GO Transit train at Kitchener Ontario

Kitchener Quickies

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I visited my son in Kitchener, Ontario recently. I was there to see him, not to railfan, but since we are both railfans… well, trains happened.

Naturally I had to capture at least one of the Kitchener-Waterloo ION trains.

The Huron Park Spur

Looking south toward CP

My son Nick is modeling the Kitchener-Waterloo area in N scale. It’s handy for him since he can just go look at different areas. He took me to see the Huron Park Spur, which is a connection / interchange between CN and CP in the area. At one time it served a lot of industries but most of those are gone now.

The spur runs south from near the GO/VIA station, under highway 8 to the interchange yard under Block Line Road. CP’s line continues from here to Cambridge and beyond.

Looking north toward CN

You can read a lot more about the Huron Park spur here.

Driving the Canadian

My son is a member of the Waterloo Region Model Railway Club, and my visit happened to coincide with an operating session on their layout. Nick and I formed an engineer-conductor crew and I had the distinct pleasure of driving the Canadian on their layout, and I was the conductor on a few other trains.

The people at the WMRC are fantastic – super friendly and very knowledgeable. I felt very welcomed.

I plan on writing more about this experience over on my “other” blog soon.

CN and BNSF Power

We had a quick look at the CN power laying over in Kitchener. A pair of BNSF units, 2090 and 2926, were connected to CN 7521 and CN 4937. I believe 4937 is one of the formerly leased GP38s, now repainted (from blue) and renumbered.

GOing Home

Nick and I took a GO Transit train into Toronto from Kitchener. I had intended on getting off at Malton to connect to the UP Express train to the airport, but we inadvertently got onto an “express” train that didn’t stop at any stations near Toronto. Oh well.

After saying our goodbyes near Union Station, I boarded the UP Express train and railfanned one last GO Train before we headed out to Pearson airport.

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