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Caption: Heading southbound on Canadian Pacific's MacTier Subdivision, CP RS2 8407 leads C424 4218 on a southbound freight on the mainline past the south siding switch at Bala, over the grade crossing at Gordon Street. The passing siding is full of maintenance of way equipment, including an errant speeder not quite on the rails. A short siding on the right branches off to Weismiller Lumber, with a boxcar spotted on it.
8407 was one of a small handful of RS2 units CP purchased (5 US-service units from Alco without MU, 4 from MLW with MU), and at the time one of only two in road service in Canada (later the only one, that was eventually demoted to yard service in St. Luc), so it was a rare shot to have 8407 leading a mainline freight. The irony is sister units 8405 and 8408 were traded in on C424's 4217 & 4219 (4218's trade-in unit was FB1 4402).
Original photographer unknown, Dan Dell'Unto collection slide.
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This unmarked slide was very difficult to identify the location of, and a story in itself. It came with some others from an unknown Toronto-area photographer in the late 60's/early 70's. The rarity of 8407 leading made it an instant buy, despite it having no location or other information noted. The codeline telegraph poles and signals suggested this was a mainline freight and not on a branchline, helping narrow things down. At first it looked like a freight along the Belleville Sub, and a few locations east of Toronto looked similar but no exact matches. Checking some old timetables, the telegraph line arrangements were listed and this one was most similar to the MacTier Sub, but there were no obvious locations that looked similar. The north end of Weston in Toronto had a vague similarity to this scene, but it also wasn't a match. Extra research included queries to the late Bruce Chapman and Ray Kennedy, but they were unfamiliar with the location. The slide was scanned but filed back with no idea where it was taken.
Further digging one day a year or two later lead to the north end of the MacTier Sub, and a search of all the siding locations. A breakthrough came noticing there were similarities to the south end of the siding in Bala, but Google Earth had no street imagery for the crossing - but Apple Maps did, which is very much changed today but the topography still bore some similarities, including a remaining codeline pole. Looking for old track maps or aerial imagery to show the siding arrangement yielded no results, but checking an old 1921 CP MacTier Sub track profile on CPHA confirmed a very similar siding arrangement at the south end of Bala, with that offshoot siding branching off to Weismiller Lumber. Looks like the mystery was finally solved. A lot of research to track down the obscure location of one 55-year old slide.
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Bala is also notable in that it had a separate "Summer Station" to the west by the harbour/wharf for tourists . CP would run daily summer (and later weekend only) trains north to the station for tourists to connect with the daily steamboats, and a "Winter Station" just NE of Gordon St. crossing (behind the power in the photo) for off-peak season use. This lasted until the early 60's (some sources say 1950's), when the summer station was demolished. It's unclear when CP demolished the remaining winter station.
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