Sarnia, ON: 1971-1990s CN/GTW Railroad Ferry

(Satellite)

Steve Horton posted four photos with the comment: "The  Scotia II and Margaret Yorke are backing out of the slip in Sarnia with nine rail cars headed to Michigan while the St. Clair and Phyllis Yorke wait downstream (with a load of 12 cars) for the Sarnia slip to become free so they can  dock and unload.  The fisherman could care less about all the activity  going on behind him. May 15, 1994."

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Dennis DeBruler commented on Steve's post
I think I found the remnants of the ferry dock,
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.9664004,-82.4125479,351m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu

I included the river at the top and the railroad tunnel at the bottom to help correlate this image with a contemporary satellite image.

Aug 3, 1976 @ 36,000; AR1VEEL00010039

When I research railroad infrastructure, I normally get the oldest aerial photo that I can find. But when I could not find a ferry dock, I remembered that a ferry service was started after railcars got too big to fit in the tunnel whose eastern entrance is in the lower-right part of these photos. So that is when I got the newest, decent resolution, photo that I could find. That was the 1976 photo above, and I did find a ferry dock. And it had a fishing pier to the north and oil storage tanks to the south of the dock.

Jun 1, 1951 @ 23,600; AR1PN0000050181

"In March 1971, they reintroduced a ferry service to handle the even taller tri-level auto carriers and 85' long automobile parts cars. Because of the growth of double-stack container cars, in the 1990s CN built a replacement 31' single-track tunnel just north of the original tunnel." [HAER_data via Dennis DeBruler]