CN Freight With GT And GO Deadhead Trains At Exhibition 11-27-10

On November 27th, I decided to go with a friend to Exhibition to railfan. His youtube channel is "Admydragon". It was my choice to go to Exhibition, and indeed it was a great decision, one I certainly don't regret.

We headed down to Union Station on the TTC Yonge subway and transferred to the 509 Harbourfront streetcar to Exhibition loop. We'd get there and go immediately to the south side platform, the closest platform to the TTC stop. Thanks to my friend for the decision, it probably saved some time for what would happen next. Once we got on the platform, we saw a light in the distance coming around the bend out of the Union Station Rail Corridor (USRC). Panicking, we got our camera equipment out as fast as we could. We quickly realized it was a freight, and was no doubt CN 435. It's the only mainline freight that uses all of the Oakville Subdivision, most notably the USRC. Thankfully it was moving slow because it had to go through some switches to get to the north track. My friend was the first to realize that it had a Grand Trunk locomotive on it, something that's quite rare, and definitely a treat.

CN 435 came through with CN C44-9W (I.C Reporting Mark) 2716, CN SD70I 5609 and GT GP38-2 4928. Not surprisingly it had a long train, almost half of the train consisting of empty autoracks bound for the Oakville Ford plant. A sneaky GO train came up behind us almost not to be noticed. This was no revenue service train, it was a deadhead. With CN 435 blocking it's way, it would have to wait for it to clear the block. The GO stopped right in the perfect spot. It could have gone closer to the signal, but it didn't. Perhaps the crew was being nice? After 435 cleared the block, it got under way. It had GO MP40PH-3C 631, 9 passenger cars and the last being the cabcar number 242. After it left, I noticed another go train coming out of the USRC. There'd be a meet between the two. Quite a treat it was. Two meets in under 10 minutes! This GO would also be a deadhead, bound for the Willowbrook GO yard at Mimico. It had GO cabcar 206, 9 passenger cars behind it, GO MP40PH-3C 645 and brand new MP40PH-3C 651. First time I had ever seen two GO MP40PH-3C's coupled together. Considering 651 is brand new, it's reliability is not trustworthy, and backup is always supplied. Usually though it's an F59PH for backup, not another MP40. After this one rounded the bend, we decided to go. Yes, we'd only been there for 10 minutes. My friend had another location for railfanning on plan though on the CP Galt Sub at Islington Avenue.

We decided to wait for the 29 Dufferin bus to go to Dufferin station on the Bloor-Danforth line, then take the subway to Islington. Although, that bus came just as we were leaving, and even when it came back, we weren't prepared to catch it. As we realized that the bus would come back, and we'd have to change bus stops. We weren't going to wait for the next bus, as it had already been 10 minutes. So we got on the 511 Bathurst streetcar to go to Bathurst station, again on the Bloor-Danforth line. When on the streetcar we had to abandon the railfanning at Islington Avenue as he found out he had to go home. It was off to Yonge station then, transferring to Bloor station above it on the Yonge line and go northbound, from there we headed home.

Saturday, November 27th, 2010