CPR CNR 1980 Kingston Subdivisions

Two 'Kingston Subdivisions', warm days at Queens East & maps and timetables from the 60s and 70s.

With enough traffic to keep the rail shiny, here is the CPR Kingston Subdivision near Kingston in 1980.
One railfan's theory was that a MoW speeder tour, without a derailment, was proof that no maintenance was needed.

The Division Street overpass is on the horizon.
The CNR Kingston Sub is at the right.
The CPR Kingston Sub begins near the distant switch of the interchange tracks.

The CNR 'yard' switch at the west end of the interchange track.

The electric switch lock protecting Track 1 of the CNR Kingston Sub.

Detail of the lock.

The gantry at the east end of Queen's East.

A little more detail.

As with kerosene switch lamps and train order signals, extremely efficient lenses

concentrated the faint light source into a beam which could be seen miles away.

I believe most of these signals also used a parabolic reflector.

Proper maintenance ensured they were aimed directly at approaching trains.

People like Rolly Martin required all signals (even clear signals) 

to be called in the cab. He also took great pride in spotting their first appearance

through the trees and across the bays of Lake Superior.

As a midday VIA eastbound rolls by, you can see that there was space for a fifth signal on the gantry.

Given the need to span the four tracks with sufficient clearance,
this does not necessarily mean a fifth signal was ever contemplated.

The Grey Ghost

Conveniently located near Queens East, this was the view from my apartment balcony.
Highway 401 from the Division Street interchange (beyond the right margin) to the west can be seen.
If you were extremely motivated, you could see a little bit of Queens from here, as well.

An extra east at Queens East: 2030, 2339, 9424.

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CNR Smiths Falls Subdivision

For the benefit of railfans, CNR often included maps with their employee timetables ...

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Below:

The CNR Smiths Falls Sub (Yarker to Sydenham)
and the CPR Kingston Sub had a junction at Harrowsmith.
The map below (collected by my father) displays some older data but was printed in the 1960s.

Pulling back a little, here is the railway ecosystem in the Kingston area at that time.
Notice that Highway 401 is shown as incomplete in the area to the west of Kingston.

CNR 2300s in June 1982 at Kingston

I was probably surprised by this freight coming down the hill to the Kingston station and by its unusual consist. These ore cars are loaded with slag, a waste of steel refining ... or other metal smelting.

A Harsco PDF on artificial aggregates from 2009 stated: 

A rail ballast needs to be cubical in shape with a high angle of internal friction and high aggregate interlocking characteristics. This is particularly important on track curves, where the lateral forces on the track can be very high and the ballast is the structural element which maintains the longitudinal alignment.

Ballast slag often has bubbles in it, or it may have a satisfying 'ringing' sound - suggesting metallic content.

The 2300s had distinctive characteristics which often endeared them to trackside observers:

• With standard Alco exhaust-driven turbo ... lag ... when starting to pull, they gave off clouds of smoke until the fuel/air mixture was rebalanced.
• At a distance, their exhausts could be imagined as a steam locomotive - with discernable chuffing.
• Like steam locomotives, you could watch moving parts - like the radiator fan drive, housed behind a simple grill.
• And, as I was puzzled to first experience on a train leaving Schreiber yard ... some of these long Alcos had a tendency to oscillate heavily at low speed. 

Unfortunately, most of these photos were shot into the direction of the sun.

I don't believe that the slag is so fresh that it is steaming. I think the long slide into Queens Track 4 is generating a lot of brake smoke. On the tailend you can see the expected caboose. I believe a large stockpile of slag ballast was kept in Brockville yard during these days.

We might long for the good old days of obsolete plain bearing (thus illegal for interchange) ore cars retained for captive ballast service on CN. However, I don't think they are missed ...

On one warm summer day such as this, a crew was working to apply fresh ballast to a curve near Kingston. The cars were being unloaded one-by-one in sequence. A worker would wrestle to open a single hopper (this was not even possible in all cases) and the power would be quickly radioed to pull ahead before the worker's legs became buried in ballast. 

... But, when the ballast was demonstrating its 'high aggregate interlocking characteristics' so well that nothing was coming out, some magnificent severe slack action was introduced into the consist to improve the flow rate. 

In particular, I remember workers scrambling eastbound on the uneven, oblique roadbed alongside the moving cars as they worked to start and stop the ballast laying process. Always having to avoid being caught between the wheels and rail, it was a hot, tiring and continually dangerous job.

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The following technical images are from:

Operating Manual, M-Line M-630 and M-636 Road Locomotives, AC-DC Transmission; MLW-Worthington Limited; January 1970.

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Here is a view of the same train in Queens 4. As this is a bad place to inspect a passing train, the crew member is probably just enjoying some quiet time outside the hot cab.

To the right is the CP interchange - showing different layers of ballast. Formerly, the CP tail track closest to the camera led to downtown Kingston - via an overpass over the CN main line. The track departing through the right side of the photo connected with the CP at Tichborne.

Below is the employee timetable for the CP Kingston Sub from 1976.

Trains still operated on the CP to the interchange into the early 1980s.

from: CPR ETT No 47; April 25. 1976.

A local railfan - who was authoritative on other subjects - said that the track inspection standard for the CP Kingston Sub was: 'sufficient to bear a maintenance of way speeder during an inspection trip'.

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One last endearing quirk of note within the Operating Manual for the M-636 is its air starter. 

The procedures are presented here for their historic value. 

... Compressed air is available in quantity on the railway. It maintains its potential energy on cold winter nights better than electric batteries.

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Still backlit by the sun, the ballast train starts to pull from Queens 4. 

Sand, dust, and smoke from overheating parts, swirl as the power gets the train moving.

A concrete mileboard is visible in the foreground.

It is my guess that these were installed in the first decade of the CNR's operation of this former Grand Trunk trackage.

A pleasing photographic effect is produced when the sun is located behind the camera!

The train is travelling under the Division Street overpass.