Let's talk about the weather, shall we?

It sucks.

So my winter was doing reno stuff, running when I could, which wasn't very much or often, working (thankfully) and grabbing the rare vid.  Since I do my railfanning on foot, this winter hasn't been particularly cordial towards my hobby, thus the lack of postings this last few months.  It's been hard enough just finding the time to run.

The mid-December ice storm kicked the year off on the wrong foot, and made the underfooting for a lot my running a lost less stable.  Last year and the year before I ran trail nearly the whole winter.  This year, maybe twice, and only when we had good snows down to get some traction going.  Actually one of the runs had superb conditions, even better than some summer runs, with hard packed snow nicely levelled by off-road cyclists.  Too much ice and thaw/freeze cycles to keep it in shape for long.

On the railfanning side and with the ice storm having set the tone for the year, my running stayed pretty local and sticking to the Lakeshore commuter runs.  But it gave a chance to visit a couple of locales I've not ventured to, such as the Birchmount Road bridge over the CP Belleville Sub.  This gives a nice view of the long sweeping curve from west to east:

From the same location, face east and you get the long corridor through the Kennedy GO Station:

Standing around outside waiting for trains isn't much fun.  At least commuter traffic has schedules so I canto time my run to arrive just-in-time and catch what I can.  Like this one, where I catch VIA's luxurious Glenfraser lounge car tacked onto the end of a Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal run, VIA combo 62/52:

Glenfraser is a pretty interesting car.  One-of-a-kind, it's a Canadian Car & Foundry unit built to the same dimensions basically as the stainless Budd cars.  VIAs fleet site has a whole page dedicated to this unit.  Since it's only one car, I do wonder how VIA decides which train gets to pick it up, it would be a nice bonus for a train trip.  However, VIA often rents it out for special functions so seeing it on the train you're about to board may not turn out as promising as hoped.

Cars like this is what made riding the rails such a thrill when I was a kid.  As a young-un, we did take a family trip once from my home in Sydney to Toronto and then back and all those images of getting set up in the sleeper bunks, eating in the dining car, hanging out the lounge, still there in my head.  When my wife and I were dating we did a trip from Toronto to Sydney while the railliners (more commonly known as the RDC cars) still ran from Halifax to Sydney.  The Atlantic ran from Montreal to Halifax for our overnighter and we took a nice big cozy bedroom for the trip.  The Atlantic was one of the last steam-heated trains in service.  When you sat on the toilet, the water was all steamy and warm, so you got this gush of nice warm air when you sat on it.  Wasn't a lot of money those days, a couple of hundred for the unit each way.  She wasn't quite as enthused with the railliners from Truro to Sydney thoguth, with their built-in diesel engines.  I always liked them, having spent many a ride from the Annapolis valley, sitting at the bar in the back.  Nothing quite like drinking a beer or two and watching the country side slide by out the window.

So, only a handful of vids this winter.  My yootoob page has a couple more.  When I get more time I'll be able to dedicate a bit more to the task.  Right now any extra time I have is spent getting in the miles to avoid becoming a non-runner.

A collection of recent weeks

A lot of my time is taken up working on some renovations so running and certainly hanging around crossings have been curtailed for the time being.  I have managed a few outings, mostly early on weekday mornings.

A couple of weekends ago I got a lucky break a caught an early arriving VIA Canadian train #2 trundling down the Bala on it's way into Union Station.  I've hung out at this trail crossing a few times but with limited success.  There's not much warning for approaching rail traffic and the noise of the nearby DVP tends to drown out the growls of throttled-down engines.  Occasionally they wail a horn for someone near the lines where they shouldn't be and that offers some advanced warning.  On this day I had to scramble to get the camera ready as I had just arrived.  Some sprinkling rain kept me from prepping the camera settings as I usually would have done.  A sudden rumble north of the crossing and a gleem of lights off the rails told me it was the Canadian approaching the turn and I wasn't one the side of the tracks I wanted but had to make do with the location to avoid crossing during the warning lights.

