A collection of rail encounters during my runs in and around the Greater Toronto Area, and wherever else I may be. I grew up near the 'coal banks' in Sydney, N.S. and often played on the coal train cars. I'm also an avid runner having logged over 20,000 miles. Here I put them both together.
Yesterday morning I ran over to the Danforth GO station to catch the morning commuter runs. On weekdays it's a mix of services, VIA, GO regular service, GO express runs. The regular services stop at each/most of the stations and the express units sail right on through.
The bridge grants a nice straight view along the westward tracks and you get a head-on type of shot of the oncoming eastbound units. I usually shoot from Main Street on the bridge over the station but thought I'd shoot at track level for this one.
VIA 50 / 52 is a connected pair of trains that head to Montreal and Ottawa. They depart together from Toronto and then separate in Belleville. It makes a few stops along the way but not at this station so it has time to pick up speed before blowing through on it's way toward it's first stop at Guildwood station.
On this morning 50 / 52 was a few minutes late. Waiting on a bench I caught sight of it's lights far down the track and positioned myself against a post, using it to help steady the camera. The train was on the center track of three and my view is straight down the middle, it's a quite warm morning and the heat is eminating from the surfaces as it approaches. Since I'm staying focused on the viewfinder and pointed westward, and it's noisy, I'm unaware of a GO express from Oshawa bearing down from the east on the track immediately to my left.
Trains, being rather large, displace a fair amount of air. One train moving in open air pushes it out and up and draws some along with it as it goes. Two trains in opposite directions and both moving quickly gives some additional dynamics to the whole process. Have it occur under a bridge adds jan extra element. Thus as I'm anchored to this post, VIA zips by on center track and at the same moment the express GO blows past me from behind. A brief but violent swirl of air throws the viewfinder of the camera shut, immediately terminating my recording. I quickly reopen the panel and feverishly hit 'record' until it started up again. It would have been a good clip had it all been a single shot. Unfortunately I ended up with two scenes and had to blend them together in editing, making the GO passing seem oddly brief.
In radio-free land, catches are luck and observation. Well, really just luck. And schedules. Commuter trains run on schedules you can usually look up. This works great near the source end but the destination end is considerably less reliable. Such is true of catching the Canadian as it rolls through the Don Valley on it's four day trip from the west coast. I've caught it by pure luck as late as 26 hours after it's scheduled arrival time.
I'm not big on long waits at crossings and locations, I give maybe 15-20 minutes if I have time, less if my run is more critical than catching some video. The Canadian is a frequent target since it's in my running territory and usually the only train rumbling through lower Bala on a Saturday morning. Since I don't know when it might arrive, I generally stop at a level trail crossing and look for signs that a train may have passed through, usually a clean path along the top of the rails free of the mud and dirt left behind by cyclists and foot traffic. The line signals help but only one is in a convenient spot, and it's for the south section so won't tell me if the north section is occupied by traffic.
Last Saturday I ran over to the valley and stopped at the bailey bridge crossing near Don Mills Road to check. The signal south was full green, unusual as it's normally yellow since it's not far before it feeds into the Union Station corridor. I decided to check the north signal which meant following some trail near the rails that offers a peak at one point. The signal glowed red, indicating a closed line north. Southbound train? Maybe, or maintenance work or something else. I ran a few hundred metres further to an open viewing point and prepped the camera just in case.
Within a minute came a heavy rumble form the north, and the sound of a ringing bell, definitely the Canadian. Passenger services through here always ring the warning bell. The Northlander when it would pass through had a quite loud and distinctive bell that could be heard well before it arrived. Sure enough, seconds later the Canadian pops into view, and on this morning had a decidedly sprite pace, unusual along this winding and aged section of Bala. 6435 lead, 6446 second, 19 Budds. The location granted a slightly lowered view and from the bright sunlit side. With the camera held well overhead to clear the ROW fencing, I grabbed my minute of video, another successful catch VIA's train #2 from Vancouver to Toronto.
After packing up the camera and heading back along the trail I rechecked the north signal...still red. I'm not sure how long the interval is before it switches status, or maybe there was something up line still holding it closed. Hard to tell. Maybe I just got lucky.
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.
early this morning. I'm surprised at how casual people consider railway tracks to be. I see them all the time crossing them, walking across bridges, walking along the tracks often in enclosed areas. When I'm out shooting images or vids of trains, sometimes I'm near some high speed areas. It doesn't take much time for a train doing 70 or so miles an hour to come up on you, especially if it's near a bend in the track as the sound doesn't always make the turn very well. I'm often caught flat footed trying to get my camera turned on when I finally realize a train is rounding the curve and very often I'll miss the shot, it's often just a matter of seconds. Even lower speed trains are deceptively fast, and often much quieter if they are powering down. An approaching GO train at the non-powered is already pretty quiet with the engine 10 cars away, and when powering down it's almost impossible to hear until it's right there. One hopes the operator is aware enough to blast the horn.
