Caption: Early dawn begins to hit the nose of CN 2341 as it idles away just short of the Port Robinson West interlocking with CN 422. At the head end, 331's death bed lies in the consist (empty Vinyl Chloride tankers). From past experiences at Port Robinson, including many very early morning trips go out of Port Robinson Yard and almost half way to Thorold Stone Road was quite common. I never bothered to stay out past 6am though as yard operations died until around 9am when Port Robinson became a barrage of granny drivers that like to drive 20 below the limit. I've even been screamed at multiple times to slow down in the downtown area while driving the speed limit (both were people standing almost in the middle of the road). As of very recently though, CN 422 has left Port Robinson shortly after 0600 on several occasions, where as before a 0900 departure was the earliest you'd see. This new scheduled time or whatever it may be is good for me as I don't have to deal with the slow knuckleheads in the area who frequently tap their brakes for invisible cars, or the crazy locals standing in the middle of the road screaming at me. However, another advantage appears to be the lighting, which was quite mellow yet not the drabby overcast kind of mellow. The sky made short work of that as it was completely overcast only a few minutes later.

422 would throttle up about a half hour after I left. As it had consistently been so recently, 422 was about 11000 feet, however dozens of 89 foot autoracks, 89 foot flat cars and 86 autoparts cars meant only 140 cars were needed to make up that length.

As for this particular interlocking, like many others on the Stamford Sub, it is a wye which leads to other subdivisions. The track to the right goes to the CN Thorold Spur. This wye is mostly utilized at night it seems. Oh, and the Geep yard power that used to be at Port Rob, I haven't seen them in months. All the six axle units have been doing all the switch grinding work it seems. The rails in the foreground show relatively clear signs of what appears to be wheel slip. Well, considering this is a takeoff point for 150 car behemoths, I guess that's not a surprise.