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Caption: This was one of my early favourite locals, after loosing the MLW’s I turned my attention to the rebuilt GP9’s. When CP stopped running locals out of Guelph Junction, most traffic destined to the junction was brought from West Toronto. Typical power back then was a pair of GP9U’s, which usually arrived at Guelph Junction around mid morning. Unfortunately a big downturn in the economy in the second half of the he 2000’s would end this train for good and today the switch off the main at the east end of the junction has been removed. This day the local was running late, arriving in the mid afternoon with the empty “sprint” frame train hot on its block. Lead unit 8228 somehow was positioned long hood forward fir the trip and I’m sure the crew were not all that happy. Not long after 8228 was reassigned to the former D&H and spend most of its remaining years there until its retirement.
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I have shots of the “stone train” as it was called until about 2005.
The east switches at Guelph Junction were removed to save $$ as GJR does not need them.
The last CP trains to go into the yard were in 2016, after a derailment that dug up some of the former GO yard by CP they were forbidden to enter the property and they drew lines in the sand where each railway is to go. Thus the switches were removed from the east end.
I used to see the Pickup in at GJ with big SD’s going around the wye. Crews seemed to like it (perhaps Jeff Willsie was on it?)
Yes I do remember the “stone train” name. It had slipped my mind. It’s interesting that CP doesn’t use any rebuilt SD40’s on H88 considering the size of the train somedays as two would be the same HP as three GP38’s. Maybe some tracked somewhere like maybe Ayr restricts this.