Caption: Manse Valley is one of the few places in Scarborough that has relatively heavy industry. No doubt though, this has to be the most oddly located section, being close to beautiful Ontario lake front houses. Regardless, after the last GO train sways through the crossover at Durham Junction, 546 makes its way down here every night from Oshawa to switch the chemical plants in the area. Halltech and Chemtura are also regular customers. The switch for Henry Roofing is still in place, but I'm unaware of how often it gets serviced. AEP also gets serviced, which seems to turn out fertilizers in hoppers. All of those are on the north side of the Kingston Sub, which 546 would have serviced first. 546 then went to the Guildwood crossover, crossed to the south track and switched ends to lastly come back service Rohm & Haas on the south side. Shortly after I got there, 546 ripped over the Manse Road crossing and quickly grinded to a halt. 546 left some of its train on the main, and for the next 45 minutes switched Rohm & Haas. Knowing this is a chemical plant, and it was very dark at three in the morning, I was trying to look as much like a foamer as possible so the crew didn't call me in as a possible terrorist. It didn't take them long to figure out I was indeed just railfanning, and the engineer put on a few horn shows, completely disregarding the fact that several rows of houses were only about 200 meters away. The conductor eventually talked to me and told me the engineer was a foamer himself, and that he drives him nuts... (That's what foamers do). Besides my camera poorly focusing due to fog, this went surprisingly well. In this shot, 7058 is sitting on Copperfield Drive getting ready to pull out, and switch tracks to pick up some more cars. Soon afterwards, 546 got its 17 car train back together, and took off to return to Oshawa. To many passengers who take the Lakeshore East GO line everyday, it's quite obvious that when they pass through Manse Valley, that the siding tracks that split off are active, as you can clearly see the tankers at both Chemtura and Rohm & Haas. They never get to see the activity though, and it appears very few if any railfans have bothered to get pictures of 546 in this area. I will say though, in regards to railfanning in Toronto, I'd much rather see CN switch secluded spurs than watch GO trains all day. Only problem is you gotta be awake between 11pm-4am.
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Very moody. Nice.
546 used to run around 7am, making it so much easier to photograph. That said, you could never get shots like this, well done!
Dan, you’re rocking it with the night shots, man…great work!
Great night shot. I was the engineer on 546 when it ran in the daytime, along with its counterpart 548 that serviced Pickering and Whitby.
LOL..i know the engineer thats working on 546 and yes he is a “foamer”. Like me
Still “foaming”with 35 years on the job.
How did you shoot this? Was a tripod used, or just using the settings on the camera to do the work for you?
Thanks for the comments guys. In response to Heavy T, a tri-pod with a 2.5 second exposure. Aperture kind of did its own thing and went up to 7.1. In response to ngineered4u, he must be living the life on that job. He’s got the GECO branch all to himself. Must’ve been quite a job for you too. I guess the foamer railroaders do get the most interesting assignments after all.
Hey Daniel, yes those of us who love trains and get to work with them are lucky. Its not always a perfect job, but what is?
I am still working as an engineer but left roadswitchers behind for the big trains.
Keep taking those pictures and capturing all aspects of railroading!
Awesome shot Daniel. Love the sun in the fog.