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CP ~ PAGE HERSEY SPUR 1986 - JUNE 2003 | MILE |
Jct. with CP Welland Industrial Lead | 0.0 |
Ontario & Dain Avenue | 0.35 |
No trackage exists on this line.
Mile 0.0 (Jct. with CP Welland Industrial Lead) Plymouth Road, Welland : The CP Page Hersey Spur switch was once located here, west of the old WX tower location of the former NYC/MC/PC Mainline. The switch was located
behind the Polish Community Hall.
Mile 0.35 (Welland Pipe) : Ontario Road at Dain Avenue, Welland : This was the entrance to Welland Pipe, formerly Page Hersey Works. It is located at the intersection of Plymouth Road-Dain Avenue and Ontario Road.
The CP Page Hersey Spur was a short lead off of the CP Welland Industrial Lead, since at least the Welland Canal relocation project. Before that, as i have ween told by a couple of Welland residents, before the Polish Community hall (now a medical building) was built, the line used to run directly along Ontario Road on the north side of the Road in the parking lot area of the old pre hall property then cross at the intersection of Ontario Road at Dain Avenue and Plymouth Road. You can see part of the ROW these days.
That was later rebuilt as an entire line of the CP Page Hersey Spur into the plant, but was called the TR Lakeside Lead. It took the same ROW of this former CP Page Hersey Spur.
The name Page Hersey is an old name relating to the operations on the Stelpipe plant in downtown Welland from when it opened in I believe the early 1990's until 20XX.
This old Page Hersey Spur was operated by the Penn Central, Conrail and then CP, until 1992 or 1994, when serving of the industry was handed over to CN, though CP still own and took care of the trackage, until it was torn our in I believe 2003.
CP had handed over switch duties to CN, because CP (and formerly CP and Penn Central) used to come from the present yard that CP calls now CP Welland yard, via the CP Welland Industrial Lead. The CP Welland Industrial Lead was torn out in 1997 leaving CP Welland to mile 2.4ish in 1997.
CP exclusively took over operations on the Spur. All interchanges for Page Hersey Spur over the last many years were made through the interchange yard on the present trackage just north of CN Tunnelbridge on the CN Canal Spur. This was in the earlier days, but later they just took the railcars back to their own perspective rail yards. CN Tunnelbridge used to be the area fron mile 4.0 up to the pedestrian crosswalk on the present day TR Canal Spur between mile 4 and this crosswalk. CN got rid of the Tunnelbridge names long before the 1990s.
Before the early 1970's, this line came off of one of the the yard tracks of the old Penn Central yard tracks through a diamond somewhere... (not WX tower).
After the Penn Central tore out their rail yard, one of the yard tracks was left in and the Page Hersey Spur was tied into that track.
During the Penn Central, Conrail and CP days a yard job out of what is now CP Welland Yard, on of Riverside Drive traveled the (the now CP until the early 1990s) Welland Industrial Lead to Welland, across Welland Canal bridge bridge 15 to service the industries.
As mentioned already when CN took over, CN 105 out of CN Welland Yard (Dain City Intermodal Yard) was given this switching duty. When Dain City closed, CN 549 service Page Hersey when ever required while in town on Wednesdays, or later when they started alternating days in the following week one day later.
Back in Sept 1991, when I got the bug to start watching trains, I had only seen a CP 8200 series light power locomotive operating returning westward at the King Street crossing. This was only one time I saw the CP yard job in downtown Welland. It was a coincidence, because I was just getting into trains in Welland and I wasn't prepared about the operations of any railways here.
During 1996, the CP Page Hersey Spur was off limits rail service. There was a 7 month strike at the Page Hersey plant. The plant strike began in November 1996 and ended in mid 1997. Shortly after the strike ended, CN went in and got the empty railcars that were stranded on the plant's property.
I never saw any rail cars shipped out after that as I was told that it was cheaper to ship by truck to Hamilton and load the pipe on rail cars there. It was too costly to do it at Welland.
In late May of 2003 Stelpipe placed their 45 ton locomotive out by the fence on the property at the intersection of Dain Ave and Ontario Road for Trillium to remove it from site.
On June 24, 2003, the Stelpipe locomotive was moved out of the plant shortly after 8am and placed out to the switch to the CP Welland Industrial Lead and I caught it sitting at the switch about 9:30am. I went home to get my bike and came back and by the time I got back, it had disappeared out of Welland. Location at the time was unknown. I later found out a few days later it had been driven down to be stored at a plant at Montrose on the CP Montrose Subdivision, now Spur.
The locomotive was then taken by CP and taken to Niagara Falls at an plant and stored there for a year or two. Rail within the plant at Page Hersey and the CP Page Hersey Spur was entirely ripped out. I was told that the person/business that bought the rail from the plant also bought the locomotive.
This locomotive taken out of the Page Hersey plant was later owned by Trillium. The centercab had friction bearings and was a 45 ton locomotive. Trillium used it down at the ADM Milling plant to move cars back and forth, for the mill. It was there for a number of years. The Port Stanley Terminal Railway in Port Stanley on Lake Erie took possession of the center cab and it was moved there. I can't remember a date, but I believe it was between 2010 and 2015.
In late 2002 or in early 2003, Stelpipe began to ship by rail via truckloads by M. J. Jones trucking located at the former site of the Dain City Intermodal facility. M. J. Jones took the pipe on flatbeds which were used to ship it out of the plant
and placed into centerbeam flat cars and moved out by Trillium to TR Feeder yard where the CN local would then take them out with the interchange traffic from Trillium.
The CP Page Hersey Spur was then ripped up on or around August 7, 2003.
While this line existed, I had the opportunity by just pure luck to catch CN and the Page Hersey unit out on the trackage outside of the gate. I had no idea of what was going on. They weren't moving railcars. This was in the time frame of the 1990's.
Seeing few photos within the plant on this page, you will see a piece of yellow steel beamed apparatus next to the tracks. This was installed to load the railcars, that they bent the device shortly after it was installed. I guess the idea was abandoned to ever see it in use. The device later disappeared over the years when Lakeside Steel owned the plant.
On July 29, 2009, I was informed that this line was being reinstated. A bulldozer travelled the old R.O.W. and there were orange marker-stakes present along the outer limits of the line's old ROW.
I was informed on August 11th 2009, that a CP subcontractor was beginning to relay the ties and rail one by one, and on August 12th 2009 I returned to the scene and they had put down most of the ties and rail but hadn't yet put all of the spikes in.
When this line was rebuilt as the Lakeside Lead in 2009, I thought it was a CP owned track, but I later was told it was owned by Trillium. This newer version of the line built in 2009 was again torn out again in May or June of 2020. The track hadn't seen use in 7 years.
26 photos in gallery
These photos are of the former alignment of the Page Hersey Spur that at one time ran alon Ontario Road from the area of the Canal Spur to roughly mile 0.3 of the Page hersey Spur, which ran along Ontario Road in Welland, until about 1984. Around 1984, the Page Hersey Spur was relocated northeast-ward to connect to the CP Welland Industrial Lead, so that the Canadian Polish Hall could be built. The ROW would in these days run through the front parking lot of the Polish Hall, that has since become a medical building.
Photos are shown from the west end of the old line to the east end.
Mile 0.30 Looking East (2013) |
Mile 0.30 Looking West (2013) |
Looking East (2013) |
Looking East (2013) |
Looking West (2013) |
Looking West (2013) |