A Day Spent Chasing Trillium Railway S-13u # 108 ("Edgar")

I'm sure every railfan has that one train, engine, or operation that no matter how hard they try they never seem to be able to catch it in action... For me, that was Trillium Railway's S-13u #108, the last of the railway's fleet of MLW end-cab switchers still active. I'd made probably ten or more trips down to the Niagara Peninsula to try and catch it running but it never worked out until this hot and humid late summer morning. This difficulty in catching it lead to me and my brother referring to the engine as "Edgar", a reference to the Grand Tour's Columbia special in which they named the spectacle bear they were looking for "Edgar Hussein".

On this day, the 108 was working the St. Catharine's job, by far the railway's longest run all the way from their base of operations at Feeder north to the CN at Merritton and then a few miles further north to Dunn Paper in St. Catharines. Helping my odds of catching 108 was the relocation of leased MP15AC GMTX #340 from Feeder (on the railway's main operation) to switch exclusively at the Welded Tube of Canada plant near CN Southern yard (on the east side of the Welland Canal) after the engine that was normally used for switching the plant broke down. On a typical day, the railway runs 2-3 jobs with one engine usually assigned per job; it is rare to catch more than one engine on a train. The railway had four active engines at the time of filming which meant that the 108, while used sporadically, was harder to catch as it served as somewhat of a backup engine.

On this day, the crew started by switching Feeder yard and bringing interchange traffic to be staged at WH yard; here the crew would lift the northbound loaded boxcars for Dunn Paper. Six hoppers heading for scrap at SLM Metals in Welland were also along for the ride and this provided an opportunity to get some drone shots of the railway's deadline adjacent to the Valbruna ASW steel plant at the north end of Welland. With high scrap prices and weak demand due to a smaller-than-usual grain harvest, Trillium saw a significant increase in cars this year with SLM scrapping the grain hoppers, along with the cars having been processed at Feeder as well.

Carrying on northward, we see the train on the CN Grimsby sub, then working the north end of the railway before heading back south. The southbound trip for me was cut short as road construction and traffic prevented me from getting ahead of the train again, but I was happy with the scenes I shot this day. Hopefully 108 sticks around for years to come but with GIO's continued investment in the railway the MLW's could be replaced with leased power at any time (JLCX 3502 already having been added to the fleet in January 2021).

As always, thank you for watching!

00:00 Intro & JLCX 3502 Departing Shop Track
01:10 Departing Feeder
03:28 Dain City
06:58 Setting Off Scrap Cars in Welland & Deadline Fly-Over
14:02 On the CN Grimsby Sub
14:46 Working the Grantham Spur
22:57 Return Move on CN Grimsby Sub
26:58 Climbing the Grade to Thorold
27:57 Passing Valbruna ASW