Railfanning Sartigan and New Finds in Archives

Yesterday, fellow railfan Jean-Pierre Veilleux was kind enough to open Groupe TRAQ archives in Charny for us.  We had a phone discussion about tank cars serving paper mills in Quebec City area and he was pretty sure their archives had some interesting shots of them in the early 80s.

Sartigan Railway 1828, Scott Junction (July 12th, 2014)

For this trip, Jérôme accompanied me and proposed we visit the new Sartigan Railway transloading yard in Scott Junction. We had the chance to see their RS18 now fully painted and lettered and the new S13 they recently acquired.

Goupe TRAQ archives aren't that well classified. A lot of stuff, but you are lucky if you find what you need on the first try. And we did!

Three photo albums from Marc Carette collection were full of pictures taken in Quebec City Area between 1981 and 1983. Some at Dominion Textile, some in Villeneuve and others in Limoilou.

We new Domtex was served by Southern 50' boxcars, but we now know Mo-Pac, Cotton Belt and Railbox were steady visitors.

Also, a few pictures showed sulphuric acid white UTLX tank cars (similar in design to Atlas kaolin car) lettered to Reed Company (the owner of Quebec City paper mill at that time, nowadays called Stadacona or White Birch Paper). That means these interesting cars have their place on the layout.

Also, a picture show a cut of 40' roofless CN boxcars seemingly in woodchip service at Stadacona. I've never seen this before. Seems like CN had exactly the same idea as CP. The cars were NSC because of their ends pattern and reinforced with beams on top of the walls.