We've all seen models of icing platforms--often hundreds of feet long, with men wielding picks and chutes adjacent to the hatches of refrigerator cars. Yet, how many of these actually were there, on the CNR in Ontario during the postwar steam era?

Working from west to east along the Northern Ontario District mainline, the first facility was at Armstrong. However, that was a secondary point, to be used only in emergency. Ditto for Nakina. The biggies were Hornepayne and Capreol. Then it was New Toronto (Mimico) and Danforth, the latter only for eastbound shipments off the Brampton, Newmarket and Bala Subdivisions. Grimsby was a secondary terminal for fruit traffic originating on the Niagara Peninsula.

That's it--there were no other regular or secondary icing platforms on the Southern Ontario District. Mind you, the CNR also had a few ice houses for storing company ice for use in passenger cars and crew coolers, harvested locally. One of these existed at Allandale. Read about that one and more in this topic on the retail ice industry in Ontario. But if you are interested in true division point operations on the Northern or Southern Ontario District of the CNR during the 1950s, choose among Hornepayne, Capreol, Mimico and Danforth.

This picture, courtesy of the Northern Ontario Railroad Museum, shows a portion of the icing platform at Hornepayne in the late 1940s.

That picture appears in Steam in Northern Ontario. There is a lot more in that book about the icing platforms at Hornepayne and Capreol. The manuscript covers everything from harvesting to loading into the ice house, crushing, handling of refrigerator cars in freight trains and yards, and topping up the reefers with ice and salt.

One of the inherent troubles with writing and publishing a series of books on the entire CNR operation in Ontario during the 1950s is that of too much choice. There is simply no railway point, no subdivision, no junction, no station, no terminal which is not of interest for modeling!

When I originally published this article on February 16, 2006, I was an avid railway modeller. At the time, I pondered how a scratchbuilder could look at a picture such as this one showing the icing platform at Hornepayne and not get all weak in the knees and start reaching for stripwood or styrene? I was tempted, regardless of what I was "supposed" to be modelling!

A word about Steam in Northern Ontario. It is the definitive snapshot of CNR steam operations from Toronto to the furthest northwest regions of the province.