On a cold, damp, and windy October day in the wilderness north of North Bay with the last leaves of the year clinging to the trees, a six pack of GMD power guides a long and heavy 214 downhill from Tomiko and past the former location of Mulock Siding at Mile 18 on the Temagami Sub. Whats left of the siding exists as a stub track accessed from the north end further up the straightaway in the background and is still regularly used by work trains and engineering crews.
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The summer of 2017 saw CP gather their best equipment in the form of an A-A-B-A set of FP9s and a 17 car consist for a tour of the country in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Canada's confederation. Followed by a convoy of railfans, they left Toronto eastbound early on a sunny August morning. Between the high speeds on the Belleville Sub and the busy 401, it was a difficult chase. This ended up being the only really decent shot I came away with, and even this was a close one as it was only upon arrival at Nichols Road near Newtonville that it was discovered the deck of the old wooden bridge over the CP was gone. An awkward stumble down and back up the the sunny side of the foliage tangled embankment and a very short wait later and here we are.
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In a wintery freshwater scene among the ancient and rocky Laurentian Plateau, a 3 pack of GP40-2LWs guide another long and heavy 431 full of rerouted CP traffic through the town of Sturgeon Falls on their westward trip from North Bay to Sudbury. While the cold, dark water looks rather ominous here, in the summer months this bridge is a popular (but still very much illegal) place for locals to do some diving. The old stone abutments at left also once carried the original lanes of the Trans-Canada Highway.
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Continuing to look back to 2019, this was certainly a highlight at another personal favourite location. CP U55 aka "The Levack Turn" with a stellar leader has a heavy train of nickel ore in check as they hustle out of Levack for a quick trip down the Cartier Sub, bound for Clarabelle Mill on the outskirts of Sudbury where the ore will be collected and prepared for smelting by Vale.
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Looking in a southwesterly direction from Elm Street/Regional Road 35 in Greater Sudbury is this iconic view that anyone familiar with the area should recognize. The impressive Clarabelle Mill is the first point of processing for ores brought in from the various mines in the surrounding area. Clarabelle is also the name of the junction that serves as an access point to Vale property for CP and CN for interchange purposes. Out of view to the left runs trackage leading back to downtown Sudbury via CP's Nickel Spur and CN's Sudbury Spur, and to the right runs the spur connecting to Creighton Mine. In the upper left background is the yard serving the mill itself as well as trackage leading further in to Vale's sprawling Copper Cliff complex. The track with our subject heads under Elm St and branches off 2 ways, with one way leading to CP's Cartier Sub at Sprecher, and the other heading up to Frood Mine and the now shuttered Stobie Mine. This was for me perhaps the largest of several small victories 2019 brought to me. This was one shot I had always wanted to do from a young age but the opportunity just never materialized. Eventually, SD40-2s stopped becoming commonplace on Sudbury locals and my sense of urgency to pull it off evaporated. It became one of those shots that I figured I would get around to eventually when the time was right, but never did I think the chance would come to do it with a matching pair of 40s again.
In 2019, a steady stream of SD40-2s were coming back online after years in storage to be used on work trains. All I really knew was that this pair had arrived in Sudbury a couple of days prior with ballast empties for re-loading and that power from such trains sometimes ended up on the locals based here. On one of those chilly October days when you don't know if its going to snow, rain, or be sunny, I arrived at the CP yard and shop tracks in downtown Sudbury dark and early to find nothing. I took this as a good sign and headed west of out town. It wasn't long before I could hear train U57 switching on the radio and did a double take when seeing this perfect multimark pair (6055/6069) slowly rolling up out of Clarabelle Yard heading for Sprecher and onward to Levack. One questionable parking job later and I was hoofing it across the busy road to machine gun the shutter button for quick minute and then book it back out as it's hardly a safe spot to hang around. Had I been 5 minutes later I would have missed the move and would probably still be cursing it to this day. Such fortuitous circumstances can make or break this "hobby" (I've never thought that was an adequate word to describe this interest we have but that's a topic for another day) and they don't come often. Every time I look at this picture I'm reminded to be grateful for the times that things just work out alright.
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