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Caption: The Kitchener-Waterloo ION LRT continues to march toward the start of service, upwards of two vehicles are testing on the line now at the same time and the expectations are that it will be fully up and running by December according to a recent report from the Region. Imagine walking through the University of Waterloo and finding this rolling down your Streetcar network, because that's exactly what happened on June 7 of this year. This was and still is the GEXR Waterloo spur, a once sleepy, 80lb rail, nothing's really changed since the 1950's branchline, but it has been transformed since ION construction began in late 2014. The Waterloo spur is now a double track, welded rail, electrified speedway for Streetcars. Freights share with the ION LRT right of way for 3 miles, but will be scheduled to run only at night, after 11 PM and before 5 AM (I believe) once operations kick into full gear. Freight Customers on the Waterloo spur include Commonwealth Plywood in Waterloo, Fairway Lumber in St. Jacobs, Sulco and Lanxess in Elmira and most of the traffic is for the latter two customers. No customers exist in the shared LRT portion. Freight service is Monday-Thursday and most often under the cover of darkness.
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Nice scene Steve. Soon to be part of history in November.
Well, not sure if you’ll be interested to hear this Mr Host but just in case you are… this spur just may be down by one less customer now. Me, Noe and a couple others are pretty doubtful that Commonwealth has had a single car since the CN takeover and even before that, pretty certain the last known car in there was somewhere prior to 2018 so… ya will be interesting to hear if CN ever services them at all or if their Spur is just kept for the occasion storage of MOW or Waterloo Central’s equipment. To me it sees that the longer that time passes, the less and less the already infrequently served customers get serviced just because overtime they find new ways to truck different materials for the differnt products which previously could only really be made by the stiff which came in through rail. A shame for us but I guess that’s just how buisness work now.
I think you just described railroading Graydon – see you are learning!
I don’t care about Commonwealth plywood, they rarely shipped cars and they would never sustain the line – without Chemtura and Sulco freight will end on that line entirely.
There’s a laundry list of customers who have given up due to CN all over the Guelph sub and their branches – new tariffs, new charges, new rates, smell ya later if you don’t like it. Just the way the world works. Freight railroads are not here for the public good, it’s just business, meaning, money. It either makes sense from a business perspective or you do something else.
It’s not a shame for us either, we’re just sidewalk observers, we have no skin in the game. We just photograph what happens, make sure to get your shots