Caption: The single track section on the CN Grimsby Sub between Jordan and Nelles Road is a mere 10 miles, so overtaking occurrences here really are quite rare. The waiting CN 331 most certainly had enough time to stay ahead of the noon hour GO train from Niagara Falls, so my guess is this had something to do with congestion around Hamilton.

The weekend GO trains to Niagara Falls are permanent year round now. While their stay is mostly certain, CN 331's stay was always in question, as was its counterpart 330. Since 2008, they have now been cancelled three times. Unless CN creates a different plan with the new container traffic, 330/331 will likely be back again when the MacMillan Yard hump gets busy again.

The rare Jordan overtake will be even harder to accomplish with 331 gone, though this does open up more of a possibility that it will occur in better evening light come spring. Extra westbounds such as X422 have a much higher tendency to run in the late afternoon, which may allow a meet with the Toronto bound Amtrak Maple Leaf or second last GO train on weekends. While I've heard of it happening twice, this is the first Jordan overtake I've seen railfanning in Niagara over my 12 years here. It was a welcome surprise when ATCS indicated that an overtake was certain to happen in the last block before Jordan, and sure enough, 331 had already rolled up to the signals minutes before GO arrived. Occurrences like this were fairly common when Jordan was a crew change point, but with trains starting and terminating at Port Robinson now rather than Buffalo, that rarely if ever happens anymore.