Later that week I got up and out bright and early a couple of mornings and put together this sequence of VIA train 52/50 to Montreal and Ottawa followed by regular GO service into Danforth Station off Main Street.  The VIA and GO units have similar departure times and often end up side by side on this stretch.  No luck catching them that close on that morning but I am hopeful that I can get some footage of that very situation one day.

On Friday before the long weekend I took some time on my return home from work to catch a scheduled GO Stouffville service heading north.  The GO trains have a lot of level crossings to deal with on the Uxbridge sub and make generous use of their horns to let traffic know of their approach to these busy roadways.  I used my older Sony SD camera which lacks the better image stablization of the CX-250 and shows a bit of wobble, especially when the engineer laid on the horn when exactly next to me.

I also moseyed down McCowan towards the western end of the CP Toronto yards in Scarborough as I've not gone around that area before and it was on the way.  Locations are inconvenient but I did catch a pair of GP9Us doing switching duty and shot a bit of footage from a lower level, but not very good positioning at all.  I'll need to find more time to scout out a better location sometime.  I can't really run out to that area, a further than my current long runs encompass.

And finally I tried some footage off the biking trails in E T Seton park near the high CP rail bridge that crosses over the Don.  This location is outside the end of the fence of the Tremco plant near Thorncliffe Park/Leaside and sits high above the valley below and level with the rail crossing for a different angle than most people will see.  In late fall to spring it's pretty barren up there and the view is much better, but the summer has lots of foliage in the way.  I didn't stay very long but managed to catch a pair of eastbounds with likely empty returns heading for the yards in Scarborough.

Bright mornings, fast trains and some poking around

I haven't had much time to be out taking images of trains lately.  There is a bridge under repair that connects my local area of Taylor Creek with Sunnybrook and it's throughly fenced in until the workers have completed their tasks.  If you're familiar with the area, it's the bailey bridge that crosses the CN Bala tracks near Don Mills Road.  The area has been undergoing renovations to replace the aging footbridge under Don Mills.  That work is completed and now they are doing the decking on the bailey bridge.  Before the bridge closure you could still navigate across Don Mills but a deckless bridge isn't very useful.  Most people are just going around the fencing and cross the tracks but I have this inate refusal to tresspass on the Metrolinx right of way so I'm staying away from the area until the work is done.

Bala below Doncaster sees not a lot of CN action these days.  VIA's Canadian #2 still uses it and Richmond Hill GO service on weekdays, but I haven't seen freight action there in months.  CP's Belleville and North Toronto subs are my freight train sources these days.  The bridge work at Don Mills makes this less accessible for the time being.  I can still get around through the area near Cottonwood Flats if I have time for longer runs.  The level CP crossing at Wicksteed needs only 25 minutes for me to get there with the bridge open, but over an hour with the bridge out.  Summerhill is more accessible right now and Summerhill has better viewing, albeit not at track level.  I did try a few longer shots of the Leaside yard area from Cottonwood Flats but there are just too many trees in the way.

The reliable Kingston sub is always nearby.  6:30AM and on that is one busy line.  Mutliple GO trains an hour, plenty of VIA trains coming in and going out.  Being wakey wakey with the ever earlier sun shining in through the window and the window opened a crack for air, the Lakeshore line gets mighty noisy.  This morning I headed down Woodbine Avenue to the crossing north of Gerard Street just in time to catch VIA combo 50/52 heading to Ottawa and Montreal with it's unique two train tandem.

Blink and you'll miss it:

They don't have the high-speed train warning signs posted everywhere on that line for nothing.

While scoping out some other locations on the streets nearby I'm glad I had the camera rolling here for this GO eastbound unit:

Not the best location, it was over a fence at the base of Westlake Avenue just south of the Danforth, but it was a unique catch.  This double-ender had two of GOs refurbished F59PH units, #564 up front and #563 tacked onto the rear.  These 59s have to double up to meet the performance demands of 10 car passenger service as they lack the oomph of the MP40PH 4000HP powerhouses on most of GOs trains.

