Canadian Railroads > CN on the ex EL

During Conrail's first year they beg, borrowed, or stole anything that another carrier could spare to help get them through the merger power crunch. A group on Canadian National units came south of the border for a while giving us a preview of the "wide cab" revolution that the US roads would see later on. The CN's would often be kept together as in these 3 photos from Akron,Ohio....

CN 9502 at Akron in October 1976 with a w/b on the former Erie Lackawanna. The cut has been made for the set of to the ex EL McCoy St yard- note the PC geep next to the PC open air bilevel and an EL switcher off the the left. With the exception of the Chessie tracks to the right, all other track and railroad buildings are now gone.

CN 9491 on CR train TV-98 has just cleared JO interlocking in downtown Akron and is heading east on the ex EL towards a crew change in Kent,Ohio. An M630 trails two GP40-2LW's.

CN 9496 takes the South St TBS crossovers from the "EL side" to the "PC side" with an w/b. Most traffic on the former EL didn't go west of this point after the merger. In about 20 miles this train will continue west on the former PRR Ft Wayne Line to Chicago.

Roger

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After the hurricane (Agnes?) damaged so much of the EL in the 1970's, briefly some of the EL traffic was diverted over the D&H and the CP across Quebec and Ontario.

Sadly, I have no pictures of my own of this event.

A friend was a trainman out of Smiths Falls ON. at the time. The EL sent dual control SD45's to Canada. The old engineer he was working with had never seen dual controls before and marveled at the novelty of it. My friend said, "Many things are automated on this engine, it will sound the whistle and ring the bell for you".

He was hidden from view behind the extra control stand, and had discovered that the bell and whistle valves worked on his side too. Every time the approached a highway crossing, the trainman would sound a beautiful 14L. It took much of the trip for the engineer to figure out it was his co-worker sounding the whistle.

Just one of the many exploits by "John boy" over the years.