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Arnold, you have captured so much! I do believe that a book by you would be amazing!
A great scene. The trailing RDC-9 is interesting. I figured that would be in the middle to avoid turning the train.
Thanks, Jacob. They must be turning it at the wye in the Falls.
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And Ken, sure; you’re the master of the NFLD books. You make it all sound so easy.
AW, you always seem to capture the best of railroads. Awesome pics and again this brings back memories for me. LOL, I seem to remember my first derailment just past this location at Merriton (brakeman lined the wrong switch) and I had to send my engineer trainee flagging (flagging kit in hand) towards St.Kitts. Ahh the good old days!
The auto industries and other related industries, such as paving companies, lobbied, bribed, and blackmailed the various levels of government to destroy passenger rail transportation. There is way more money to be made from the inefficiencies of private automobile transportation vs. passenger trains.
I will not disagree with that assessment. This is roughly the same idea of when governments (in conjunction with auto manufacturers) got rid of trolleys many years ago in order to force people to buy more cars and spend more on (taxable) gasoline.
An RDC-9 out on the road!
And what killed passenger train service – and intercity public transit in general – is heavily subsidized highways and airports. Even without the lobbying of the automobile industry, free highways (highways pay no property taxes, for instance, while the railway pays taxes on every inch of rail, and every building) was going to make railways expensive in comparison.
I am not sure I agree with the last two statements in regards to the demise of the passenger trains in Canada, or North America in general. Just as diesel did to steam, it is the natural progression of technology and the consumer wanting the fastest, easiest way to travel. We saw it over and over in history, the horse vs the steam engine, steam vs diesel, ship vs airplane and the automobile vs trains.
no matter how much we might hate to see scenes like this disappear from everday life, it was inevitable. The railroad, like any other venture needs to make a profit and these trains we not profitable anymore. Sure I think there might have been some bribery and lobbying, but the writing was already on the wall. Lets just be happy that people like AW and all those who capture these moments exist. We are lucky to have them preserve our history.
Love the marker lamps on the end of the RDC-9. And Arnold, travelling by train from St Catharines to Unionville is still very much possible today, especially on weekends, thanks to GO trains with 3 departures from St. Kitts on Sa/Su/holiday Mon and fairly frequent weekend Stouffville Corridor train service to Mount Joy, Today, driving into Toronto on the QEW was a nightmare, and ngineered4u’s thesis “the natural progression of technology and the consumer wanting the fastest, easiest way to travel” meant today NOT to drive in the QEW traffic mayhem with gas at $2.00 per litre ! This means you may just see crowds of passengers like in this picture coming back – GO with a $15.00 weekend 2 day pass to “anywhere” on GO and a 2 hour trip to Toronto sure was better than what I was struggling with on the QEW.