Winter blahs - in spring

It's starting to brighten up out there.  However, I will have to have a talk with those gophers that predicted an early spring because it's been anything but for the last several weeks.

I managed to turn an ankle while running frozen trail a couple of weeks ago on some ruts and sidelined myself for a week.  I could have run as it doesn't really affect straightline running but I wanted to play it safe, and the less than desireable weather meant I didn't feel too bad about sitting around for a few days.

The trail system is peppered with signs informing users to stay off the trails in muddy conditions as this damages the slopes and really messes up the surface.  I've been running them all winter and conditions have been good but it looks like plenty of people ignored the signs when the temps crawled over freezing and the trail was heavily rutted from walkers and a small handful of cyclists.  After it froze over, which is when I ran it, it's like cobblestones turned on their edge and I managed to misjudge on a downhill, rolled my ankle and hobbled home.  The swelling a couple of days later let me know it needed some rest.

Nonetheless, back at it this weekend and inspected the trails on Sunday.  They seemed fine until I got to some messy muddy sections near Bayview Avenue and had to run off-trail.  While high in the section near Bayview I heard a consist trundling it's way southbound on Bala near the trial crossing at the 5 mile mark.  I had my camcorder with me and was a bit out of position for a clear shot which left me finding a reasonable opening through the trees.  Much to my surprise, being a Sunday, it was VIA train #2, the Canadian, running more than a day late after being held up by snowstorms in Saskachewan.

Related news article:

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/via-train-moving-again-after-spring-storm-leads-to-major-delay-in-prairies-1.1207173

Quite the catch as there isn't much activity on south Bala outside of the Canadian and the weekday GO commutes.  I used to see a lot more freight action along this line.  For freight action these days I hang out around the level CP crossing at Wicksteed when time allows:

Happy Spring!

101 tankers

Without aid of a scanner, railfanning becomes part luck and part experience.  Over time you get some idea of when certain trains tend to pass and plan accordingly but most of the time it's just winging it and depending on lady luck.

After a few trips to the Summerhill pedestrian bridge crossing CP's North Toronto Subdivision I figured out that a mixed westbound consist, likely originating from the Markham yards, passes under the bridge at about 11:25 on Sunday mornings.  It means a crossing of the high trestle bridges in the Don Valley a few minutes earlier.

An outing two weeks ago had bad timing as I was late making my way through the snow into the valley and caught only the last car and EOT device disappearing over the bridge.  After hanging around a bit I headed up the valley walls only to hear another westbound unit crossing the trestle bridge.  Out of position to vid I got back in time to see a lengthy crude consist which I had not seen while hanging out in Summerhill.

Last Sunday, February 17, with sunny skies and fresh fluffy white stuff down it was back to the trestle bridge and try for the mixed consist.  Sticky snow on ice is pretty good to run on but light cold snow over ice is tough slippery going.  I got to the bridge just a shade to late to catch the power units on a surprise eastbound mixed slowly crossing on the north track.  Within a couple of minutes, with the e/b in motion, a trio of engines appeared westbound on the south track in bright sun and towing two boxcars and 404 axles worth of crude tankers.  Likely headed stateside (train CP 605 perhaps?) with two CP SDs and a DME SD sandwiched between.

This is shortened to save bandwidth but it's 3 locos, 2 boxes and 101 crude tankers. The lead is SD60 CP 6245 followed by SD40-3 DME 6068 and SD40-2 CP 5941.

Edit: It was train 609 as caught in this vid by SD402F:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hls8u9TXZvk

Now in HD, with a CP pull/push consist as my first HD catch.

Upgrading to HD for my videos as Santa put a Sony CX250 under the tree with my name on it.  After poking around with it in the house for a couple of days, I took it along with me on the trails, after a decent little 8 inches of snow came down late on Boxing Day.  The trails are nicely runable with good packing snow down.  With shorts on I did get a couple of "Aren't you cold?" questions coming my way with -6C temps.  The cool air feels nice on the legs when your pushing through the snow as it burns calories a whole lot quicker than flat dry stuff.  I managed all of last year with shorts although it really didn't have any of the really nasty cold days we can get up here.

