If you guys wander in the old city of Montreal, close to its historic harbor on the Saint-Laurent river, maybe you will spot a railroad line along it, that I thought was only used overnight. But these last years I was lucky enough to encounter a few trains daily, the last one a week ago beeing a stack train, maybe 3 or 4 km long (rolling at about 15 km/h, it held surrounding grade crossing gates closed maybe 1/4 hour..), with 3 CN road units.Another time, a pair of Geeps switched hoppers close to an old grain elevator.. Dom
Wow! Some nice photos from the Old Port area and around there. You even got the Jacques-Cartier Bridge in there. Between the two GE's I spy what seems to be an SD70I or SD75I. And those last three photos show an industrial setting that just begs to be modeled! Great work, Dom!
Thank you Mike, indeed the middle unit was a SD75i, good point.About the structure that appears on the last three pics, I really don't know what it is. Maybe some grain elevator, according to the hoppers that were switched by the two Geeps ? But behind it, unfortunately not visible from public area (but that one may spot on GoogleEarth) there are a few tracks that often hold freight cars, generating switching operations from time to time. What is interresting is that you can hear from behind the rumble of an EMD645 prime mover, even at idle, plus the "pschttt" of pneumatic devices of any normally constituted american built diesel locomotive when one is present out of sight on these tracks. So you just have to send the wife shopping in the neighbouring stores while you wait for some pictures to catch. Dom
I think I've found where those last three photos were taken, thanks to Google Earth! It's somewhat west of the Old Port and near the old Lachine Canal locks, and it's the only spot where the tracks snake through the space between buildings with the overhead conveyors: I managed to get a sidelong view to approximate your photo angle. The train passed where the thick light blue line is, a little left of center. The diesel sounds you heard are likely from another pier just behind this view, where there are some storage tracks, and a little further west, there's a small intermodal facility.
