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Caption: Do all good things have to come to an end? About 2 weeks ago, I got word that CN was looking to abolish CN A435 (Toronto to London). With that information, I decided to go for it on the last Saturday it was supposedly running. CN 435 has had a very interesting history, originally running Toronto-Windsor. Of course, for a long time, it went east out of Toronto and took the Bala and Oakville subs to Aldershot. This ended in 2012 and it was routed along the Halton for the next 9 years. I have great memories of 435 "always taking the cool stuff" throughout 2018 and 2019. Now that its been 6 days since it last run (a week ago today), I think that its safer to say that it's gone for at least the short term.
And while the 435 running on Saturday was completely generic power and a shorter then normal train, it was nice to see it one more time.
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435 was one of my favorite trains to operate. Although i was a Toronto freight pool engineer, every once in awhile i would get the call to take the train to London. It was a busy train to work,especially when we ran downtown to set off at Oakville, then off to Aldershot,Brantford and sometimes Paris. My most memorable trip was one summer Friday when we were running late for operation via downtown. I told the chief dispatcher we should run via the Halton Sub due to the time,but was overruled. I am sure he regretted the decision. As my train was passing through Mimico East 7 cars derailed just east of the station. Mimico East had 3 main tracks, plus the GO transit lead to Willowbrook and 2 VIA tracks. The derailment blocked 4 of the 5 tracks (only 1 VIA track open)
Needless to say it caused the most cancelled and disruptive operation in GO history!
One of the good things about the event recorder is that it can exonerate you if you did nothing wrong. The download was sent right to EHH’s office.
A track defect was the cause of the derailment!!
435 was always an adventure
Isaac, thank you for the very nice picture of 435, good colour and composition, and interesting commentary. When 435 ran downtown on the Bala, I often used to park at Oriole GO and watch it go by – ngineered4u, that would be me giving a highball on the platform as you rolled by. Watching 435 snake around Union Station was fun, and I have one picture somewhere of 435 picking up speed as it passes VIA’s TMC west bound, a bit west of where you had your derailment. Well remember that event because it got a lot of TV and press over the resulting afternoon GO rush hour cancellations and passenger overcrowding at Union Station. Thanks for posting.
Great story! It seems like 435 was regularly a memorable train, even in the few short years when I had the privilege of shooting it.