Bala was quiet but the CP rail lines that comprise the Belleville and North Toronto subdivisions as well as Leaside Yard are always active.  After making my way through the snowy trails to the Bayview Avenue I waited near the CP rail bridge over Bayview to see what might come my way.  It never takes long and from the west came a consist of 115 tankers, two auxiliary cars and a pair of ES44ACs (8737 and 8784) leading .  This one was unusual with an AC400CW unit 9585 pushing from behind for assistive power.  The sound of the AC4400CW is quite distinct from it's ES44AC cousin, you hear it coming through near the end of the video.

Some Leaside Yard action

Since I haven't had much opportunity to be catching anything new I figured I'd upload some clips I gathered of a lengthy CP consist doing some shunting in Leaside yard.  I was passing through an open area in Crother's Woods just off the Bala line and heard some action high above in Leaside.  With the trees bare you can see quite a bit of the western portion of the yard from the valley.

It started with 6 assorted CP power units coming into view, given away by the sheer noise of these units even this far down the valley.  It stops to wait as a shorter CP unit speeds by westbound on the southern track, then proceeds down the North Toronto Subdivision in prep to drop off a set of hoppers in the yard.  The consist was pretty mixed with some covered vehicle carriers, assorted tankers, the hoppers, some engineering and MOW units, and at the very back a GO unit probably used as a makeshift caboose for housing maintenance crews.

JayJr2007 grabbed some footage of a GO unit at the end of a CP freight consist in Parry Sound on November 29, likely the same unit, and again it appears in Lambton Yard on December 2 in my clip of the CP Holiday Train.

Lots of noise in this one as the cars rattle about while being positioned in Leaside.  I wasn't going to get any power unit numbers unless I was carrying binoculars with me but it looked like an interesting assortment.

After seeing the initial action from the valley,I scooted up to the crossing at Bayview to get a little closer and better sound.  After about 20 minutes or so it was getting fairly chilly standing on the hill in shorts and a couple of shirts so it was time to get moving again.  Back in the trails of Crother's Woods I caught the end of the consist with the GO unit heading west and the hoppers left behind in Leaside.

Canadian Pacific Holiday Train at Lambton Yard, Toronto

Some shots of the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train as it makes it's December 1, 2012 stop in Toronto at the CP Lambton Yards off Runnymede Avenue.  Lots of people on hand for the visit, many of them casuals who just happened to see either the crowd or the train and wandered up.  Also a chance to get decently close to some action in the yard as work went on in the background.

Prior to arrival, a group of engines sit idling to the west.  The Holiday Train will arrive on a track to the right of these units.  Yes, that's a GO train car.  I saw it yesteday attached to a consist being shunted in Leaside Yard and headed off west, I guess to here.

 After arrival, the train backs up to the near tracks.

 

 

Lights, lights and more lights:

 

 

 

 

The band entertains the crowd:

 



Some inventive aligning of the yard work light over the tree adorning 9815:

 

 

The show comes to a close. Lights on and the 2012 Canadian Pacific Holiday Train...backs out of Lambdon Yard:

 

Work goes on as a pair of power units are shunting stock in the yard:

 

Catch of the Day - Aug 19

Had to assemble the video for this post and only got to it today.

Up early and headed up the trail to a unique viewing perch high over the Bala line near Northline Drive.  Catching the ONR Northlander northbound.  Not sure which unit was leading, usually it's 1800 for this Sunday run.

After that, scooted over to Wicksteed Avenue to catch CPR units 8807 and 8621 absolutely flying through the level crossing westbound on the Belleville sub.

When shooting at a double track, always stay clear of the open track as you cannot hear anything coming up behind you.  I stayed in line with the barrier for safety.

I later hooked the trails through Crother's Woods up to Pottery Road to see if anything else may chance by on Bala, and a brief stop to peek at the Don Branch rails .  At the northern end, the Don Branch is pretty grown over with fallen trees and other debris scattered around the tracks.  Who knows if Metrolinx will ever really use this section of the line, it would certainly need some extensive cleaning up.  I returned via Crother's Woods on the path closest to the ROW, but nothing was happening on the return trip.  Long run day, 12 or 13 miles of mostly trail.

