Caption: The rail lines on Vancouver Island have sadly been on a gradual decline. CNR pulled out first and CP’s lines slowly followed to the point that only VIA Rail used most of CP’s route. During my visit in 2003 only the VIA RDC’s were running and we only got one chance to photograph the run. Years of deferred maintenance along the line finally caught up with VIA, and while the passenger trains were popular and often full, they were discontinued a couple years later. Many years earlier CP passed its lines over to RailAmerica, and in this view the lack of revenue traffic in the yard was a sign that RA would soon give up the operation as well. Today limited freight service still survives under another operator borrowing a pair of GP9’s from the SRY. The two GP38’s in the yard this day were waiting the call to duty another day. The 3870 is somewhat unique as it was part of a group ordered by Penn Central with dual control stands. The cut out on the front of the cab denotes this. As for the Railink 2099 it should look familiar to anyone Railfaning Brantford and the Hagersville subdivision after Railink took over operations on the line in the late 1990’s. It is interesting in that it was built as a GP20 for the CB&Q. By the time Railink picked it up it was rebuilt into a GP9 and numbered 1751. After a few years it headed out west. I believe it was scrapped years ago.