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Caption: "Steeltown". "The Hammer". For railroaders, these names bring to mind heavy, slow drags with cars of steel (gondolas, coil cars, flats) and other industrial cargo. Here we see 0800 Hamilton Yard assignment heading towards "the hole" (N&NW spur) with a sizable number of gons. Yesterday when I saw this job, they returned to Stuart Street with something like 40 cars and 5600 tons--no wonder they use two or three unit sets of old road power such as GP38-2 4705 (ex 5505)and 7241 (rebuilt for yard service from GP9 4311)! To see the same location in 1975, http://www.railpictures.ca/?attachment_id=47735 .
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This was a train for the steel centre at Parkdale Yard
Very nice ! It was cool to see that movement in morning light. Typically 555 takes those slabs directly to Parkdale daily around midnight. Based on observations, for the last few weeks they haven’t run a 555 on Friday and Saturday nights but 421 has been occasionally setting off generous amounts of traffic for Parkdale. Maybe the accumulation of slabs in the yard necessitated this atypical move by the yard job in lieu of 555.
There were two 555s last night, one of which went to Parkdale. I’ve been keeping close tabs on it lately to try and figure out if CN is picking up slab slack this winter (many will remember a chaotic winter on CP last year with the slabs for Aberdeen, which hasn’t repeated itself this year).
Not unheard of for the yard jobs to make the odd run out to the steel centre. Always enjoy it when they do.
Only places in town you’ll ever see slabs for are Parkdale and Aberdeen. See plate loads in the industrial area. CP interchanges plate loads to CN for Empire Steel. And both CP and CN take plate loads to Great Lakes Stevedoring for unloading for nearby Chapel Steel.
I remember when the mainline trains used to work Parkdale – around 2000′s. I mostly remember trains from Niagara to Toronto (TT Westbound on Grimsby sub) usually in the mid morning.
@jknott86: I did see what looked like a 555 in the morning. It set off at Stuart Street then took one cut of outbound cars from Friday’s yard jobs back to Aldershot. The rest of the outbound cars from Friday were lifted yesterday by what I think was an X422. I guess I missed that second 555. It appears CN’s made some operational changes lately in Hamilton. I’m always surprised how many slabs Dofasco brings in on a regular basis. I thought they had enough steelmaking capacity for their needs. Does CN always share this traffic with CP ? Regardless, it’s all quite fascinating to follow.
Nicely done John!
You can’t see where the tracks to right in the older photo were. Very nice John.
To the left I mean.