OVR Power

Through the summer and fall of 2000, Ottawa Valley Railway’s motive power roster consisted of the following:

2002 – GP38
5006 – GP35
4203 – GP9
1800 – SD18
3509 – MLW M-420
3582 – Bombardier HR-412 (Owned by Mattawa Temiscaming Excursion Company)
3585 – Bombardier HR-412

The 1800 was typically assigned to switch the yard in North Bay and the remaining six locos formed three sets of two, one set for the Grimmer Turn, one set for the Timber Train (Passenger Excursion), and one spare set for work trains, etc. The end of the Timber Train season that year was not our finest hour, with loco’s dying faster than we could fix them and several minor yard derailments occurring at the mill over the Thanksgiving weekend. It got so bad, we had to send the 1800 up to Temiscaming to switch the mill (we typically didn’t let six axle power up the Temiscaming Sub.) and then had to discreetly borrow a unit off CP’s 431 or 432 to switch our yard in North Bay. By Thanksgiving Day every unit in our roster was somewhere between Mattawa and Temiscaming, either dead or limping. That afternoon I got a call from Daryl Duquette advising me that he was bringing all the power in to North Bay with several days of held up mill traffic (with the exception of the 1800 which was still up in Temiscaming). This occasion called for a picture so off to Bonfield I went and the attached photo is the result. There are six units in that consist (2002, 3586, 3582, 4203, 5006, 3509) and if I remember right maybe one and a half were working!