One last Sunday morning with the Northlander

It's Sunday morning, September 23, 2012.  I'm up and off to a perch high above the East Don River on the off-road biking trails just west of Northline Road in East York.  I was hoping this video could be shot later in the fall when the trees were ablaze in red and gold, and catch the orange and blue colours of Ontario Northland's Northlander as it winds it's way through the Don Valley and northwards on it's run to Cochrane.

However, this is the last Sunday this train will make this trek, the video couldn't wait.  It will still be running for the next 5 days but I'm unlikely to find any time.

It's a chilly morning and I was a bit late getting started.  It took me 25 minutes to reach here, normally it's a 30 minute run.  I made it with seconds to spare as I could hear the familiar bell of the GP38-2 just beyond the bend as I arrived.  In the original footage I'm still catching my breath during the first few seconds and quickly adjusting for position.

It's a slow incline along the edge of the golf course, listen in as power unit #1800 has to crank it up once it crosses the bridge.  The wind was kind enough to abate as the train made it's way past, picking up as it disappeared to the north.

A Face Full of Train

Scooted down to Pottery Road to catch the ONR Northlander, as it's days are coming to an end.  Used the Nikon today to try for a few good snaps.  Would have been better had I realized the white balance was set to incandescent.  Post processed it get the colours decent anyway.

Next Sunday is it's last Sunday run.  I have a week to decide where to shoot from.  I have one Tuesday morning I can try as well depending on timing.

Saved the running for later in the day, at the Terry Fox Run (Wilket Creek), 3 1/2 miles to the venue, run 10k (up paced, not race effort), and 3 1/2 miles back for 13ish miles. Added a bit to make up for their short 10k loop as I wanted at least 13 today.

Another VIA Canadian vid

I was heading over to Bayview Avenue to check out the area around the CP overpass after reading a bit of this web page on rudy.ca about Old Pottery Road.  I wanted to see if the area had any good viewing locations for the CP Belleville sub section that crosses this location.  After crossing along Pottery Road and heading up Bayview Avenue, I heard the crossing signals at Pottery go off.  I turned to catch the VIA Canadian train #2, but too far up the hill to make it back down in time to get a closer view.  It's still an interesting viewpoint, higher up the hill, and you can watch it wind it's away beside lower Bayview on it's way to Union Station.

As for Old Pottery Road, the area is under construction by Hydro One as they have been working on the new towers just south of the CP Rails, and views shown in Rudy's page above are not accessible at this point.  I suspect that once completed, any good viewing access that existed to the CP line will no longer be there.

I'll have a Canadian, please

Last Tuesday, on a day off, I headed down the valley with intent to catch Via's Canadian on it's eastbound run from Vancouver.  Upon crossing under Don Mills, I'm sure I heard the distinctive metal on metal sound of a railcar on the Bala line.  My thought was that it might be the Canadian running a bit early, which is always a possibility.  Scheduled arrival in Washago is 6:30 AM, leaving some 3 hours to reach Union Station.  It doesn't take 3 hours to get from Washago to Toronto, so if there's no blocking line traffic and it makes Washago on time, it could easily arrive early.

At this location, the northbound ONR's Northlander is always bang on time, as it only 5 miles out from the station.  On that particular morning it was a few minutes late, which reinforced my thought that some southbound rail traffic did hold it up by a couple of minutes.  I'd also missed it by about a minute as I was late getting out the door and didn't quite get into position.

Having missed the Northlander, I arrived at a level crossing at the rec trails a bit north of Pottery Road.  It has a nice bridge over the Don River and a good viewing angle, an interesting location for catching some traffic.  It has a set of signals to give a little advanced warning of an oncoming train.  My hope was to catch the Canadian here as it crosses the bridge.  However, after waiting around for almost 2 hours, there was no sign of the Canadian that morning, nor any other traffic since the Northlander went through, and so I headed back through the trails and home.

...

Skip forward to today (Saturday), I got up considerably earlier and headed back to the same crossing.  No Northlander today as it doesn't run on Saturdays, but I was plenty early to not get caught off guard by an early arriving Via.

Bala can be mighty quiet on a Saturday morning. I could hear the occasional freight high up the valley along CP's Belleville sub.  It was a good hour in when the crossing lights came on and the bell started ringing.  Too bad the engine sound was from the south instead of the norh, so it wasn't the Canadian.  Instead a GO train on it's way to Richmond Hill came through, lead by MP40PH-3C unit #613.  The video's unfortunately rather shaky.  I leave steadyshot off for close trains as the steadyshot highly distorts the image for large / close moving objects.  It does give an idea of what this crossing looks like.

