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• i've seen it Mike, it crosses Ironwood drive and i think it goes to some kind of scrap recycler.you can get a nice shot of the roadbed as they hacked thru the bush on streetview. i had also heard about ETR getting a ferry but i can't understand why, when they already have direct connections to eveyone on this side. if it gets built it'll be in the same area as the truck ferry from what i hear, and that's another reason why the ferry was/is (?) closed.
  and...i'm not sure if she's still there, but ol Pere Marquette #12 (ferry) has been sitting in the Morton slip since october i beleive...maybe this is why. some of those things are still at work around the river/lakes i think. #12 has been tied up in detroit for years.
  i didn't even think they still pulled out of ford. i forgot about boarder reload, that's the lumber facility right? i think they still pull out of the Hearn wearhouse too.
  on a fun note, i'm a memeber of the Southern Ontario Locomotive Restoration Society or SOLRS, the same group that owns ol' ETR #9. We're in possesion of 2 of ETR's old engines #101 and 103. 101 is the oldest S-1 in canada and was hauling material for WW2 and didn't stop until about 2 years ago. we just got 103 to finally turn over. These technically belong to Don Hearn, but he's letting us restore them and is offering the use of his track and buildings out on Thomas road in A'burg. anyways.......pending discussion with ETR, SOLRS has a very strong interested in running a dinner train on the ETR from windsor to A'burg. Hopfully this goes well, 103 can be put into proper order and a dinner train can get on the rails. i think this community would eat it up. if all goes well we might be able to get a steam engine down hear to pull the cars!
  i've heard ETR is great with visitors, and i might have even suggested they be covered here since they're one of the longest running Windsor companies.

  ok....geez sorry Andrew lol highjack over....maybe ;)

• Mike: They are upgrading the rail tunnel, CP Rail is doing it to run double stacks through town. They wanted to make an intermodal hub part of a transport thing by the airport, which would've been huge rail business (and would've made the old Hiram Walker CSX line that is left north of Pelton massively valuable) but last I heard Eddie Francis and council wasted a lot of time on an expensive study and London beat them to the federal financing to do it... highly unlikely Ottawa is going to want to build two of the same things so close to each other. Another rumored reason CSX is investing in upgrading the CASO, supposedly.

  The real alternative to building a second bridge would've been to build a customs port on the outskirts of town, load all the trucks up on the back of a flat bed train and run them across the border via the tunnel to another customs port on the Detroit side. It's what they do in Europe (English channel I believe) with their trucks. It would've been a portion of the cost... but that's just it, the cost involved is what made them *want* to build a bridge, and is the real answer to almost all of Windsor's developmental and planning problems through the decades... there is a quick fix in construction projects and Windsor has a long addiction to them. Allowing them to build something creates jobs - even if they're temoprary - and makes deals with local construction companies who pass the dollar along and keep everyone happy. Eddie Francis will likely get re-elected because of this based on the "creation" of 12,000 jobs to build the new bridge and link to the 401 (which is starting this year obviously)... those jobs are temporary but a job is a job these days, now more so than ever before, and again - quick fix, makes everyone happy and politicians look good and heroic at shovel ceremonies. Windsor has knocked down so many old buildings mainly on this reason alone - neglecting buildings until they're falling apart and beyond repair is a great way to guarantee there will be a job there or potential job there to knock it down and, if they're lucky, build something new (and cheap, ugly, antiseptic, culturally neutral) buildings that are, again, nothing more than quick fix construction jobs. This, and the whole Canadians loathing their own history, heritage and culture, combined with the apathy and insular small-town thinking that is pervasive around here (and most especially Windsor) makes for the horribly run city and long history of mistakes of destroying the noble heritage, cultural and facade that our past relatives left for us... it means nothing in the service of a dollar in the end. There is no concept of a dollar as an investment here, it's just a dollar to spend.

  Anyways... yes... massively off topic now... but the ETR suggestion is a good one. I second it. :)

• Hey Aaron, where is SOLRS based out of? This is something I would be really interested in sine I have been railfanning every since I saw my first train. Send me an email at admin-AT-6jonline-DOT-com with some more info if you can :)

  I also heard that the new west end spur was for the scrap yard and possibly 1 or 2 other customers, just haven't been out to see for myself yet. Border Reload is the lumbar yard on Walker Rd. I'm not sure if they pull from Ford or just wye trains there for Hearn but I do see a couple trains a day going through the crossing beside me on St. Luke.

  Carl: Glad to hear about the tunnel. Maybe this will bring more rail activity back to Windsor. Although, it won't be the same without the square top carved into the east tube :P.

  Anyways, thanks to Aaron and Carl for the information and sorry to Andrew for continuing to hijack the post.

• Mike that addy isn't working for me. I'd give mine out but it's a work e-mail. should i have not copy and pasted that? lol

• replace the -AT- with @ and the -DOT- with . lol. kinda hides an address from spam bots

• for bio of William Christie see DCB entry below
  http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=6032&&PHPSESSID=1kou06tgec37h2a6ej8rbd66o3

• Trucks are best , no waiting for stupid CP rail to go go back and forth on tecumseh road and dougal ave and good ridence to ETR they are a pain in the ass to Windsor needs to get rid of this problem of blocking road ways for more than 5 min., trains are dinasaurers any way.