Caption: In 2004 I had a nice DSLR, an itch to scratch, and well, everything excited me. A rail grinder was coming ! Oh boy! So I beelined it for Ayr with enough time to catch the parade of westbounds that were before me. I simply parked here and snapped happily as these trains passed in great sunlight. First was an auto train at 4:25 PM with a great leader then came this, at 5:53 PM, the Ham Turn, which I believe was train 525. The 'ham turn' ran from London to Hamilton and back and it's main purpose was to bring autoracks from Toyota east then south to connections in Hamilton for Buffalo, returning the other way in the afternoon. I would often find the Ham Turn in Galt lifting around 0830 and I think even then that was a late train. Going back north/west they usually had a very small train (to no train at all) with some parts cars for TDS in Tillsonburg that were handed off to the OSR and they do seem to be on the head end today, but looks like they also lifted some autoracks in Galt too. They also worked occasional customers especially those that were only served by 4 axle power such as the Ayr pit spur, Phillips & Daughters in Puslinch amongst others. The other local on the line(London Pickup) had 6 axle power at the time and it's job was to bring Toyota traffic to London from Galt to be lifted by other mainline trains, and with six axle power on the Pickup they couldn't work too many customers, hence Ham Turn did the rest. The Galt traffic came from the twice daily Galt job that worked to Toyota and back from Galt proper. In the evenings, Trains 127, 129, 139, 147 with auto traffic to or from from Oshawa, Brampton, Windsor, and Toyota lifted the auto traffic in London. All of this has since been consolidated into the current "London Pickup" and 2 Wolverton jobs, with all set offs and lifting done in Wolverton instead. Train 147 now handles almost all automotive traffic instead of the four trains that did so previously. 254 and 255 handle all the Buffalo connections now, but what we'd give to see this again today eh.

What about the rail grinder? - yet to come. :)