Figuring it would be 15 or more minutes before any southbound traffic could show up, given that it's all single tracked to north of York Mills Road, I jogged down to Pottery Road and back just to stay moving and keep my legs from tightening up.  Returning back, I waited around for another lengthy period.  It was well after 10 and I wasn't feeling much like waiting around too much more.  I decided to head back along the north trail as it stays near the track area and gives the occasional good viewing spot should something happen by.  I was less than a minute away when I could hear the crossing signals going off and high tailed it back, too late to catch any power unit so I was hoping to myself 'please just be a GO unit'.  Sure enough, the familiar green and white double-deckers were passing by S/B, so I  breathed a sigh of relief and returned back to the trail and headed north.

Now, the city is busy rebuilding the pedestrian walkways on the trail at Don Mills.  As a result, it takes some inventiveness to get around the fenced off construction areas.  For the crossing at Don Mills into ET Seton Park, you have to scale a somewhat steep rise to Don Mills Road, cross the roadway, then back onto the regular trail and to the bridge.  The footbridge is not part of the construction.  On it, I had to get on my hands and knees and peer low to see the railway signal to the south, which glowed green.  The signals are in crappy locations down here and are almost useless to figure out traffic conditions on the line for railfanning.

Standing on the bridge, it's about 15 minutes back home from there, it's quarter to 11 and I've been out since 7:30.  I'm standing and pondering whether to give a few minutes first and then leave, or leave now, when a very distinctive blast of a horn to the north beyond the bend in the rails made the decision for me.  Opened the Sony and positioned it, resting my hand against part of the bridge, and there it is...Via Canadian train #2, eastbound from Vancouver, rolling nice and easy through the valley.  A couple of extra blasts from it's horn (the first one caught me off guard and my hand jerked) echoed off the surrounding area.  #6429 leads #6411 in tandem, with 21 stainless steel Budd cars in tow (including 3 domed units).  Lots of passengers were seated in the domes taking in the final views of the valley as their trip was coming to an end.

 

I didn't get to catch it at the crossing I wanted, but this was pretty good substitute.  It really is a magnificent train to see, especially in the valley  I can only imagine what it's like to ride in.

 

Saturday morning fare - GO push power!

Part of my Saturday morning run along the Danforth.  Positioned under the Main Street overpass at Main GO Station, this westbound unit is being pushed by GO #642, an MP40PH-3C.  In the confines of the overpass, the power unit is super loud, especially as it's only about 6 feet away from me.

Ghosts of Raillines Past - The GECO / Kingston Extension

I saw a post somewhere that made mention of trains passing by the old Hy & Zel's in Warden Woods Mall and it sparked a memory for me at the same location. I remember sitting in the parking lot as a train headed south, my wife headed into the mall and I stayed back to watch a short consist go by.  I now recognise this rail line as part of the GECO branch line.  This section was built to form a loop for local switch traffic in nearby yards, connecting back to the very busy Kingston line.  It was closed in 1996 and Hy& Zel's, together with the rest of Warden Woods Mall, is now history.

A few weeks back I traced the existing active section of the GECO branch from Comstock to the Uxbridge sub.  This weekend I followed the path of the removed section to see what would remain 16 years later.

With Google maps, the rail bed can be traced fairly easily and the in between reclaimed sections are easy to interpolate from it's satellite view.  On foot, it's not so easy.  I cached the satellite view on my phone, grabbed the Sony cam too, just in case I met some traffic on the active lines, and went off towards the southern connection point.

I wound my way south to along the Danforth then east to Danforth Road.  Near Warden, I could hear a short unit, maybe engine(s) only, heading along the Kingston line but wasn't yet in position to catch it.  A bit later I found Milne Avenue near where the spur connected up with the Kingston line tracks.  An industrial building occupied the section just north of the switch and I wasn't about to enter to see if I could spot any remnant of the switch bed, with 'private property' sounds in abundance.

Edit: I found this image on Railpictures.ca from June, 1983. On the right side of the image is the building shown above. Note the railway crossing signal where the extension would have passed near the building. The first indication of the line is an asphalt patch on Milne Avenue left behind after rail removal.

At the north end of the patch is a short metal barrier added to prevent road traffic from accessing the road level bed.

The path of the rail bed is quite obvious here as it parallels Milne Avenue.  When you stand at this point you can see the path of the former railbed through the entire section.

