Caption: Test of Time. I'm not sure if this is just me, but whenever I'm in Niagara, I can't shake the feeling that things are not what they once were. Sad to say, a few of the industrial icons are gone; John Deere in Dan City and the Thorold paper plant are a few I can think of off the top of my head. Although this may sound gloomy, some things have changed for the better, ie. the Welland Canal realignment. Times have changed, and the railway spaghetti bowl that is Niagara makes this obvious.

Despite all this change, I was surprised to learn that at the time of my photo above, the looming steel plant in the background, Atlas Steel, had just turned 100 years old (under multiple owners, mind you). For the great majority of that 100 years, they produced specialty steels for domestic and international markets up until the early 2000s when they closed for several years. The recent details seem to be a bit fuzzy, but after exchanging ownership a few more times it seems they started producing here again as evident by Ryan Gaynor's fantastic shot at this location.

This was not the first time this location had been covered here, as shown by my copy of Arnold Mooney's shot of the TH&B scrap line in 1988 which, taken 30 years and one month before my shot above (I was wondering which railfans footprints I was standing in when I took the shot...!). I even wished for Trillium to run their (hideous) MP-15 cab forward on a cloudy day, just so I could get my shot as close to Arnolds shot as possible.... Truth be told, the likeness between the two shots is purely accidental and it was only seeing Arnold's shot on the home page highlight reel that pushed me to submit it. This probably isn't the first and surely won't be the last time I cover one of your shots Arnold. You cover Niagara very well and I'm hoping to recreate some of those angles one day, but intentionally this time!