Comments on: CCGX 1001 leans to one side as it slowly shoves empty dimensional car WDLX 1001 along the overgrown Western Mechanical Spur north of Tiffin St in Barrie. This is a rare move as Western Mechanical only requires service a handful of times per year. Earlier that morning I had driven over this spur while running errands in town and noticed a crew armed with pickaxes clearing ice from the rails at Brock St. I guessed that something was up so I abandoned my errands (my wife calls this being irresponsible) and chased down the BCRY train in Innisfil where I found their train consisting of WDLX 1001 along with an empty centrebeam for Tarpin Lumber and a tank car for Comet Chemicals. With my suspicions confirmed I played the waiting game until they had finished their work in Innisfil and was able to get this shot when they made their return trip through Barrie.

By: craigandru

craigandru — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 02:59:14 +0000

Graydon, thank for the comments.

I don’t think Western Mechanical sees much rail service and I’ve only observed the spur in use this one time. If I were to guess I’d say the BCRY visits a few times a year, if that.

Comet Chemicals, Tarpin Lumber (now called United Truss) and Tag Environmental are all pretty similar in terms of frequency of service and are visited 1-2 times a week. Number of carloads is higher for both Tag and Comet than for United Truss.

BCRY also has transloading services at their yard in Utopia and it seems to be utilized frequently.

By: Railfan99

Railfan99 — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 19:51:33 +0000

Great Story Craig and honestly, I bet almost everyone else would’ve Done the same thing, especially if something rare was possible to happen!

Had a quick question for you also, just of curiosity do you or anyone else here happen to know how often Western Machanics happens to receive service from BCRY on average? Is it as less as just once a month or is it usually even be more infrequent averaging to be somewhere around half a dozen times a year? Just a curious thought I had.
And with the other 3 BCRY customers, is my list accurate with the fact that Comet Chemicals seems to be the biggest customer of them all getting serviced to almost twice a week while the other 2 (Tarpin Lumber and Tag Environmental) aren’t all too far behind and get serviced about once a week on average but that’s can always vary for them too based off of ‘Production Wise’ of the buisness’s?

By: Jakob Mueller

Jakob Mueller — Sat, 23 Mar 2019 12:53:44 +0000

This has a Maumee & Western feel to it.

By: craigandru

craigandru — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 18:54:02 +0000

Thanks for the comments everyone

Driver8666 – when taking the photo I didn’t fully realize how uneven the tracks were.

Jamie – glad this closes a loop for you.

Stuart – you can see photos of WDLX 1001 at Western Dimensional’s website http://www.westdim.com and browse through their projects section. I didn’t personally get a decent photo of it and the image I took wouldn’t have met the standards of this database.

Dave – I fully agree but unfortunately don’t think my wife will change her opinion.

By: DaveA

DaveA — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 04:07:44 +0000

I call that responsible railfanning!

By: Stuart Streit

Stuart Streit — Thu, 21 Mar 2019 17:24:05 +0000

So where’s the photo of WDLX 1001??!!

By: jknott86

jknott86 — Thu, 21 Mar 2019 16:01:02 +0000

Interesting. I saw WDLX 1001 sitting empty at Stuart Street in May 2017 but couldn’t figure out much about it, including its reporting mark. Nice to close the loop on that one.

By: Driver8666

Driver8666 — Thu, 21 Mar 2019 15:11:05 +0000

Looks like it’s going to tip over.