Speaking of the operators and engineers, I can't image being in that position where you see someone on the tracks ahead, you blast the emergency horn and thrown on the brakes but there's no way to stop in time and you have to be there witnessing this from the front row. It has to be the most stressful aspect of rail work there can be. It's no wonder the rail security and police are unforgiving when it comes to dealing with tresspassers and barrier crossers.
My main rule for shooting images and vids is to make sure they're taken from legal and safe positions and stress whenever I can that it's a big no-no to venture onto the tracks or poke around inside right-of-ways.
Take this guy for instance:
This is on a busy right-of-way, closed off all around by high ROW fencing, and yet there he is strolling along. I'm surprised nothing came around the bend at that time and I'd be really curious about how the operator would handle this one, particularly since this is a freight line with large, heavy and hard to stop trains. Hopefully it would have a non-tragic ending but you can be sure that many of the strikes are exactly like this, someone tresspassing on rail property and right-on-the-tracks at that.
What's more surprising, I see adults taking their kids over bridges and inside fencing onto tracks and I keep thinking they should know better than that.
A brief trip to Ottawa gave me a small bit of time to scout around the local trackage and see what was happening. Our hotel was a couple of kliks aways from the main VIA Rail station near Vanier Parkway of Tremblant Road. I had been down that area last year scoping out viewing locations. A local trail near the transit road offers good sitelines and for westbound traffic out of the station.
I timed it on Sunday morning to catch train #643 on exit. I had little time for neither running nor fanning so I had to keep my wait period down to a minimum. I arrived about 5 minutes before departure and had enough time to pick an angle and focus points. The trail pathway is however on the northerly side of the tracks which means you don't get a direct sunlit view on departure. Trains will get full sun once they round the bend and turn southward so the morning sun catches them full side, as seen in the Youtube thumbprint.
For this morning, 643 was lead by F40PH unit #6455. I believe the parked unit on the right is #6415 but hard to tell in the shot hear, the original 1080 vid reveals the numbers a bit better but I'm still not positive if it's 6415 or not.
The departure is quite slow. The train doesn't start to throttle up until it rounds the bend so it's a fairly quiet pass. Next time I'm in the area I'll venture down line a bit, there are some level crossings further south that should offer good views and units at higher power output.
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.
I have run the Boston Marathon. I unexpectedly qualified by running 3:27:30 at the Mississauga Marathon one fine spring day. The next April, my family and I drove down to beantown and stayed in a hotel in Brookline right on the marathon route and about 2 miles away from the finish line on Boylston.
We had perfect marathon weather that Patriot's Day, with cloudy skies, temperatures in mid 50's, light west breeze, it couldn't have been better running conditions and far removed from the blistering temperatures that prevailed that day a year earlier.
When are are one of the runners in Boston on marathon day, you are treated like royalty. People high five you, they nod as you pass, despite the thousands that will toe the line that day they find it amazing that you are there to run it. The day before, during and after, if you are a Boston Marathon runner it really is all about you, or so they make you feel.
The crowds persist over the entire 26.2 mile route. They never seem thinner than 3 rows deep anywhere. The screaming wall of women at Wellesley College can be heard a mile out and is the perfert mid-race pick-me-up. You do have to reign it in a tad to make sure you don't overcook at, since the college sits nearly right on the 13.1 mile marker.
You battle the hills in Newton and your quads seem cooked by 20 miles. I could only discern the infamous Heartbreak Hill by the signs in the area, as the whole region at this point seems like you're either climbing up or scampering down. As you make your way into Boston proper, you see the Citco sign looming into view, the crowds thicken and it gets impossibly louder. If the marathoners are tireless in their pursuit of the finish line, the crowds that scream every number and every name along the way must be twice so, because they start when the first wheelchair athlete passes by and don't stop until the last straggler has is through.
This year, somebody, or some group, decided to take advantage of the openess of the venue, and attack the spectators, the runners, the volunteers, the passers-by, the curious, the media, children, adults, unselective, unforgiving, inhuman. The projectiles that were blasted out of some hidden devices arbitrarily tore through one victim and another, and another, with deadly force, set with utter disregard for the who, all within an instant and without warning.
I don't even understand what this was an attack on. An 8 year old boy? 29 year old woman? Athletes from around the world? Just, people?
Runners will run. People will watch and cheer. This won't change. I haven't run a marathon since 2006 Boston. Maybe that part will change.
