Throwback Thursday - It's Lovely Weather for a Cab Ride Together With You

March 18, 1987 was indeed a lovely day for a cab ride into the 3M plant which was situated near Havelock, Ontario.

By Peter Mumby.

The 3M plant featured in today's photo was situated a few concession roads east of CP's yard at Havelock, Ontario.  The 3M spur swung north off the main line, crossed highway 7, then dropped down a slight grade into the facility.  Most of the outbound traffic consisted of covered hoppers loaded with roofing granules, although open hoppers full of trap rock were occasionally thrown in for good measure.

Today's train has cut off its inbound cars at the top of the grade.  The power has run ahead to clear the siding switch to allow the cars to roll down the grade into the siding which is visible to the right side of the picture.  The locomotives will then proceed ahead around the corner to retrieve the day's loaded cars before properly spotting the empties.  Then the train will return to the yard.  The 3M loads will stay in the yard while the train crew spends the afternoon working the Nephton road switcher.  Later in the day all the loads will be combined into the evening train which will head to Toronto's Agincourt Yard.

The lead unit in the consist in the photo is RS18u number 1816, which was rebuilt from RS18 8799 in 1983.  The photograph was taken from RS18u 1820, which will be the lead unit on the return to Havelock.  Sandwiched between these two units is RS18 number 8797, itself destined to be rebuilt in 1989 as 1849.  Also used at other times on this assignment were GP9, GP 38-2, SW 1200RS, and C424 locomotives, although I remember the engineer telling me that day that the RS18 units were crew favourites for the type of work encountered on the Havelock and Nephton Subdivisions.