Caption: Working a local freight along the Campbellford Sub, CN GP9 4524 is seen switching at the south end of Peterborough, just north of the Highway 7/115 overpass around Ashburnham Drive. Its train sits south of the switch as the lone Geep handles some flatcars at Trent Timber Treating Inc.'s siding around Mile 61. Visible on the right is the local CASE/International Harvester dealer, whose lot is full of various pieces of construction and farm equipment (but who doesn't appear to have been a rail customer at the time).

CN's Campbellford Sub was cobbled together from various 19th century railway lines and ran from Belleville to Lindsay via Peterborough, but by the time this photo was taken in the mid-1980's, time was running out for many of the unprofitable low-traffic branchlines in the Southern Ontario area including the Campbellford Sub. A year later in 1987, CN would abandon a large section of the line between Corbyville (north of Belleville at Mile 3.2) and the south end of Peterborough (Mile 60.6, a bit futher south of this photo), but continued to operate any local service between Lindsay and Peterborough via the Uxbridge Sub connection in Lindsay.

Faced with mounting operational losses, CN would pull out of Peterborough for good when it applied to abandon the Lindsay to Peterborough segment, which was approved in June 1989. Also included were the abandonment of the Lakefield Spur running north-east out of the city, the Ashburnham Branch on the east side of the Otonabee River (that at one time also served the Quaker Oats plant via a bridge at the north end), and the sale of a number of CN's industrial lines in Peterborough to CP for continued service to the few remaining customers, including Trent Timber Treating (the spurs were then accessed off CP's Havelock Sub). Eventually CP would abandon these former CN industrial spurs in 2012 citing costs and a lack of traffic, and remove most of the trackage around 2015-2016.

Keith Hansen photo, Dan Dell'Unto collection slide.