DAR trip report with hot news!

[downeastrailfan]

Today Samuel Clark and I went on a DAR field trip. No changes at Windsor and Hantsport to report. We continued on to Blue Beach Rd, and walked along the ROW going west and found one partial and one full washout. This is in addition to the washout we couldn't find. No changes at Wolfville. A two pieces of rail have been removed from the siding at Port Williams next to the feed mill. We found a disappointing sight at Greenwich. The rails from the three tracks at the crossing have been removed and paved over. The Crossing posts are still in place, along with the electrical cabinet, while the lights and crossbucks have been removed. Dirt now covers some of the tracks, and the siding into Frito-Lay is gone. A depressing sight indeed. At Steam Mill, the office from the elevator remains, but the grain bins are gone, and so is the concrete and rails. No changes in Centreville, and the former location of the station is still a mystery to us.

Onto the good news. While snooping around Lakeville, we found the Billtown station has been moved to a private residence, sitting on the north side of the roadbed. The current owners placed it on skids, towed it with a piece of heavy equipment about a mile railway east on the ROW to their farm. This was done in January 2012. The roof is currently covered in Tyvek, the floorboards replaced, the doors on the freight room end have been removed and a new wall built two windows. Future plans include finishing the roof, rebuilding the bay window and the roof overhang. Its planned use is as a workshop. It is located at 284 Lamont Rd. One of the owners was home, Shelly Bain, and she was very friendly and happy to give us a tour.

Since I can't figure out how to tag a location on Google maps, the station is roughly located where the roads on the edge of the field meet: http://tinyurl.com/bpvm9p8

Unfortunately with the short winter days, we ran out of daylight and didn't make it to Weston. That will be a trip for another day.

Photos to come of today's adventure.

[SamuelMClark]

Here is the general location showing on Google Maps. Hopefully the marker I created for the link shows.

https://maps.google.ca/maps?saddr=45.12 ... sz=16&z=16

Please see the link for the Billtown station for photos.

http://www.dardpi.ca/wiki/index.php?tit ... wn_Station

[Dan Conlin]

Thanks for sharing. Interesting images. I especially like the shots of the station restoration in Lakeville. I am glad to see the owners are referencing the original plans. (You can vierw and print these plans from a link on our pages to the CP Historical Society website by the way. I am sorry that I wasn't available for the trip.

Dan Conlin

[stem]

The prints say it's a standard No. 4 CPR station.

He must have got the print from the CPHA (Cptracks.ca) site.

http://www.cptracks.ca/data/Structures/H-14-23.pdf

[fergusontea]

The Billtown station was already gone when I went by on my way to my sister's place at Thanksgiving. I'm thankful to learn that it is ok! I feared for the worst. :O

-mike

[fergusontea]

Steve: On a similar topic (since we're discussing the old North Mountain line, I have all of those photos of the warehouses from Kingsport to Weston but I don't have a place online for them anymore. Can we work out something that allows me to upload them to the DARDPI? All I ask is that I be credited.

-mike

[stem]

We already have a category for Apple Warehouses. If I remember it was Dan who set it up to put all the photos he already had. So you upload them to the wiki, put your photo credits on them, then we create a page for each warehouse and list the photos there.

http://dardpi.ca/wiki/index.php?title=C ... Warehouses


Go ahead and start. I'll check up on them and make sure they're all categorized properly. Just put a good description of the photo page and your credits and we can all take it from there. Maybe after seeing a few pages done you can chip in too if you get the idea.

[SamuelMClark]

I was doing some Google Searches for Dominion Atlantic to see what I could find that wasn't related to our site, and I had found this PDF document written by Spurgeon G "Spud" Roscoe

http://www.ve1bc.com/files/Cornwallis%2 ... ilroad.pdf


Reading part of his write up he mentions the Billtown station and that the current owner want to fully restore it and make it into a museum.

[Dan Conlin]

Hey Matt and Sam,

Interested in another field trip? It's a good time of year to spot of railway features before the leaves come in!

Dan

[SamuelMClark]

Yeah I'm up for another trip, though make sure to put on Sun Screen. I went up to Windsor there on Sunday and got a sun burn. I took pictures of the Windsor and Hantsport rail yards. Though I didn't get some pictures of some gypsum cars which I need to finish up plus a take a few better ones of certain areas of the Windsor Rail yard. As I'm working on Windsor and Hantsport Railway section for the site. It's really small but hopefully useful.

This weekend I'm free but the weekends I do have off in May I'm busy as I'm helping Margaret (girlfriend) and her family out. Then I'll basically have week days off for my weekend after May.

Maybe if we go this weekend if it's nice we could try and find the Mosherville Station, and maybe explore the Mantua rail yard and walk out to the bridge. I had found that there was a bridge up near Ellershouse going towards Windsor I believe the line is crossing over the St Croix River.

[Dan Conlin]

All that sounds great. Maybe Sunday?

Dan

[SamuelMClark]

So on Wednesday Margaret and I were up in the Valley and going though Lakeville I stopped in to see how the Bill Town Station Reno's were going (sorry no pictures, should have) and they are doing a good job. They finally have the roof on and got the gable supports for the roof on which they did a good job of copying the original ones that were still on there. I don't think they are going to put the operators bay back in as one of the new gables appeared to be over part of where the operator bay would be at, but then again I didn't fully walk around it.