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• Maintenance cars. #90 is a sweeper. #94 appears to be for maintaining the overhead lines. You can see the scissor-jack lift on the roof.

• #94 appears to be an overhead work unit, with matching flat car behind to transport wire, and other equipment. This is a standard style car for most Electric lines around the world, from that time line and in today's modern street car running, as example with San Fransico MUNI system, and Amtrak/NJ Transit out east, but with a modern Twist.

• Ian, I was going to send you a link to this, but I should have known you'd be all over it!

• Hi, rail grinding is a maintainance activity that takes place on regular railroads as well as streetcars -- it's done to restore the profile of the tracks as they get deformed from the contact with train wheels. Grinding reduces the need for replacing the rails. One big company that builds this equipment for large applicatios is called Loram.

  It's a really interesting and amazing sight to see if you ever get to see it happening in the field.

  Like a lot of other MOW equipment, it looks like the streetcar shop fabricated its own equipment from an old passenger streetcar.

• S W & A is an acronym for?

  Please! Thank you.

  -g

• Sandwich Windsor Amherstburg ....

• Here is a video of the modern day Railgrinder.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdc6zgaulrk

  Here is a picture of a Switch Grinder at work.
  http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=92029&nseq=43

  This is what Fresh Grinded Rail looks like.
  http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=228067&nseq=337
  http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=225384&nseq=484

  Here is why Rail needs to be Ground down sometimes.
  http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=211859&nseq=41
  http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=204870&nseq=52
  The Rail is needed to be ground to make the life of the rail longer. If you can see in the first photo, you can see the line where the rail is starting to create a little lip, which can in the long run get worst, and start pushing wheels out of alignment and create a derailment. In the second you can see that the outside part of the rail head is not wearing properly, and needs to be ground down, so that the rail gets worn out evenly, or at least try to evenly wear it out.

• The railgrinder is an amazing machine, especially with the speed that it operates at. Do they operate around Windsor often?

• They do operate around Windsor, but its like once every 2 years or so, and only on the Canadian Pacific Railway (aka CPR) Line. The VIA mainline does not see any rail grinding train, since its not as busy, to warrant the rails to be ground down, also the weight of the train is not dangerous. You will see Test trains come down on all the Rail lines into Windsor, (Geometry Trains), to check the rail with the computers and such onboard, along with other measuring equipment. This sometimes results in the Railroad asking for the railgrinder to come through and grind down some of the tracks that are needed.

• it would be great if the city would have built a rail museum and kept one of the original street cars but i keep forgetting this is windsor