It the crosses Mack Avenue with a similar patch in the asphalt.  At both former crossings can be seen the painted 'X' warnings on the roadway, this despite maybe 20+ years of wear.

North of Mack the patch guides the railbed into a dome shaped storage building.

With the path leading into closed industrial property, I was forced to head west and looped around to find the crossing point on Danforth Road.  Here, I had to resort to my cached map on my phone as finding the location was essentially impossible visually.  There was no sign of any former crossings, likely the roadway had since been resurfaced.  The only indication of the former line was the curvature of the property lines of the nearby buildings indicating they abutted to the right-of-way.

Maybe this road patch was part of the crossing, but I doubt it.  My maps indicated it was very close to the correct location but it didn`t seem to completely cross the road.  However, it`s possible that more patching simply fooled me.  Very difficult to say.  This lead to a roadway into a new housing development.  I followed the road until it was blocked and exited to some new but existing housing at Oates Drive

After running through a park north of Oates and passing a couple of standing water overflow ponds, I was now on Bell Estate Rd., a section thoroughly regraded and any hint of the former rail bed is long since removed.  Back to Warden I headed north.  A multi-business complex had an access area towards the back just south of a Hydro One station.  The area of the rail bed is somewhat obvious here, if you knew what you  were looking at.

It`s recessed along the back fences of some older existing housing of Santamonica Boulevard (yes, that`s what it`s called).  You can detect the climb from further south as you get here so the recessed grading was necessary for rail traffic.

I had no intent to wind my way behind the Hydro One station so instead headed back to Warden and then north to St. Clair Avenue.

At St. Clair, a trio of railway bridges cross overhead.

The western two bridges are for TTC line traffic.  The eastern bridge serviced this GECO branch section.

Climbing some stairs to Santamonica Blvd off St. Clair, you can cross along a field to track level and see the top of the bridge.

The rail ties are still in place, but no rail.  There still exists `no tresspassing' signs so it may still technically be trespassing to step onto the bridge, so I didn`t.  The TTC tracks into Warden Station are adjacent to the west side.

Back along the field, you can see more ties where the rails used to reside.  A TTC train is seen exiting Warden Station.

Southward, the rail bed disappears into the brush, heading on a downgrade.  I didn't venture down this way as the growth is pretty thick and leads back behind the Hydro One station.  I'd be interested to see how far the ties carry though without venturing too far, but not today.

While nothing large and mechanical may ever cross the GECO part of the bridge ever again, the other two bridges are perpetually active with TTC traffic, seen here as a TTC train crosses St. Clair.







I headed north through a park adjacent to the tracks, eventually returning to lower spur of the existing active GECO branch line extending from the Uxbridge subdivision.  This was seen in my previous GECO blog entry.

The immediate southern section has been regraded, making it impossible to locate any trace of the line.  A bit further south, adjacent to Pidgeon Street (clearly, they are running out of names for streets in T.O.), the line can be picked up through traces of right-of-way fencing and 'No Tresspassing' signage, the signs seemingly ludicrous given that nature has effectively reclaimed the entire area.

From Google maps, it does look traceable, although the late summer growth shown here makes naviging it next to impossible.  I may revisit this area sometime before next spring after the growth has died off and see what remains.

Of the whole spur section, the reminders of the track persist in the southern most section through the impact on the streets and housing.  The centre section is mostly reclaimed by industry and housing development.  In sections not regraded, the location of buildings and fencing hints at the CN ROW points.  Only in the nothern sections, especially around St. Clair Avenue, can the former railbed's infrastructure be seen and will likely be there for a very long time to come.

It was a fun run for a Saturday, about 90 minutes of running with an added hour for the shot taking.

Catching ONR 1800 pulling out of the station

While vacationing in Muskoka over the last week, we popped into Bracebridge for a little shopping and replenishing of supplies.  A quick stop into The Right Track to see what obscure model train items they may have in stock before they closed at five, we were greated by the blaring noise of a diesel air horn on the tracks nearby.

It turned out the be the southbound ONR Northlander running about 40 minutes late, lead by 1800, fortunate for me as we had just arrived.  I managed to just get my phone out and grab 4 quick shots as it rolled over the street out of the platform and on it's way.

This section of the line is part of the Newmarket Subdivision, a control box one street over shows mile marker 121.87.

It's a pretty cool location to catch rail traffic as it's so intimate with the surrounding streets and crosses a bridge over the Muskoka River.



As I wasn't expecting to be taking in any rail traffic on the excursion into town, I'd left the Sony cam behind. Too bad as I would have had some of that in-town air horn to present.

Next time...