it comes down to one reason really: engagement. It's fallen and continues to drop. We get scads of traffic between those two sites but in return the response tells us we've lost our audience. For example a recent week at BIGDoer.com had us greeting four thousand unique visitors, who on average read three separate articles (of the 1200+ there) and spent some ten to twelve minutes each browsing in total. That's 12k pages views and 666 person hours in those seven days. And from that came a single comment and one social share. And it's not like doing either is made difficult there. 

We operate these sites for fun (I don't how in some minds they think we make money off it – I wish) and with the hopes that other people will enjoy the experience too. But lately it's been the sound of crickets and of course that always present background noise from haters and the (fill in the blank) police. They always let us know they're around. If the positive vibes flow they can be drowned out though.

We really should be getting better results than we do. Not that we don't appreciate those who have been cheering us on and doing their part – we love you guys muchly. Please join them! We put a lot of time and resources – we're volunteers here people - to bring you these articles.

Plain and simple, if we're not hearing from you, via comments, here and especially at BIGDoer.com, by likes, shares or any other interactions the numbers tell us there's little reason to continue. Let's make this comparison...we're a band, a pretty good one too...exhausted but knowing we've done something great, the crowd gets up, turns and leaves without a sound. No ovation, no applause, no calls for an encore. Just deafening silence. That's the state of it. And it's been getting progressively worse for many, many months.

I also came across this post on Mike McNamara's interesting Northeast Kingdom blog. What I would normally call the 'death of a blog' admission (haven't posted here in a while) but notice the pivot to Facebook posting:

The illustrious Kingston Sub modeller Jason Shron also marked the pivot to Facebook:

Now, I've consistently stated that anything I do, online or in a book, is really for my own use and enjoyment. That sounds self-serving, and it is. But I'm not doing it then hiding it nor putting it up on a shelf in my office. I'm sharing it. If you or someone else gets something out of it, so much the better. But I catalogue my memories, some photos and observations this way. A quick glance at my Blogger statistics shows that my comments-per-post are pretty consistent: 0, 4, 2, 0, 3, etc. Can't really judge pageviews because of those weirdos in the Ukraine and India using my post to sell cars and shoes. Don't care.

Blogging is not the future. Facebook is not the future. Likes and shares is definitely not the future. Dollar signs are not the future. If engagement is the future, then engagement happens in a continuum. Years from now, I will send my Trackside Treasure posts to you in a single thought via some plasma channel or other StarWarsy hologram thingie. Whaaaa?

To help me with my quandary, I reached out to three fellow rail enthusiasts who are making excellent and varied use of social media: Dartmouth's Chris Mears plus Mark Perry and Steve Boyko, both in Winnipeg...

I asked fellow blogger Chris Mears about the blog/Facebook issue:
"I’m trying to create a balance. I get so excited by these things I like and the compulsion to share them can be hard to suppress, and I’m not sure it should be. I’d hate to think I was burdening my friends or a group with these outbursts so I created the blog and the Facebook page to act as outlets. I like the ease of posting content to Facebook from my cell phone and it feels like maintaining a sketch book of ideas. 

As the Prince Street Facebook page matures I think it plays well to exercise ideas that could mature into posts on the blog, which remains the heart of my creative output. In those two domains I have a place where I determine what is suitable content. As well, Facebook is becoming my primary cloud storage platform for my current railfanning photos. I’m willing to regard Facebook style of cost for that of other storage. The ease of Facebook seems to encourage it."

Winnipegger and TRAINS magazine contributor Mark Perry is posting almost daily to Facebook. What does he like about it?
"I pretty much only put my photos on FB, not much into writing magazine articles anymore nor do I want to post pics on sites like Flickr so that thieves like B**** can steal them. I like a story with every photo, and I try to shoot photos with a story behind every one of them.  Lets face it, I've had enough of 3/4 wedge grade crossing shots to last a life time. I like FB!"

Fellow blogger Steve Boyko puts it this way,
"My issue with FB is that we don't own the platform. FB controls everything, including if and when it decides to show our posts in feeds. I prefer to host the majority of my content on my own site where I control everything. If nobody comes, well, that's my fault for not writing something that people want to read, but at least I control that."

Sure Facebook and other social media are easier to post to. But they're not as 'permanent' or 'searchable' and that is really paying a compliment to blogs, which are known for being not all that searchable and who knows about permanent? We gravitate to what's easy. What's fast. It's tough investing time in a project if we feel no-one is giving us any return on our investment.

Not sitting here looking at charts and graphs of which of the social media are on the rise, and which are in decline. The next big thing for the young people? Myspace, facebook, blogs, email, portable cell phones, colour TV, talkie movies, sitting around the ol' Victrola? They come, they go, some stay.

While I enjoy the immediacy of Facebook, and the neat things I've learned and been part of there, I don't see myself gravitating that way for anything other than immediate things. I also don't see myself duplicating Trackside Treasure in Facebook form. But I do feel the pull of Facebook, and acknowledge that it's already pulled me away from Yahoogroups. Yet the strongest pull is the resiliency and depth that blogging offers me.

