Comments on: After lifting 20 cars from FS Partners of Ayr, the Ham Turn breaks the silence of this rural-rooted community with blasts of the horn as they approach Guthrie St. There is one other customer in Ayr, Tampa Hall at right, who makes trusses and floors amongst other products for the housing industry. I don’t know if Tampa Hall is actively using rail but I rarely have seen a car in there. I know very little about the history of the Ayr Pit spur – but you can see remnants of a line that ran along Greenfield Rd and I believe the pit was just south of it. You can tell the line’s been here quite a long time though. It makes for a nice branchline feel though and why I’m attracted to it Thanks to Aleks Stefanovic for alerting me to this one fine morning in Paris. Got some bucket list shots off my todo list.

By: Stephen C. Host

Stephen C. Host — Fri, 27 Dec 2024 20:09:21 +0000

Thank you RonaldB for the notes. Very much appreciated. The local railfans of the area very much appreciate these observations.

I can’t recall the last time I saw a revenue car at Tampa Hall – Noe can you? Google maps satellite views and street view don’t show a single car in the place over the last 15 years, but it’s only about 20 snapshots in time.

By: RonaldB

RonaldB — Fri, 27 Dec 2024 00:00:18 +0000

Last note: Mainline trains a switching here could only use 4 axles unit(s), so when we were called out of Toronto for a westbound & we had tonnage suitalbel for 2 big units, and we had an extra 4 axles unit, we knew we were going to be lifting stock at Lambton. The process for that was to back the engine consist onto the west leg of the wye & split away from the 2 big units, and just take the livestock car(s) & the 4 axle unit back to Maus.

By: RonaldB

RonaldB — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 23:55:45 +0000

There were other businesses at Ayr off the main track. There were elevator tracks on both sides of the road running south off the main track. There was also a track ell as a stock pen off the main, in a storage/service track on the south side of the main track. That track also had a pit between the rails where we sometimes spotted coal. it was a simple affair, designed for a conveyor to be inserted under the chute where the hopper car was spotted.

By: RonaldB

RonaldB — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 23:49:47 +0000

I may have discussed the following in other comments on other photos at this location, but given your notes Stephen, I offer the following. The spur to the pit, was the straight track at the crossing opposite Foodland. The usual activity there was loading of “air” dumps for company service. A later example of this before the pit was “tapped out”, was fill used at the newly installed hotbox detectors on the Galt & Windsor Subs. This was approximately 1980-81. Sometimes the pit track was used to store cars when business slowed down. One time a bunch of CP open multilevels were stored there, and when the crew that was told to retrieve them tried to pull them, they found out they were stuck in ice just above the wheel flange. It had rained and later froze solid during their storage time.
The other spur that led to Northumberland Rd went across the road before my time, to a margarine plant. Early in my career, the rest of that track was the Maus stockyard. It received feeder cattle every fall, just about every day in the peak season. Tampa Hall lumber loads were always spotty at best. It should be noted that the situations mentioned above were before the time of the Galt or Wolverton jobs, all work was handled by through freight trains crewed out of London.

By: Stephen C. Host

Stephen C. Host — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 17:27:24 +0000

Great to know thank you. I believe a 38 trailed on this train but I haven’t found / looked at these photos in a long time.

Anyone ever seen a map of the pit spur?

By: Noe

Noe — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 17:11:15 +0000

FTRL Railway had purchased retired CP 8223 in 2015.

By: mberry

mberry — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 13:52:37 +0000

Sure do miss those CP GP9′s.