Ghosts of Raillines Past - Leaside Spur

Last Saturday it was the still very much alive CN GECO branch line that I explored. This Saturday was spent on the converted rails-to-trails line once known as the Leaside Spur that extends from just north of Eglinton Avenue to it's former junction with CN's Bala Subivision a bit south of York Mills. This connection linked the Bala with CP's Belleville Subdivision into the Leaside Yard. Abandoned for many years, the land was sold to the city, the rails were lifted and replaced with a walking trail. This spring, most of it was cleared and paved over, all the way from the southern tip to Bond Park Avenue. North of Bond Park is a fairly new gravel layer with a heavy amount of overgrowth of vines and summer flora. The northern and southern most points are blocked by ROW fencing to the respective active rail lines. At the north end a casual path to a parking lot grants access to the trail while the south end just seems a dead end.

It took a little more than a half hour to reach Eglinton at Leslie through ET Seton Park. Google maps showed the closest entry point and Overland and a peruse of the properties while running echoed that find. At Overland, a center fenced circular section on the paved trail has a short pair of track rails embedded in concrete as a testimony to the history of the trail. The asphalt on the path still had that new car smell.


I headed south to see if there were any other useable entry points all the while looking for evidence of the rail line itself. About half way on the south leg, railway ties leading towards a short siding by a Canadian Tire warehouse is all I could find for evidence of railbed.

At the southern end, you can spot the ties for the connection to the CP line just beyond the rocks blocking the entry, but no rails over the ROW fencing.

No whistling on the trail, please.

Heading back north I found a no-whistle sign on the east side of the pathway. I assume blaring horn blasts were out of the question as well, given the close proximity of residential housing beside the line.

Further north, the trail crosses Lawrence Avenue with a tidy set of signals for pedestrians and bikes. The trail adheres tight to the rail bed in width, flatness and straightness, there's no mistaking that this used to be a railline.




At Bond Avenue, you find the paved portion of the trail ends with a dirt path up to a 100 year old railway bridge, complete with ROW fencing and railway ties. Apparently there's much talk of what to do with this bridge, some think it should be removed for easier access to the park while others feel it's of sufficient historical significance to keep. It is the only real remanant of the earliest history for this spur with it's original concrete struture and ties. The ROW fencing on the south east part makes you believe this is an active line as it blocks access to the bridge, yet the bridge surface is clearly pedestrian in nature, covered in pressure-treated planks.

North of Bond is coarse gravel, probably laid in preparation for more asphalt. It's heavily overgrown and I weave my way around vines and summer flowers as a follow onward. Baseball bats ring out from the Bond Park diamonds immediately to the east.

At the north end, a very worn looking flanger sign sits just outside of the ROW fence, the white dots are pretty well rusted away, but it's the last remnant of the railline that once ran through this section.

Over the fence, the rails of the Bala line head north under the bridge at York Mills and south along Bond Park.








I noticed that the track signals to the north were red. I took the short informal entrance on the west side into a parking lot behind a church and headed to York Mills. Shortly after I arrived, a CN work truck on the rails stopped at a switch just north of Y/M and did a short inspection. This was the only activity I'd see this day.

This was over an hour into the run. It was again getting hot out, so I headed back down the pathway to Overland, back into the valley and home for another Saturday 3 hour outing (2 hours of running and one of exploring).

Running and Railfanning

Railfan: A railfan or rail buff, railway enthusiast or railway buff, or trainspotter or gricer, is a person interested in a recreational capacity in rail transport.

Runner (running): Running is a means of terrestrial locomotion allowing humans and other animals to move rapidly on foot. It is simply defined in athletics terms as a gait in which at regular points during the running cycle both feet are off the ground.

I am a runner with a liking for trains. Armed with a Sony SX-63 camcorder , I run the roads and trails in and around the Don Valley in Toronto. Welcome to my new blog!