The Railways of Northern Ontario, Canada in the 1980’s.

This presentation was by Andrew Kaye who is a member of the Thames Valley Group. Although now living in the UK, Andrew was brought up in Sudbury, Ontario and spent the 1980’s observing and photographing the local Railways. Sudbury is located in a basin surrounded by nickel Rich Ores. This provided freight for the railways in addition to being located on the Transcontinental railway with  both the CPN and CN Railways. There is also  a sprawling line north of Sudbury which still uses Budd railcars. The station names on this line come from the use of a GER timetable by the original engineer, even though the spelling may differ in some cases.

In the 1980’s lorry trailers were being transported by rail rather than containers. Freight trains still had Cabooses some of  metal constructions which only had a short life and eventually some were used on permanent way maintenance. Locomotives were either Alco or EMD both for main line and yard shunting. During this period there was a locomotive shortage and locos were borrowed from USA companies such as the Chessie System.  At this time the passengers locomotives were fitted with steam heat boilers and due to the low temperatures in winter a steam generating plant was built at Sudbury to heat passenger coaches held over in the sidings. Once locomotives were built without steam heating boilers it was often necessary to include a steam generating vehicle in the passenger trains.

The Nickel mining and processing operations were owned by INCO. In order to reduce pollution INCO built the tallest chimney in the Western Hemisphere. In addition to the main line railways INCO had an industrial railway linking the nickel mines to the main processing plant. This was equipped with overhead electrical supply and operated a variety of electric shunting locomotives of varying age.

Thanks to Andrew for an interesting presentation giving us an insight into the operation of Railways in Canada in this period from his own personal experience.