Canadian Railroads > Big Power on a Halifax Local

On March 24 of this year I was in town and able to shoot one of the Halifax locals from the Coburg Road overpass.  SD70M-2 8023 and a Dash-9 were hauling a string of containers that had arrived on Z120 that morning under Jubilee Rd. in the distance and towards Ocean Terminals in the south end of the city.  Two big road units seems like a lot of power for a transfer between two yards, but the trains can be quite lengthy and they have to deal with up and down grades of up to 1% in the cut, so the power isn't totally wasted.

GTD

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Nice catch. That is some tight clearance!
JB

Excellent, Geoff!

texchief1

3rdswitch Wrote:
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> That is some tight clearance!

The north track in the cut (the one remaining track) was undercut in the 1990s to allow double-stacks all the way to HOT.  The south track became the defacto "passenger" track, until it was removed about 10 years later.

About 10 years ago CN signed a deal with the federal government to relay the south track in order to move more containers out of the downtown by rail instead of truck (local customers).  It hasn't happened and seems to have been forgotten about.  I'm not sure if the feds didn't come through with the money, or CN just didn't do the work.  I don't think the proposal included increasing clearances.  The containers would only be moved a short distance on single level cars to an inland "port" where they would be loaded on trucks.

Meanwhile CN has been rebuilding the century-old bridges, after a lengthy legal battle with the City over who should cover the costs.  They apparently didn't feel it was worth it to redesign the bridges with something that wouldn't be a clearance problem later on.

GTD