It's been said that writers desperately want to be heard. As a blogger, I'm a writer and photographer. I suppose photographers desperately want to be seen. I can do both these things on various social media. Blogging forces me to formalize, focus, format and forge posts that can be all about the past,  in the now, and updated in the future. [Ed. note - an effective editorial always concludes with a strong call to action. Cue the call to action!]

                                         It's time I stopped navel-gazing and get to work. 

To the ramparts! To the bookshelves! 

To the photo albums and notebooks! 

To seek, to strive, to share, to blog, and never stop!

-Eric

Running extra...

Thanks to Chris, Connie, Mike, Mark, Steve and Chris Mears for their valued input and doing the work online, sharing what is nearest and dearest to them. Don't ever stop.

Congratulations to Winnipeg's Ian Lisakowski for being the first to note all five differences in Trackside Treasure's eleventh anniversary Lego Swap contest! The oft-coveted Trackside Treasure prize pack will be winging its way westward! Honourable mention to TLC's Railfan Sisters' Allison Gagnon for her studiously collaborative entry. Here are the substituted 'F-units' that were to be found! Good F-F-F-F-Fun!

Summertime at the Station, August 2019

Each summer, a free evening with concurrent comfortable conditions gives me an opportunity to grab a coffee and a baked good or two, and catch the evening's VIA action at the Kingston station. This summer was no different, so on July 31 and August 14 it was time to tiptoe trackside! Tims in hand (top photo - upon arrival before the first train), the first of four VIA's on July 31 was an eastbound non-stop No 646: 6418-3453-3343F-3341-3303R (F=Future wrap, R=Renaissance paint scheme, and soon L for Love/La Voie will join the nomenclature!). The first westbound arrived at 1903, basking in the golden-hour glow - VIA No 69: 907F-3460-3329F-3310R-3356F:

The next train was also westbound, 15 minutes later, putting VIA's new Love the Way/La Voie Qu'On Aime front and centre for this Corridor camera-bug!

1918 WB 906Love-4005-4109-4122-4120.

Loving this new way - work on the street that serves the station -  this view of new single access-point (under the bulldozer) that will form a loop from John Counter Boulevard (under the red Jeep), replacing the two current entrances: 

On August 14, the first of the evening's six VIA trains waits. And waits. VIA No 46 waits at station from 1837-1857. The consist is 918F-4009-4106-8117-4116. Soon, this red ball wrap of fortuitous fortiness will disappear in favour of the Love/La Voie lettering. But until then...

A large, system tie gang moved slowly up the CN Kingston Sub as it did last summer. Under CN Foreman Mike Miron, the gang comprised over 50 track machines and associated road vehicles, replacing ties on both tracks. At one time, single-tracked from Kings to Ernestown (over 25 miles!), the gang operated 24 hours a day with two shifts, but delayed VIA and CN trains that were waiting at interlockings at either end of the long work block. A hi-rail pickup stopped at three former CN intermodal trailers parked at the west end of the VIA station property to pick up bottled water and other supplies for the gang during my visit:

Tie gang ahead! VIA No 46 during its 20 minute wait at a red signal...

...which gave this stainless steel-seeking shutterbug more time than usual to leisurely lens some unusual images:

During VIA's nabbed nap time, CN westbound freight 377 steadily slogged by, led by CN 2943. Right on time, as part of Precision Scheduled Railroading, this mix of paper and chemical traffic included this ghostly image of somebody on a Huron Central boxcar door:

Mid-way through was Distributed Power Unit CN 3109, unusually tailed by 50 auto racks - fill tonnage:

VIA No 46 was finally able to deservingly descend the deciduous defillade out of Kingston:

The next eastbound also met a red-board. Normally non-stop, VIA No 646 was detentionally dinged for five minutes in Kingston: 1902-1907. The consist was led by another Forty/Future unit - 909F-3477-3366F-3345R-3312R:

The lighting was perfect and I don't think I'd ever get tired of this Forty/Future wrap. Although soon, I'm sure the future will be removed in favour of the Love. Love always wins. Heck, it makes the world go round! VIA 3366F:

Trying to get creative for the next one-unit, four-car consist, I zoomed 'through' the Princess Street overpass to get the next non-stop, VIA No 68 missing one ditchlight at 1920 - 914F-3471-3352F-3307F-3311R:

Forty minutes later, VIA No 69 continued westbound after stopping, at 1959 - 907F-3473-3329F-3310-3356F:

Darkness was drearily draping itself over the station swampland as VIA No 647 departed Kingston at 2009:  906L-4005-4129-4122-4121, ditchlights blazing!

I see a full moon a-risin'. I see love upon the way. (There, I paraphrased CCR beside the CNR!)

VIA No 54 slyly slid in under cover of darkness at 2040: 6454-3468-3316F-3332R-3340-3363R-911L.

