27 October 2007
Locomotive Buffs Share Their Special Trains of Thought
Toronto Ontario - Railways 101... F is for Front.
Don't forget that.
"It's important to be able to tell one end of a locomotive from the other," says John Dubreuil. "Especially ones with a
cab at either end."
Hence the big letter F on the chassis of the engine being repaired at Canadian Pacific's Toronto Yard in Scarborough, where
Dubreuil helps run the mechanical facility.
He's taking a group of enthusiasts on a tour of the yard. Their ages range from early 50s to mid 60s and most of them are keen railway
modellers. "They're a wild bunch," Dubreuil says of train buffs. "They come from everywhere. There are thousands of them
out there."
The yard is huge, as is everything in it. The locomotive inspection pits belong in a giant's gas station. A dozen or more locos sit
like a herd of dull red elephants. There are freight cars everywhere, their names evoking the lost romance of the rails: Southern
Pacific, Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific, Grand Trunk Western, Burlington Northern, St. Lawrence and Hudson, Golden West, Milwaukee
Road - "America's Resourceful Railroad."
And here's a question for train buffs: If one-time Soo Line locomotives are now painted in CP colours, how do you
tell a loco's origins?
A CP engine's number is white on black; Soo is black on white. Some of the guys write this down.
"Geeky? No, it's fascinating!" says Brian Duxbury, waving his pen.
Duxbury, a financial adviser, and Chris Walker, a TTC bus driver, have toured the yard half a dozen times. "Even my son Adam
says, Dad, not again," says Walker. "And he's training to be an engine driver."
"It's the smell, the noise, the movement," says Duxbury.
"And to come here and see how it all works... " says retired TTC driver Jurgen Niemietz. "When you're a young boy,
everyone loves trains. Some of us never grow up."
This is also where freight trains are assembled for the long hauls east, west, and down into the States.
Cars are pushed up a slope and over "the hump," rolling down to be automatically switched to any one of 72 tracks. You have
to watch where you're walking. A car can sneak up on you as quietly as a cat.
Up in the six-storey control tower, which looks as if it belongs at an airfield, Gary Zuters is co-ordinating
a metal ballet that goes on around the clock, 365 days a year.
Zuters is a rail buff, too, and once wrote a book detailing every locomotive owned by CP up to 1995. "I'm the designated railroad
historian," he says. "And I lived in a caboose for 14 years."
The tour is visibly impressed.
"We do the same as these guys do in their basements," says Dubreuil. "Except we've got the real thing."
Dubreuil leads the group past a pile of blue drums labelled CP Lavatory Fluid. It's for the toilets in the locomotives.
"You know," says a voice. "I'd come and work here for free."
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