I met a kid today, when I mentioned who Greg McDonnell was didn’t know who he was… I asked – don’t you buy books? Nope. I don’t – he said.

My god. These kids have no idea of what happened prior to the Internet basically..

The Central Western (1986 – Tom Payne) and GEXR (1992 – Railtex) were major efforts, test beds if you will, starting a shortline was a giantic effort back then, and took a lot of government intervention and a boatload of work on the part of the pioneers of the industry and government to see them through. Plus change in government delayed it all by a few years due to labour laws.. (Documented in Thorning/Hooton Rails to Goderich book)

But some of the Shortline pioneers, including OSR’s Jeff Willsie and even Trillium’s Wayne Ettinger – which were not granted shortlines until AFTER the act – were pushing for the deregulated framework prior to enactment in 1996 (and forming their own Shortlines by means of acts of parliament!). Witness that Trillium’s parent company is ultimately called the “Caledonia and Hamilton Southern Railway” – do you want to bet what Wayne was looking to capture when he formed it in 1994? Probably the very line you speak of and/or the Hagersville!

Then the explosion of shortlines occurred.. and brings us to today – where 21 years later, as these leases expire, we’re seeing churn as agreements are re-negotiated, cancelled, or changed to new operators.

There’s also major politics involved – CN wanted to shed lines, but also you can bet their dollar they wanted to shed NS too. Just took much longer than they thought… NS’s iron clad agreement at least forced CN to give them another route.. you’ll never see agreements like that again!

But ultimately, look at the new elevators on GEXR/CN in Breslau, Shakespeare, and on the Goderich sub – this is business that was once north on the Branches now moved south. Takes a while but it will move to rail eventually, CN knows this… just takes 10 to 20 years..

More recently, the CASO abandonment of 10 miles from Fargo to Ridgetown – which should have been kept – the place was shipping 20 cars a week (From St. Thomas 40 miles away), instead could have been done for 10 miles ex Fargo witch would likely still be profitable, but they ripped ‘er up. Would have made more sense to keep that and do Blenheim along with it, but the timing didn’t work out as CSX still owned some of the track needed to make it work out. Wonder where South West AG is shipping to now. There’s dozens of these ag customers now without direct rail, but most were very infrequent. Ridgetown was one of the more frequent at the time (2005).

Feel free to discuss/negate/add – just my two cents

I’ve read that report regarding the objections to the abandonment of the Cayuga in the past. One has to wonder if that stretch of the Cayuga to Nelles Corners may have survived if CN decided to lease the Hagersville out to a shortline sooner. For those who may not know, Armstrong still receives hopper loads which are transloaded at the elevator in Hagersville.

There was a customer at Nelles Corners who put up a pretty good fight to keep his rail service. The CTA ordered CN to service him from the Hagersville Sub for one year past the order date for the rest of the line. True to form, CN ordered an extra “B559″ every Sunday to run from Brantford to Nelles Corners via Garnet to do this customer only!

See here if you want more info:

https://otc-cta.gc.ca/eng/ruling/870-r-1995