Caption: Photo two - the first in this series is T99 northbound at Preston photographed 20 minutes earlier
The Grand River Railway was built to convey passengers and freight. A Grand River Transit bus, which is the eventual successor of the passenger carrying Motorcars that plied the double track line now waits for a southbound freight. The Waterloo sub is easily good for 100 freight cars a day, but soon may carry thousands of passengers a day. Not only does the Hagey job work three shifts per day, Wolverton to Hagey turns run 6 days a week in daytime, and sometimes at night to bring cars to this busy line - mostly for Toyota Cambridge assembly. This means two trains are on the line fairly often - under OCS control f.y.i.
Passengers you say? Waterloo Region is busy building the ION Streetcar route duplicating the efforts of the GRR (and the former Kitchener-Waterloo Railways Streetcar system) and if phase two happens as planned, this picture will change significantly in the next 10 years, ION is planned to use the CPR route to get down to Galt. Hence, in due time, the Grand River Railway may again become a busy freight and passenger carrying railway. What is certain though is ION will be on its own right of way, we'll just have to stay tuned to see how they plan to make this happen, assuming phase two even occurs.
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best plan for ION would be for CP to exit the Waterloo Sub north of Hagey (+ necessary headroom) and sell ROW to Region of Waterloo for ION use.
G&W would have to switch Triple M and CN destined Toyota traffic would need to be interchanged elsewhere, ie. Lambton in Toronto .. a lot of headaches could be avoided.
Ron, Agreed.
The region is asking triple metal to move (not compatible with block line rd urban developments) and still in negotiation.
then again, the region wanted to use the huron park spur and instead, its being relocated….
i suppose the asking price is too high
also the fergus spur / cp interchange in galt could be used also….
My understanding is cpr said no. ION has to make own plans on own right of way.
https://rapidtransit.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/stage2ION/resources/Stage-2-Preferred-Route-2019.pdf
Current plan is to use some of the former Hespeler Branch of the GRR though.