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General railway discussions

crs1026 said:
^That van is in maintenance of way service rather than train service.

Where cabeese are still used these days, it’s mostly to provide a “shoving platform” - a safer option for workers protecting a backup move - so they don’t have to hang off the side of a freight car while the train backs up. Often the doors to the car are welded shut, so there is no access to the interior.

I don’t know what this particular van was doing in your shot, but it’s spring, and the MOW forces are on the job.

- Paul
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Refer to my profile banner to see one van that had a generator and storage inside of it. It also has a working big radio and a table and chairs for crews to eat.
 
Allandale25 said:
https://www.facebook.com/418840911523773/posts/7424503440957450
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Good to see a passenger coach being restored and preserved. My preference would be to go back to the original olive green, black and gold colour scheme but I understand their thinking that the (ugly IMHO) black and white colour scheme is underrepresented (likely because few new coaches were built during that era). It isn't clear if they will be restoring it to its original Super Continental coach configuration or its 1965 rebuilt Café/Snack bar configuration, since that is when they repainted it black and white.
 
roger1818 said:
Good to see a passenger coach being restored and preserved. My preference would be to go back to the original olive green, black and gold colour scheme but I understand their thinking that the (ugly IMHO) black and white colour scheme is underrepresented (likely because few new coaches were built during that era). It isn't clear if they will be restoring it to its original Super Continental coach configuration or its 1965 rebuilt Café/Snack bar configuration, since that is when they repainted it black and white.
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The black and grey (not white) scheme is underrepresented because a lot of historical societies are run by people who were alive when the earlier scheme was still around, and therefore fetishize it (that term is a bit unfair, I'll admit - but not far off of the mark either) - and not the following scheme that greatly outlived it in service.

There was a famous conversation held many years ago between two people at one of the bigger museums east of Toronto regarding a loco painted in the CNR 1954 passenger scheme (colloquially known as the black, green and gold scheme). The gist of it was that "It's my locomotive, so I'm going to paint it how _I_ want!" Sadly, this attitude permeates a lot of the railway historical scene.

Thankfully any given paint scheme is just a (necessary) coating on a railcar and can be painted over in the future should (or when) the need arise.

Dan
 
smallspy said:
The black and grey (not white) scheme is underrepresented because a lot of historical societies are run by people who were alive when the earlier scheme was still around, and therefore fetishize it (that term is a bit unfair, I'll admit - but not far off of the mark either) - and not the following scheme that greatly outlived it in service.
Click to expand...

There is a knee jerk tendency for heritage folks (railway or otherwise) to conserve things in the “as-delivered“ state. There’s no law that says this has to be the case, but I can’t fault curators who try to turn the wayback dial all the way over, assuming they do it well.

Restoring a CN PS coach to its mid-career status is especially interesting because it requires reversing the VIA-era interior modifications. That may imply some interesting colour combinations. I’m looking forward to the end product.

But hey, if the rail enthusiast community had nothing trivial to argue about, how would they cope?

- Paul
 
Allandale25 said:
Brief mention of shipping by rail in this article.

CBC News: First Canadian rare earth mine starts shipping concentrate from N.W.T.
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Some high points paraphrased from the article:

The deposit was discovered in 1983, and the N.W.T.'s environmental regulator approved a plan a decade ago involving extensive water use with large tailings ponds that had significant environmental impacts. The new mine however operates using an x-ray separation process that requires no water.

The produced concentrate is barged down Great Slave Lake to Hay River, where it is then taken by rail to Saskatoon for further refinement. The Nechalacho mine hopes to produce 25,000 tonnes of concentrate per year by 2025.

In addition to freeing the green power and electronics industries from China's stranglehold on rare earth mineral production, the Dene First Nation has been contracted to perform the actual mining. The mine's owner hopes to work out an equity share for the area's Indigenous groups.
 
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dowlingm said:
“the railway has lacked stable business from a steady commodity since the 2015 dissolution of the Canadian Wheat Board.”

Huh. Wonder who was in government back then.
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2015 isn't quite accurate. They lost all their marketing board powers in 2012, and became just another grain company.

April 2015 was the sale of a majority of the (crown corporation?) to a Saudi/US group. It still exists as part of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G3_Canada, with the majority of the shares owned by Bunge (traded on the NYSE).
 
Good to hear. I had heard, perhaps on here, that they had to rebuild the transfer shed of the mill.

I noticed that another thread on the 'Havelock Yard' YT channel has some interesting images of the before-during-after of last weekend's storm.
 
^ the swing bridge is on the former CN line. The swing bridge on the CP Havelock Sub still works.

The video mentions the last train to use the spur.
 
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