Caption: Final curtain call for the Bobcaygeon Sub: Overgrown yard tracks and piles of removed rails reflected the dwindling importance of many low-traffic branchlines on the CP system in the 1980's, many of whose days were numbered. CP C424 4242 works an extra freight (likely the Lindsay Turn from Toronto) switching a few hoppers at the CN-CP interchange at Lindsay, Ontario at the end of the Bobcaygeon Subdivision in the Summer of 1987. The view here is looking north from Queen Street near the former station site, east of Lindsay Street North. CN had a short spur line, the Lindsay River Spur, running up from their main Campbellford Sub branchline along the Scugog River to get to the CP interchange (once part of a larger network of CN lines in the area, by this time also dwindling). CP's MLW C424, RS18u, and GMD GP35 roadswitcher units solo and in pairs were common 4-axle branchline power in the east at the time (the RS18 rebuilt program was cutting into the ranks of its unrebuilt 8700's, and CP didn't start its 8200-series roadswitcher GP9u rebuilds en-masse until 1988).

CP's Bobcaygeon Sub, originally constructed in the early 1900's, branched off the Havelock Sub at Dranoel and ran 18 miles north to Lindsay. It once continued north all the way to its namesake town Bobcaygeon at Mile 34, but that section north of Lindsay was abandoned in 1961. There was also a CP line running north-west from Lindsay to Port McNicoll via Orillia, but a chunk was abandoned in 1937 and the remaining portion became CP's Port McNicoll Sub (abandoned in sections between 1976 and 1992).

At this time there would only be a few more months of CP service for Lindsay, as the final portion of the Bobcaygeon Sub from Dranoel to Lindsay would be abandoned in November 1987. CN would pick up any remaining CP customers in Lindsay, but three years later CN would also leave town for good (abandoning the Campbellford Sub from Peterborough to Lindsay in June 1989, and the Uxbridge Sub north of Stouffville to Lindsay in December 1990).

Once a town full of branchlines reaching out in all directions, by the time the early 90's rolled around no train would call on Lindsay again.

Keith Hansen photo, Dan Dell'Unto slide collection.