[drum118]

June 16
Caught this in Birmingham and too bad they did not past me where I was train watching at grade and it came down the other line to the west of me. This is at the Intermodal Hub for Transit, Intercity Buses and Amtrak

For a city of over 200,000, they don't run bus service on Sunday

NS 4851 Rebuilt GE AC44C6M (Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia Railway (TAG) )

Did catch the Amtrak departing the station eastbound where I was rail fanning with the diamond floating up and down for all the rail equipment. The other track comes out of NS yard and goes north to connect with the northbound tracks that wye off the east-west mainline to the west that cannot be seen from this location. It also has a wye to this location and caught a few movement. Lots of UP power on trains going in both directions.

 

[Allandale25]

Historic train spotting shot on the 'High Line' at Union Station. I haven't come across many pictures of a train on these tracks. cc @crs1026 @ProjectEnd @smallspy

Railpictures.ca - Cameron Lonsdale Photo: I was quite surprised to see a CN freight train in the vicinity of Toronto Union Station. It was on one of the two tracks closest to the highway on the far south side of the complex, in August of 1985, led

Tens of thousands of great Canadian railway photographs, discussions, and much more. Click to view the image or register for your free account. Please share this if you like it.

www.railpictures.ca

 

[crs1026]

Historic train spotting shot on the 'High Line' at Union Station. I haven't come across many pictures of a train on these tracks. cc @crs1026 @ProjectEnd @smallspy

Railpictures.ca - Cameron Lonsdale Photo: I was quite surprised to see a CN freight train in the vicinity of Toronto Union Station. It was on one of the two tracks closest to the highway on the far south side of the complex, in August of 1985, led

Tens of thousands of great Canadian railway photographs, discussions, and much more. Click to view the image or register for your free account. Please share this if you like it.

www.railpictures.ca

This happened many times a day, once upon a time!

- Paul

 

[ProjectEnd]

Historic train spotting shot on the 'High Line' at Union Station. I haven't come across many pictures of a train on these tracks. cc @crs1026 @ProjectEnd @smallspy

Railpictures.ca - Cameron Lonsdale Photo: I was quite surprised to see a CN freight train in the vicinity of Toronto Union Station. It was on one of the two tracks closest to the highway on the far south side of the complex, in August of 1985, led

Tens of thousands of great Canadian railway photographs, discussions, and much more. Click to view the image or register for your free account. Please share this if you like it.

www.railpictures.ca

This happened many times a day, once upon a time!

- Paul

I still remember seeing some freight coming through the USRC in the early-mid 2000s. Certainly wasn't common then, but it was still happening.

 

[smallspy]

I still remember seeing some freight coming through the USRC in the early-mid 2000s. Certainly wasn't common then, but it was still happening.

Even into the mid-2000s freights through the USRC were common in the sense that they were scheduled and operated almost every single day, although certainly not at the same frequencies as 20 years previous.

For instance, there was a daily (except Tuesday, I think) MacMilan Yard-Aldershot train that ran via the USRC so that it could serve Oakville on its way through. And it was big enough that it frequently warranted 3 large 6-axle mainline units. It was scheduled to arrive at Cherry St around 2.30 in the afternoon.

Dan

 

[ProjectEnd]

Even into the mid-2000s freights through the USRC were common in the sense that they were scheduled and operated almost every single day, although certainly not at the same frequencies as 20 years previous.

For instance, there was a daily (except Tuesday, I think) MacMilan Yard-Aldershot train that ran via the USRC so that it could serve Oakville on its way through. And it was big enough that it frequently warranted 3 large 6-axle mainline units. It was scheduled to arrive at Cherry St around 2.30 in the afternoon.

Dan

Oh wow. So it would depart MacMillan, go east on York, south on Bala, west through USRC, then west on Oakville? That's almost as convoluted as the Canadian needing to circle the City clockwise on departure to maintain [general] unidirectionality!

 

[Bojaxs]

A co-worker of mine at CN insisted that CN still runs a train through the USRC corridor in the middle of the night when GO operations shut down. I didn't believe him. Can anyone confirm if this is true?

 

[smallspy]

Oh wow. So it would depart MacMillan, go east on York, south on Bala, west through USRC, then west on Oakville? That's almost as convoluted as the Canadian needing to circle the City clockwise on departure to maintain [general] unidirectionality!

That is correct. It was felt that this routing was better at keeping traffic flowing, as there were/are a bunch of eastbound freight trains - including one high-priorty intermodal train, #148 - due across the Halton at the same time.

This same traffic is still operated today, but instead is moved on different westbound manifest trains from MacMillan, and more frequent transfers from Aldershot and Oakville.

A co-worker of mine at CN insisted that CN still runs a train through the USRC corridor in the middle of the night when GO operations shut down. I didn't believe him. Can anyone confirm if this is true?

CN runs almost-nightly local switchers both east and west of Union Station. But nothing is currently scheduled to go across the whole corridor anymore.

Dan

 

[APTA-2048]

Plain Siemens Venture car spotted at the NRC.

 

[Allandale25]

 

[DSCToronto]

Even into the mid-2000s freights through the USRC were common in the sense that they were scheduled and operated almost every single day, although certainly not at the same frequencies as 20 years previous.

For instance, there was a daily (except Tuesday, I think) MacMilan Yard-Aldershot train that ran via the USRC so that it could serve Oakville on its way through. And it was big enough that it frequently warranted 3 large 6-axle mainline units. It was scheduled to arrive at Cherry St around 2.30 in the afternoon.

Dan

Yes. I used to walk around Corktown Common area in the afternoons quite often ca 15-20 years ago and some of these trains (all seemed to be going south, towards Union) were very long - and moved very slowly.

 

[innsertnamehere]

I recall the freights as well - I would have sworn I remembered seeing them into the 2010's even. At a minimum small runs to service the Portlands.

The Wilson yard was a freight yard until the mid 2000's so there was definitely a fair amount of freight movement until that conversion at least.

 

[drum118]

I had some videos of CN train going westbound at Union but are missing along with a number of other ones from youtube after they had a major failure like Flickr. I have a few videos where it show two different vidoes shot years apart as one video after the failure.. I still have those videos and it will require a lor of digging to find them with out a year to start with..

Shot this on August 06 2011 leaving the Portland at 3;10 am

Edit
I have a vidoe for Aug 6 2011 but not the same train

 

[crs1026]

The long freight train that people remember coming down the Don Valley was a CN manifest from Mac Yard that served the Ford plant in Oakville on its way west. The routing made sense because it avoided a backup move from Burlington/Aldershot to Oakville.
In an earlier decade, there was a westbound CN intermodal that avoided congestion at Mac Yard by taking the Kingston and Oakville Subs. It was distinctive as it usually had a few flat cars with aluminium ingots on the head end,
And of course, various roadswitcher assignments ran through the USRC at various times over the years.

- Paul