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Caption: It's no secret that CP's Belleville Subdivision has gotten significantly quieter over the last decade or two. I tend not to visit it for that reason, but whenever I ride my bike down to the CN Kingston Subdivision, I'll inevitably cross the Belleville Sub at Cochrane Street here in Whitby. When I cross the bridge I'll check if the signals at either end of the siding are lit, which they rarely are, but on very rare occasion they will be! This was one of those times, I had just made it to the bridge and I noticed the signal at Whitby West was red indicating a train was occupying the track just beyond it. I waited a few moments, and before long I saw the headlights come around the bend. The train passed by at a particularly slow pace, eventually stopping somewhere between the Whitby siding and the Oshawa siding before continuing on its way about 10 minutes later. Clean AC44 rebuild 8154 heavily contrasts with 9360, which I presume had recently been used in coal service. A few cars back, there's a dimensional load in the form of one Bombardier Flexity streetcar.
This was the same week as some particularly bad wildfires on the west coast. The smoke had made its way here in the upper atmosphere, creating a haze in the sky and somewhat muting the brightness of the sun. This is easily my favourite weather conditions for photography, as it maintains the light while reducing any harsh reflections from glass or metallic surfaces. All the while, the colours of the trees were starting to noticeably change in some areas which significantly brightened the colour palette of the landscape. A very unique day to be out with my camera, that's for sure!
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@Adam. Is there as reason the Belleville Sub is less busy? I thought this was CP’s mainline to the east coast?
Indeed it is CP’s main artery to the east, which makes the state of this subdivision even more perplexing. There are a few different factors that likely contributed to it, though the effects are staggering nonetheless. I wasn’t old enough to pay much attention, but I’ve heard from friends that there used to be 15+ trains in daylight on the Belleville Sub per day. We’re now down to three daily runs in daylight: 118 from Edmonton, 113 from Montreal, and 142 from Chicago in addition to their nightly return trips and some seasonal grain and ethanol runs. I think a big part of it is that unit trains were combined to the point that we often see containers, manifest, and autos on the same train now. That eliminated at least a couple dedicated manifest trains, probably some others too.
@Adam. Thanks for the information. Its appreciated. I don’t follow CP’s trains that much as I am more a CN fan
. I am, however lucky enough to have CP’s Belleville Sub running right behind my house where it leaves Toronto Yard at Neilsons and see all these trains you are talking about. It definitely seems less busy. I can understand consolidation from an efficiency point of view but I figured that since CP got back its access to the east coast that traffic would be much more frequent.
No problem! I’m certainly more of a CN fan myself, the relatively busy Kingston Subdivision helps with that. Unfortunately, whether we’re getting more CP trains from the CMQ acquisition is yet to be seen. I get the feeling that it’ll be slow to start, but between the new deals with Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk there should at least be some higher volumes of freight. Supposedly, there’s a Maersk test ship that will arrive in Saint John some time this weekend. I’ll remain cautiously optimistic.