Canadian Railroads > Chasing a train on foot

This past Saturday was a gorgeous (though very hot and humid) day in Montreal and in the afternoon I went to meet up with a friend and shoot CN 401 crossing the Lachine Canal in St-Henri. While we were waiting we heard on the scanner that the Pointe St-Charles Switcher was going to go to on the East Side Canal Bank Spur with 8 cars for Robin Hood Mill (the last client on the line). This was much more interesting, so off we went. The power consisted of GP9's CN 7083 & CN 7054, after they dropped off the 8 cars they came back light power. As this is a short spur and the crew has to flag a few crossings, I was able to chase it both ways on foot and get quite a number of shots of this interesting line. Even with the low speeds, some running was involved!

1-The train is westbound on CN's Montreal Sub, crossing over St-Ambroise Street. Soon the train will backup, curving behind the building at left.

2-The train is now eastbound along the spur, with the GP9's shoving. The Lachine Canal is at right and the train is approaching the busy Atwater Market

3-The train is now approaching the Charlevoix street crossing.

Michael Berry

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4, 5 & 6-The train is approaching and then entering the mill, seen at left in the first two photos.

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In these shots the train is now leaving the mill and heading back west along the canal.

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10-The crew is flagging the crossing at the Atwater Market.

11-Finally the power is back on the maine line. This is a going away shot of the power heading east (geographically somewhat south) as they cross the Lachine Canal. Here I ran into Ray Murphy who caught the end of this move.

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Nice !!! Very interesting!!!
I have a question for you ??? Did anybody catch that "Amtrak" inspection train that came into Montreal from St. Albans???

I was stuck in traffic on St-Ambroise street (Notre-Dame closed, nearby Atwater market Saturday afternoon, wedding party at a canal-side facility in this block, etc etc) when the gates went down and I first saw this train going west on the main line. I wasn't planning on stopping here, but then the gates went down again and this same train backed up onto the spur, so I knew it would come back shortly. So I found a parking space.

In the meantime, I caught 401 (Pictures #1, 2) and a Via train. Then the switcher's power came back to the main (Picture #3).

As Michael's pictures show, there's a lot of nice pedestrian traffic in that neighbourhood, too!

Ray

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Great chase coverage with interesting locations.
Thanks for posting this.
Bob

gaspeamtrak Wrote:
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> Nice !!! Very interesting!!!
> I have a question for you ??? Did anybody catch
> that "Amtrak" inspection train that came into
> Montreal from St. Albans???


Thanks.

Yes, a few shots from southern Quebec and Vermont are on railpictures.net.

Michael

MBerry

Almost every pictures could be a stand alone post but all together they show a train in an area where it looks like it is a bit out of place today. Was this a big industrial area at one time? I like how you framed the scene in picture with the Hydro-Québec pole on the left. I also liked how you framed picture 8 even more, cute scene!

Jim

tq-07fan Wrote:
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> MBerry
>
> Almost every pictures could be a stand alone post
> but all together they show a train in an area
> where it looks like it is a bit out of place
> today. Was this a big industrial area at one time?
> I like how you framed the scene in picture with
> the Hydro-Québec pole on the left. I also liked
> how you framed picture 8 even more, cute scene!
>
> Jim

Thanks. The Lachine Canal area may have been the most industrialized area in Canada at one point (maybe in the mid to late 1800's).

Check my older post which has links to some of this area in 1972.

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?15,4223864,4224168#msg-4224168

Michael

Good suite of photos.  I have to get up there sometime.

GREAT stuff..!! Thanks for posting.