Caption: My first experience with Northern Ontario railroading was watching a Rail Innovations VHS tape called “Superior Railroading,” a couple decades ago. The video focused on CP trains rolling across the Canadian Shield featuring, tunnels, rock cuts, single track mainlines with meets and amazing scenery. I was hooked and years later I would be able to railfan the northern Ontario mainlines of both CN and CP. However, it was quickly discovered that with the beautiful and almost untouched landscape that both mainlines traversed between Toronto and the northern hub of Sudbury, it also presented a unique set of challenges. Long waits between trains, little warning of approaching freights, unforgiving lighting, as well distances between accessible locations would often make for a quality over quantity day spent trackside. It was not until a first visit to the very small town of Cartier, located north of Sudbury on CP’s transcontinental mainline that railfanning Northern Ontario really became fun. Cartier was actually the opposite of anything previously described and as Arnold Mooney said best in a comment “couldn’t recall anything negative” when railfanning that area. With friendly crews more than happy to print line-up’s, a classic station to wait around with benches, great scenery both south and north of town, the ability to plan upcoming photos of impending trains, plus being able to have decent lighting in either direction, as well as conversing with crews also made time pass incredibly fast.
Here, CP train 440 departs the Cartier station southbound with CP 9301 and 5958 after a fresh crew had boarded. CP 9301 was a large SD90MAC-H, which was part of a group of four built by GMD in 1998 and delivered to the railway in the beaver scheme. The original order of this model was for 20, however it decreased to only four after problems and reliability issues began to persist the model. This continued unfortunately through their entire careers. In the end, a failed main generator had sidelined 9301 and it was retired in November 2008 eventually being sold to RB Recycling in December 2010 after sitting stored unserviceable in St. Luc yard. According to reports, 9301 was scrapped in 2011 and became the last of the model to exist prior to being cut-up after its relatively short life.