With the above final lamppost-leaning lens work done, I departed with coffee cup and camera battery both drained. Summertime, and the living (and lensing) is easy!

Still basking in the afterglow of Trackside Treasure eleventh anniversary, stay tuned for anniversary contest winner results and an editorial, coming soon!

Running extra...

Standing Still - an intriguing series of articles on VIA's Canadian and its on-time performance, by the MJ students of the University of King's College School of Journalism, Halifax. You'll see references to fellow VIAphiles Chris Greenlaw and Tim Hayman (but also perpetual VIA critic Greg Gormick). Thanks to Trackside Treasure reader Bill Staiger for the link.

Also from Bill, (thanks again!) this LA Times article Return to the Older is about travelling on the Canadian in May. (At first I thought it said LATE times.) The writer is concerned about vegan vs. vegetarian and uses interesting vocabulary. Watch for CORUSCATING! But a good, representative article nonetheless.

If you like CN operations in the 1980's and later, check out Rymal Station in HO Scale. With five posts so far this year, this interesting blog makes Trackside Treasure's weekly posting schedule look absolutely frenetic! Though I don't see the blogger's name, I believe it's P. and Keith MacCauley from Hamilton. 

Trackside Treasure's Eleventh Anniversary

The future is on board, and also online! The impact of the internet increases! Only a few years ago, Skip the Dishes meant TV dinners for supper. Amazon was still just a river in South America. Hashtags were how we labelled containers of hash. Without the internet, it's obvious that there would be no Trackside Treasure. But here we are, at Trackside Treasure's 11th anniversary! Woot!

This is exactly the 600th post that's been published here. There are a further 35 posts in Draft format, so Blogger tells me. I also have a 'Rolodex' of ideas that are not even that far advanced, but for which I have reference material. All a mix of retro/today, freight/passenger, CN/CP, prototype/model and a fair bit of miscellaneousness that defies categorization. Just the way I like it! To get an idea where my areas of interest and experience lie, look at the labels widget in my sidebar that I use to categorize most posts:

Fun Fact: According to my Blogger statistics, 25% of Google searches for Trackside Treasure are actually for Trackside Treasures!

I noticed that some bloggers have made excellent use of Facebook. Much more responsive and real-time, I realize that dialogue is much easier there than there historic and somewhat cumbersome 'Comment' communication mode of blogs. I have yet to take Trackside Treasure to Facebook - perhaps in future.

Blogging is the best way of cataloguing my interests, modelling and railfanning for future use, short of a straight-up webpage. If anyone else finds it remotely useful, that's gravy! Some recent difficulties with our ISP made it painfully obvious how much we now take the internet for granted, perhaps even more than when Trackside Treasure started. It has worked its way into our everyday life in a plethora of ways we don't even recognize anymore. But as this Jack and the Beanstalk effect weaves the internet into our corporate existence, it also guarantees the future of Trackside Treasure, rooted firmly in some anonymous Blogger server somewhere.

Each anniversary is my annual opportunity and obligation to thank my blog readers, contributors and commenters. Trackside Treasure reader and book contributor Randy O'Brien kindly created this celebratory graphic. Thanks, Randy!

I continue to enjoy the prolific and professional output of my fellow bloggers, whose blogs are featured in my sidebar: Edd, Steve, John, Dave, Chris, George, Bernard, Matthieu, Marc et Michael. It's great to be in the company of others who believe in the blogosphere.

A recent study of psalms revealed this paraphrase - loosely (and I use the term loosely, loosely!) based on the 23rd. Seemed to fit this auspicious auccasion:

A Blogger's Psalm

Blogging is my hobby, I shall not be bored.

It maketh me do research in far places;

It causeth me to correspond with odd people;

It keepeth my mind agile;

It leadeth me down paths of understanding for curiosity's sake.

Yea, though I live through a winter of inclement weather,

I will fear no boredom if my laptop and scanner are near me.

As I wallow in nostalgia, it comforts me.

Blogging provideth me a means of escaping the tensions of my responsibilities;

It filleth my desk with books and files.

My cash runneth lower.

Surely interest and knowledge shall follow me all the days of my life,

And my posts will live on in the blogsphere forever.

-adapted from A Philatelist's Psalm by Erma V. Berkley, as discovered by Steven McLachlan.

CONTEST TIME

Time for Trackside Treasure's 11th anniversary contest. The first two correct responses received via email or via a comment on this post will win the coveted Trackside Treasure 11th Anniversary Prize Pack. Below are two images of Lego trains. I've substituted a number of locomotives in the second photo. Find them all and you win. Simply refer to the substitutions by row or location in photo, colour of locomotive or some other creative way of showing you found 'em! As always, click on photo for a larger image. Answers and winners to be announced in the 601st post! Some conditions apply. Enjoy!

(At this point, you may be asking yourself, "WTF - What the F-unit??")

Thanks for showing up, for reading, for participating,
and for being part of Trackside Treasure!

-Eric