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robmausser said:
Its a Toronto tradition: sell off railway ROW, build on it, create demand for transit through building on it, require subway tunnel built underground at billions of dollars for transit.
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Really? A Toronto tradition?

I can think of exactly one previous example where this could be the case, but it was about 4 blocks long and over 30 years before they built the subway where the ROW was.

Dan
 
With the exception only of the Canadian Northern line though Scarborough and North Oshawa (which Dan referred to), OBRY will represent the longest abandoned railway in the GTA.

And except for the CNoR, which was abandoned in the 1930s, every abandoned mainline railway in the GTA over the last 100 years (there are not very many!) ended up as a rail trail of some sort. (Except for a section of the CN Beeton Sub near Georgetown. Damn you Halton Hills!)
 
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ShonTron said:
With the exception only of the Canadian Northern line though Scarborough and North Oshawa (which Dan referred to), OBRY will represent the longest abandoned railway in the GTA.

And except for the CNoR, which was abandoned in the 1930s, every abandoned mainline railway in the GTA over the last 100 years (there are not very many!) ended up as a rail trail of some sort. (Except for a section of the CN Beeton Sub near Georgetown. Damn you Halton Hills!)
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And the Beeton sub through it's namesake town. They put suburban houses on it.
 
Bordercollie said:
In 10 years they will be wondering why we where so stupid to abandon a perfectly usable transportation corridor.
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Then it seems the time is nigh - the line was abandoned in sections starting in 1975. The ROW at Georgetown is built over and the houses don't look all that new.
 
Bordercollie said:
In 10 years they will be wondering why we where so stupid to abandon a perfectly usable transportation corridor.
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Agreed. MTO identifies and begins acquiring corridors up to 50 years prior to actual construction; Metrolinx really should be taking a page out of their book.

Collecting pre-made corridors and paying $10k to property owners for first-right-of-refusal when they decide to sell, coupled with an MZO (potential transportation corridor, current use grandfathered) is a cheap way of locking down a future corridor without expropriation. Their junior-team (staff that works on simpler items like bridge repairs and parking structures) can handle this type of thing as there is no firm commitment; they're just setting protecting options.
 
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Orangeville Yard yesterday (Tuesday) morning. Normally, OBRY ran on Tuesdays and Fridays. More recently, it's been a Tuesday and/or Friday operation, operating on an "as needed" basis. I didn't get to go for one more chase/photo session yesterday (no big waste, I had work to do in Brampton anyway) but at least I got a few other photos of the right-of-way pre-abandonment.

IMG_7246.JPG
 
Nomad_87 said:
You know when the last run will be? I want to see this railway before it's gone.
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I do not know, but I expect it will be before December 31, when the rail contract expires with Trillium Railway (which operates several other shortlines in the Hamilton and Niagara area). Service from Orangeville is increasingly sporadic; until mid this year, trains operated Tuesdays and Fridays, but now only one day a week - previously Tuesdays, but now most likely Fridays.

Though the line is still active, disused yard track and abandoned sidings have been recently removed, such as the long-abandoned siding at Cheltenham, which was just recently pulled out, and a half mile of track at the far northwestern end of Orangeville.
 
ShonTron said:
I do not know, but I expect it will be before December 31, when the rail contract expires with Trillium Railway (which operates several other shortlines in the Hamilton and Niagara area). Service from Orangeville is increasingly sporadic; until mid this year, trains operated Tuesdays and Fridays, but now only one day a week - previously Tuesdays, but now most likely Fridays.

Though the line is still active, disused yard track and abandoned sidings have been recently removed, such as the long-abandoned siding at Cheltenham, which was just recently pulled out, and a half mile of track at the far northwestern end of Orangeville.
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We should be encouraging the use of these shortline railways, not shutting them down.
 
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