Canadian Railroads > The West End Shunter

The Burnside Industrial Park in Dartmouth, NS still has a number of rail customers.  Although there aren't as many as there were 40 years ago, new ones have been known to start up from time to time, and there is still a day's work there for a crew every weekday.  When the eastern end of the the Dartmouth Sub was Rule 105 territory (essentially yard limits), the job that worked it had no number, and was known to the crews as the "West End Shunter".  Eventually, OCS was extended closer to Dartmouth Yard (about mile 12), and the train that worked Burnside needed a clearance to get there, and Local 503 came into being.

Here are a couple views from September 24, 2000 of GP9RM 7076 and ratty GP38-2 4724 working train 503, first coming off the "D" spur from the team track with some dimensional loads, and then on the "A" spur, which was home to a building supply wholesaler and a scrap dealer.  In the 20 years since these pictures were taken, not too much has changed, although GP9s are getting rarer (7076 went to Indiana Boxcar in 2013) and 4724 still needs new paint.

GTD

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I like how some British terms like "shunter"  have survived in Atlantic Canada.

eminence_grise Wrote:
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> I like how some British terms like "shunter" 
> have survived in Atlantic Canada.

I'm not sure the exact reason for that.  "Van" was certainly ubiquitous, not just on CP, but CN too.  The railways were built by imported talent from Great Britain (more specifically, Scotland), so it's only natural that the lingo would be imported too.  Perhaps being relatively far away from American influence here (compared to southern Ontario and Quebec), meant that the British terms persisted.

GTD