When the G&G took over the CN’s line to Owen Sound, Ontario, they also bought the stub of the CP’s line to Owen Sound, then connected the two together at the mouth of the Sydenham River/the south end of the harbour. This left a bunch of trackage along the harbourfront, which, eventually, Owen Sound wanted to remove. In approximately 2010, a provincial grant funded the abandonment of that downtown trackage in favor of a swing bridge at the mouth of the harbour.

After 12 years of operations over this bridge (leaving the bridge closed while the OSW local worked the industrial park on the CP stub) the city decided that it should only be open if a train was going across it, which meant a lot of back & forthing to open and close the bridge on days when the local came to town.

The (now) OSW suggested that, if the city would let them run it along the waterfront, some sort of car mover would allow them to only open it once a visit. That was acceptable, so a used Trackmobile was purchased, modified to get a top speed closer to 30mph, and put into service in the middle of 2023.

OSW 1492 is a used TM Magnum, producing maybe 230 HP with a tailwind, which is powerful enough to slowly pull two loaded boxcars up to the previously mentioned industrial park, but still fast enough to drive around the harbour in finite time.

(And, given it’s a weird truck/locomotive hybrid, a local drover was hired and trained to run it, making it the sole single person crewed job on the entire Parsons Vale system.)