With the ONRHT&S convention scheduled for Kirkland Lake this year, I had originally planned for a few days to railfan my way up to the convention as well as to ride VIA's train 185/186, with its two Budd cars that travel from Sudbury to White River. I have photographed this train several times over the years, but never have been able to ride it. Bram Bailey and I had decided to jointly make our way to the convention this year, and it didn't take much for me to convince Bram that we should make this side trip to White River. Somewhere along the planning, we mentioned our plans to Lloyd Leonard and soon we had three ONRHT&S members making the trip. So the Monday before the convention, Bram and I headed towards Ontario from Ohio. With tickets purchased long before the ride, Bram picked me up at 0100 (yes that's 0100 dark) to begin our trek east and northward into Ontario and our destination for the day being Sudbury. As many of you know, Bram lives on the far west side of Cleveland while I live on the far east side. In a few hours we found ourselves talking to the officer at the Peace Bridge about where we were headed and what we were planning to do. I can only imagine what he thought, maybe something like what kind of folks to I get crossing so early in the morning and going to ride a train? After passing into Ft. Erie, it was onwards to beat the Toronto traffic and get northward of all of the commuters. A quick stop at Tim Horton's and we were ready to begin our day railfanning around Perry Sound before ultimately landing in Sudbury. A few trains were caught south of Sudbury, as well as exploring some of the old CP trackage before we decided to head north. Of course after setting our departure time from Perry Sound after sitting there hoping to catch a shot of a train coming across the CP trestle that spans the river, our railfanning pal Murphy's Law came along and sent a NB CN train while both our camera's were packed and we were ready to leave.
Tuesday morning we met Lloyd at the Sudbury station, and after a small delay, our train arrived and we boarded with about a total of close to a dozen passengers. As most of you may know, the VIA train shuttles back and forth between Sudbury and White River three trips each week. The train provides flag stop service to many remote locations only accessible by rail on the Canadian Pacific Railway mainline. The journey is some 300 miles in length and averages about 10 hours travel time as it treks through Ontario. The typical equipment are Budd Rail Diesel Car (RDCs), using an RDC-2 (6219) and RDC-4 (6250). Lloyd mentioned that he had ridden the train when an extra RDC had been included. While it’s a long journey, there were several stops at established stations such Chapleau as well as the opportunity to photograph some meets with CP Rail freight trains. I also used the time to take some photos of the landscape, in hopes that I could add some of that Ontario flavor to my home layout.
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| Brief stop at Chapleau |
One word of advice for the trip is make sure that you make motel reservations prior to the trip and bring along enough munchies for a two-day trip. While White River has a grocery store, selections were a little limited, although a sufficient stash of crackers and peanut butter was available to make the author happy, especially for the return trip.
So after our return to Sudbury Wednesday afternoon (we actually arrived ahead of schedule), it was on to Englehart for the evening and meeting fellow convention attendees Thursday evening.
