Elgin County Railway Museum Grounds, St Thomas Ontario
I last visited the Elgin County Railway Museum back in 2014, didn't really shoot all that much at the time and focused mostly on the exhibit inside. I stopped by on the way to Port Stanley in the morning to shoot around the grounds. This used to be home base for Canada Southern Railway. I have family connections to the Canadian Railway industry both with Canadian National and Canadian Pacific, but I never hear of CASO. It stretched from Windsor to Niagara Falls and was built in the 1850s, like a lot of 19th century railways, CASO was a financial failure and consolidated with a much bigger company, in this case Michigan Central, and later its parent company New York Central.
For much of the 20th century CASO was the railway short cut between Chicago and New York, the NYC Wolverine would pass through St.Thomas, major maintenance centre for New York Central. Even well into the 1970s you could hop an Amtrak Train along CASO in Ontario and go direct to Chicago or New York. In the end this railway was bought up by CN and CP for the trestle across the Niagara River and the tunnel under the St. Clair River, most of the rails were pulled up and the right of way left be. It's going to be while before the Wolverine is going to stop in St. Thomas again.
I wanted to capture the train station, the abandoned freight cars and what was left of the track. There was a lot to work with, I plan to go back and shoot in colour this Summer.
Camera: Nikon F2S, Nikkor S.C 50 f1.4 lens, Nikkor Q135 f2.8 lens, Ais 28 f2.8 lens.
Film: Kentmere 100, Rodinal 1+50
For much of the 20th century CASO was the railway short cut between Chicago and New York, the NYC Wolverine would pass through St.Thomas, major maintenance centre for New York Central. Even well into the 1970s you could hop an Amtrak Train along CASO in Ontario and go direct to Chicago or New York. In the end this railway was bought up by CN and CP for the trestle across the Niagara River and the tunnel under the St. Clair River, most of the rails were pulled up and the right of way left be. It's going to be while before the Wolverine is going to stop in St. Thomas again.
I wanted to capture the train station, the abandoned freight cars and what was left of the track. There was a lot to work with, I plan to go back and shoot in colour this Summer.
Camera: Nikon F2S, Nikkor S.C 50 f1.4 lens, Nikkor Q135 f2.8 lens, Ais 28 f2.8 lens.
Film: Kentmere 100, Rodinal 1+50
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