Rusty Rails

      I remember only one siding track, but my father showed me where other tracks and switches had been located to carry steam shovels while loading gravel from the pit. After the line had been constructed and ballasted, the relatively long siding was frequently used to store empty boxcars required for seasonal grain movement out of Goderich. The railway would store the cars in three sections to avoid blocking the two laneways we used for crossing to our farm fields south of the tracks. The empty boxcars were a great place for me and my brother to play cowboys.

      In the summer of 1961, we were fixing fence next to the pit. The railway was responsible for maintaining the boundary fence, but we often had to do some temporary patching until Bill Hoy and his crew could find some old ties and page wire to do a proper repair job. On this particular day, the train came to a stop and we were able to watch as the engine cut off the combination coach and caboose, then backed into the pit to pick up the string of boxcars. It was the last time cars would be switched in the pit as in the fall of 1961, the siding switch was pulled out. All winter the switch lay on its side in a storage pile alongside the track. In the spring of 1962, the switch was hauled away, but the siding track and the name board would remain for another ten years.

      On the Saturday afternoon before Thanksgiving of 1964, we were back near the tracks husking corn and, given the clear blue sky, I had taken along my Kodak 620 loaded with slide film. Around 4:30 I heard the train whistle at McGaw and ran over to the track to get ready to photograph the train. As the short train approached, I noted that an F unit was on the front end and was really highballing it back to Guelph Junction. I clicked off several shots as the train hurtled through the pit and disappeared around the bend toward the Maitland River. The speed of the train was such that my close-in shot was badly blurred but the more distant shots captured the rare event.