Railroad drawing of the day
Based on profiles drawn by Joshua Moldover @ The Railroad Paint Shop and yours truly @ my dining room table
Answering the question “what would have happened if CPR hadn’t dieselised the CPER in the early 1960s?”; eventually the CPR would get tired of all the duplicate lines and start abandoning the old interurbans, at which point a shortline operator jumped in and bought them (only to be absorbed into a new regional (Canada Southern’s line from Niagara Falls to Windsor)) which was later grabbed by the LT&L during the PV&T’s second round of acquisitions.
1980 (the last motor built – by the CPR shops – for the Grand River after CPR decided to keep the wire up on switching districts, and still in use because the energy crisis of the 1970s put the fear of G-d into the central office) was transferred from the GRR to the LE&N during the process of divesting/abandoning these lines, and was renumbered to 1980 to commemorate the year when the ORRC’s founders decided to try and buy the old radials before the CPR could tear down the wires and abandon them.