Nightime is Traintime

Brockville, Ontario is a small town of about 15,000 people, located just north of the American border. It was conveniently (for me) located just three hours north of where I was living in upstate New York. because the town is on the Canadian National railway mainline between Toronto and Montreal, it had a lot of rail action, 24 hours a day. VIA, the Canadian rail passenger service operator, provided nearly 20 trains a day, including the overnight runs between those tow major cities. Since the distance wasn't that great, the trains would stop in Brockville for almost an hour in the middle of the night. That made it the perfect place for my buddies and I to go to take our nighttime images. Since the trains sat for long periods of time, it was easy to haul our photo gear around to the best locations. The train crews didn't seem to mind us, the station folks being quite friendly. I don't imagine we bothered many of the onboard passengers, most of whom were fast asleep.

Pictured are two eastbound trains. The one on the left is on the main, and will depart for Montreal. The train on the right was the Ottawa section. That one took cars off the Montreal section, and took them up the branch to Ottawa. At this date - sometime in the late 1980s, VIA still used a variety of 1950ish locomotives and cars, which gave our photos a more historic look.

We always had fun crossing the border between the US and Canada.  This was pre-9/11, so things weren't as paranoid. Since we would sometimes leave after to work for our photo excursions, we'd cross the border after dark. Sometimes we'd have to return home early, so would cross back also after dark.  The guards would always inquire about the purpose of our trip. We'd always say "taking pictures". I don't know that the guards always believed us on those nighttime up and back trips, but they never hassled us. Maybe we provided some humor in an otherwise boring job.

A couple of my other memories of Brockville are gastronomic. It was my introduction to Tim Hortons, a Canadian institution. They are a nationwide donut shop, luckily for us with an outlet just down the street from the train station and open 24/7. We often went for midnight snacks and coffee. If we stayed during the day, Caroline's Frying Circus was a necessary stop. Located in an old school bus across from Timmy's, Caroline served up the best french fries.

It Helps to Know the Engineer

In 1993, AMTRAK was testing two European high speed trainsets, the Swedish X2000 and German ICE. The two trains were sent on a tour of the system, to show off the potential of high speed rail. Since both were electrically powered, and there is no electrification outside of the route between Washington DC and Boston,  AMTRAK put two of their turbine locomotives on the back to push it around. The proposed American builder of the X2000 was located in Elmira, New York, a town near to where I lived. As part of the tour, the train was sent to be displayed at the proposed factory.

The routing of the train to Elmira took it down a backwoods branchline that in the last 40 years had only seen an occasional special passenger train. The branch only hosted a couple of local freight trains a day. A railfan friend of mine, Don, was the regular engineer on those local freights, but whenever a passenger special came available he'd volunteer for the job. So of course he got to run this special.

Another friend and I took the day off from work to chase this train. We picked it up on the mainline, our intention to follow it all the way down the branch to Elmira. We had our radios on, and Don helped us out by making periodic announcements of his location. Things went fine for awhile, till we heard on our radio a call to the dispatcher from Don. Apparently the turbine locomotives had both died, leaving the train stuck in the middle of nowhere. Since we knew just where it was, and were close by, we went to the nearest crossing then drove down along the tracks until we came to the stalled train. On our way there, Don and the on board managers had decided that if they couldn't get the turbines restarted, that he would have to get the locomotive from his local freight to pull the train to Elmira. Normally that would have involved calling the dispatcher and waiting hours while he found someone to drive out, ferry Don to where the freight was, etc. But hey! We were on the scene with a vehicle, and promptly volunteered our services to drive Don to pickup the other locomotive. Everyone was pretty happy about that. So much so that they gave us a tour of the train while we were all waiting as they tried to restart the turbines. And not just a quick tour, but The Grand Tour, normally reserved for politicians and other VIPs. Ultimately they did get the turbines going, we finished our tour, and we all proceeded on our way to Elmira as originally planned.

Everybody's Favorite City

 A shot from everybody's favorite city, San Francisco. We're looking down Hyde Street from near the top of Russian Hill. Fisherman's Wharf is at the bottom of the hill, Alcatraz visible in the bay. I walked up the hill to find the right perspective to get this shot. I wanted to get high enough to see the bay, and needed somewhere too many parked cars weren't in my shot. Had to be in the middle of the street to shoot this, so had to get my timing right between passing cable cars and vehicles.

Indiana Bruce and the Temple of Transportation

One fine September day my buddy Gene and I decided to head up to Buffalo, NY. Buffalo was not a destination most people would choose, having the reputation as the "armpit of America". This former industrial powerhouse had, by the 1980's lost all that had made it - the steel mills, the chemical plants, the manufacturing. It was at death's threshold. It still had a relatively large rail presence though, and it had Central Terminal.

Central Terminal was opened to the public in 1929, one of the last great railroad stations built in this country. Passenger traffic had peaked some years before, so the station never used the capacity it was built to serve. By the 1970s it was down to one train a day each direction, and was finally abandoned in 1979. When we visited in 1989 it had been empty for a decade.

It was quite eerie being here. I had never been in such a monumental, man made structure that was in such a state of abandonment. I  imagined my feelings while wandering through must have been similar to those of an archeologist in an Egyptian pyramid.  Walking along the weed overgrown platforms where thousands of people once trod and among the greatness of the grand concourse left us speechless. Amazingly, the structure was neither vandalized nor covered with graffiti. It was an experience I hadn't before experienced, and have not since.