UtakataNoAnnex
Senior Member
Update: Off of Yarmouth Centre Rd., monster mounds, earth being moved as far as the eye can see, service gates ad infinity, goodness...but not much else to report.
- Thread starter ericmacm
- Start date
SaugeenJunction
Senior Member
Found this on Facebook. CN is cleaning up its old Paynes Sub in St. Thomas. It was completely overgrown and impassable in recent years. It connects to the opposite side of St. Thomas from the VW plant, but has an old yard on it. CN might be planning to use it to store or marshal cars for the plant.
Northern Light
Superstar
@SaugeenJunction being the kind fellow he is.............was clearly thinking.......... When @Northern Light gets up in the middle of the night, I wouldn't want him bored......... so I need to find something for him to look into.
From hospital to housing, the re-purposing of the former psychiatric facility in Central Elgin
A pilot program embedded in the provincial budget rolled out Tuesday (March 26) is going to have a direct impact on Central Elgin and Elgin county. Elgin-Middlesex-London MPP Rob Flack explains wha…
ianscityscope.com
From the above, we can see the new trackage that will link the exiting to railway to the PowerCo/Volkswagen site:
The site will have its own City-owned rail yard. As at yesterday, according to this piece, the actual agreement for interlinking to CN required further work.
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Using the description above and from @SaugeenJunction 's post, I have used google to follow the rail line from the work mentioned above ( near Major Street) which is on the left side of the image, to my best approximation of where it will enter the PowerCo lands. (right top)
Note the yellow of Highway 3 here, which will be extended to the east, and which the railway will traverse.
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While I was digging I came across a couple of other things that may be of interest.
1) CN 's 3-year Rail Network Plan:
file:///D:/Downloads/three-year-plan-en.pdf
2) St. Thomas Economic development is regularly posting vids on the development of this site, here:
From the Beehive - mini update, mega site
Video updates for the St. Thomas Mega Site - From the Beehive - Industrial Construction, Economic Development St. Thomas, Ontario
www.st-thomas.org
and here:
These vids also include discussion of the Regional Transit plans.
@crs1026 should be flagged here for his insights.
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crs1026
Superstar
I don't have any official or even back door information, but some informed people I talk to have been musing about CN's industrial development around St Thomas for quite a while now. While it may have appeared that CN had decided to pull out of St Thomas altogether, they have held onto odd bits of track - and even paid to keep up some of it - in ways which made people wonder if there is more to the strategy... the loss of the Ford plant was a blow, but St Thomas may be a sleeper lication that was seen as having industrial development potential all along.
CN has certainly laid out a line in the sand with its spur to the VW plant and one does hear that CN and the city have been in discussion about various other things around town.
The interesting angle to me is the whole business of interswitching. It seems unlikely that VW would site its plant in a location where they are limited to being served by only CN, and certainly there is another route into town that would allow another railway to also serve the plant....just as auto plants in Woodstock/Ingersoll and Oshawa have dual railway service. People who wonder why CN and CP don't cooperate more.on other things might watch this one as it may be a situation where their most competitive instincts come to the fore.
The other comment I have heard is about the grades required if spurs were built to connect the plant from various directions. I haven't looked at any data on this, but it would be interesting to know how steep the line will be, if at all.
- Paul
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Northern Light
Superstar
I know some of the old track/yard near downtown St. Thomas was sold off for development. Not sure about the rest, you would likely know better than I.
Looking at the the rough footprint of the 1500 acre industrial site (inclusive of Powerco), and placing my first white dot where the proposed PowerCo rail yard would be, I have drawn a line to the Ontario Southland trackage.
This is not the most direct route, but w/o the long term plans for the site, I drew around the 1,500 acres.
OSR is former CP trackage and to my understanding is leased from CP still. So you have intact ROW (albeit in terrible condition) to within ~2.5km of the plant, bit closer if you find another connection point further south in the site plan.
ShonTron
Moderator
Interesting developments! St. Thomas bills itself as “The Railway City” despite the fact it lost almost all of its rail connections - at one time it had CP (Credit Valley), CN (Great Western/Grand Trunk), Michigan Central, Chesapeake & Ohio, and London & Port Stanley, with tracks leading out in nine directions. Now there are just two intact connections to the main CN and CP routes.
It trades mostly on nostalgia and remnants of its rail history, such as the railway museum in the old Michigan Central shops, the intact MCRR station (the only one of the three that remains standing) and the old viaduct that’s now a public park.
So it’s interesting to see CN clean up its tracks. I thought the old Payne’s Sub was going to be pulled out.
Oh, and though theoretically Toyota in Woodstock could be served by CN, it would require a spur line that doesn’t exist. It, like Cambridge, is entirely served by CP.
It trades mostly on nostalgia and remnants of its rail history, such as the railway museum in the old Michigan Central shops, the intact MCRR station (the only one of the three that remains standing) and the old viaduct that’s now a public park.
So it’s interesting to see CN clean up its tracks. I thought the old Payne’s Sub was going to be pulled out.
Oh, and though theoretically Toyota in Woodstock could be served by CN, it would require a spur line that doesn’t exist. It, like Cambridge, is entirely served by CP.
crs1026
Superstar
Currently, CN, OSR and GioRail all share a small yard just east of the bridge at Kettle Creek. It's congested already, with Gio Rail attracting lots of added car storage business. Even without the new car plant, I'm not surprised that all three are looking for more yard space, I don't foresee any further reactivation of the Payne Sub, it's not very helpful to CN since trains would have to backtrack to Komoka to travel on to the US.
- Paul
- Paul
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crs1026
Superstar
PS - that map mentions the Great Western Railway, operating as Canadian National Railways. How's that for a heritage moment? GWR disappeared a very long time ago, but may still exist as a landowner, on paper at least!
- Paul
- Paul
crs1026
Superstar
OSR in terrible condition? Heck, no....they are the envy of other short lines, OSR is stellar for putting their earnings back into the track.
The vulnerability is that reportedly CP can cancel their lease on very short notice. So far that hasn't happened, but the VW plant is a new ballgame.
- Paul
Northern Light
Superstar
On matters of rail, I will overwhelming defer to your expertise Paul; but I must confess, this doesn't look great to my eye:
Street view: summer '23 Those ties looks per rough.
crs1026
Superstar
I'm not a track inspector, but it mostly looks bad because of the different colours of ballast, and the varying shades of crossties.
But I don't see many split ties, and the drainage is good - no mud. Surfacing looks good - Rails look level and I don't see any dips.
OSR runs Class 2 track which is good for 25 mph. Class 2 requires 8 good ties for each 39-foot section of rail, with a good tie under the joint bar.
The rest of the specs would mostly require measurement.
I do know that OSR maintains a pretty capable track maintenance staff, more people and experience than most short lines..
- Paul
Northern Light
Superstar
I was looking more at the rot on some of the ties, the fact they aren't precisely equal in length anymore, and that some are also not straight.
^^^ this is the expertise that I lack and you possess I was noting.
Using a spacing between ties of 19 inches, what's that, something like 16 ties over 39ft?
So 1/2 of them 'good'?
Hmm
I suppose i just think 'class 2' looks kind of junky in general if the picture I posted is representative of said class.
Obviously not all freight lines are going to be 'class 6' But that's a big step down from most mainline rail I've seen.
crs1026
Superstar
So long as the ties will still hold a spike, they are mostly considered a pass.
You are correct that a railway track of lesser speed will have some good ties and some not good ties. The number that must be good goes up with track class and speed. In a “mature” railway track, the maintainers will selectively replace the worst of the worst but only up to the needed standards. And if the track is downgraded, they can rest on their oars until things get really bad… a tie will last 50 years or more, after all.
In the photo above, one can see plenty of dark black ties which would be the new ones that OSR has inserted fairly recently. So my inexpert eye says they are keeping up with maintenance. Similarly where they have dumped the blacker rock, it speaks to having looked for what is needed. Certainly a major railway needing heavier use out of the track might do more in the way of undercutting the full length of the line and cleaning the ballast and/or dumping new rock more uniformly. But this, after all, a railway with only so much money available.
It would be interesting to compare this picture to the CN line that connects St Thomas to London. That’s where the auto traffic from VW will be carried. I bet it’s pretty similar.
- Paul
You are correct that a railway track of lesser speed will have some good ties and some not good ties. The number that must be good goes up with track class and speed. In a “mature” railway track, the maintainers will selectively replace the worst of the worst but only up to the needed standards. And if the track is downgraded, they can rest on their oars until things get really bad… a tie will last 50 years or more, after all.
In the photo above, one can see plenty of dark black ties which would be the new ones that OSR has inserted fairly recently. So my inexpert eye says they are keeping up with maintenance. Similarly where they have dumped the blacker rock, it speaks to having looked for what is needed. Certainly a major railway needing heavier use out of the track might do more in the way of undercutting the full length of the line and cleaning the ballast and/or dumping new rock more uniformly. But this, after all, a railway with only so much money available.
It would be interesting to compare this picture to the CN line that connects St Thomas to London. That’s where the auto traffic from VW will be carried. I bet it’s pretty similar.
- Paul
Northern Light
Superstar
I wouldn't bet against you, I don't like losing money!
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Since you asked, this is the CN line crossing Ron McNeil just outside St. Thomas:
I think that actually might look worse, but its definitely not materially better.
crs1026
Superstar
Ugh. See the spot in the foreground where the mud has pooled? That is definitely a problem in the making - it indicates that drainage is poor and water is collecting. The trackbed has “pumped” the mud up into the ballast and basically the rock ballast either isn’t there any more or is badly infused with silt.
The next thing that happens is that a low spot forms and eventually the trackbed softens. The low spot can lead to the underside of equipment making contact with the higher level crossing surface (possibly plowing up the asphalt) or even breaking the rail as the track will flex with every wheel that goes over it. As well, the ties rot out faster because they are sitting in water.
This is especially common at road crossings because the track bed has a different hardness than the roadway bed and things compress differently as trains and autos pass.
The solution is to undercut the track bed in the weak spot, put in new rock, and resurface to achieve a better longitudinal plane. And revisit the drainage away from that spot. But that only happens when the railway decides to spend the money.
All of this is a big digression from batteries and auto plants, perhaps…. Except that, with the amount of money that St Thomas and Ontario are sinking into new infrastructure to attract these industries …. Roads, utilities, Hydro substation etc….. it might be prudent to look at the state of the rail lines and ask if they are up to the task. Fundamentally, at the current time, St Thomas sits on lower grade branch lines…. Not unsafe, but not best possible either. Quite possibly CN, OSR, or whoever are already asking for this or have built it into their tariffs.
- Paul
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