Back in 2000 or 2001, I was exploring Saint John, New Brunswick and took these photos of the former Lantic Sugar refinery.
The refinery opened in 1915 and received raw cane sugar from the Caribbean and South America. The processed product (white sugar and molasses) was shipped out via rail and truck.
There was a certain smell from the refinery… a bit sweet, a bit sickly.
In 1981, Lantic Sugar purchased St. Lawrence Sugar in Montreal, and consolidated its operations there. The Saint John facility was closed in 2000 and demolished in 2004.
Today the lot is undeveloped. Some remediation has been done but it is contaminated and will likely never be anything but a green space.
CN served the facility as an extension of their potash spur. The track ran past the potash terminal and Lantic Sugar, on to Pugsley Wharf along Water Street.
I took a photo of it from across the harbour, on Germaine Avenue (below), in December 2002. The tracks in the foreground still exist and lead into the working port. The Lantic Sugar complex is in the big red box.
Speaking of Pugsley Wharf, here’s a photo from June 2003 (below) showing the last bit of track along the waterfront. I shot it through a fence. The track on the left went just past the fence, and the siding on the right (with the track bumpers) would have held freight cars that were transloaded from the big blue warehouse.
None of that exists today. It’s now the Marco Polo cruise ship terminal.
The shoreline of Saint John harbour has changed dramatically in the past 60-70 years.
CN’s Track
This map is from CN’s Car Control Manual (Moncton, Saint John, Havelock, Sussex, Oromocto, Nashwaak and Centreville Subdivisions) dated January 1988.
It shows how extensive the track was for Lantic Sugar and for the Pugsley Wharf area of Saint John. Lantic Sugar itself had more than a half dozen tracks.
These are the track assignments as per the car control manual.
| SPINS | Designation | Usable Footage |
|---|---|---|
| LW41 | Atlantic Sugar Ref. | 150 |
| LW42 | Atlantic Sugar Ref. | 60 |
| LW43 | Atlantic Sugar Ref. Outward Loading | 295 |
| LW44 | Atlantic Sugar Ref. Outward Loading | 330 |
| LW45 | Atlantic Sugar Ref. | 455 |
| LW46 | Atlantic Sugar Ref. | 110 |
| LW47 | Ballast Wharf* | 140 |
| LW48 | Ballast Wharf* | 485 |
| LW49 | Ballast Wharf* | 530 |
| LW50 | Ballast Wharf* | 445 |
| LW51 | Ballast Wharf* | 370 |
| LW52 | Ballast Wharf* | 275 |
| LW53 | Ballast Wharf* | 275 |
| LW54 | North Stub Track | 950 |
| LW55 | South Track | 605 |
| LW56 | Lead Track | – |
| LW57 | Scow Siding | 235 |
| LW58 | Runaround | 830 |
| LW59 | Grain Elevator | 540 |
| LW60 | Grain Elevator | 540 |
| LW66 | Old Pugsley 1 | 820 |
| LW67 | Old Pugsley 2 | 820 |
| LW68 | Old Pugsley 3 | 475 |
| LW69 | Pugsley Ext. Track 1 | 625 |
| LW70 | Pugsley Ext. Track 2 | 610 |
John Falconer graciously agreed to the use of his photo of Lantic Sugar (circa 1975) in this post:
The six tracks LW48-LW53 are all occupied on the left side, with a combination of boxcars, covered hoppers, and a tank car. I see three boxcars on what was probably LW45 with a covered hopper on LW46. Track LW44 goes into the building so who knows what was on that.
People in the RailsNB group on Facebook told me they shipped sugar out mostly in covered hoppers. I thought it would have been bagged, and maybe some bags did go out in the many boxcars shown here, but the hoppers were used for bulk sugar.
Some notes:
- None of the Lantic Sugar tracks are very long. Keep in mind that the shortest car was 40 feet and cars in 1988 would be at least 50′ long.
- The “Ballast Wharf” tracks are listed as “for storage & cleaning sugar”.
- I have no idea what a scow siding is.
- Did you know Saint John had a grain elevator? It actually had two – CNR and CPR. Grain was shipped out of Saint John until 1989 or 1990, according to this post.
The above photo from about 1930 shows the CPR grain elevator in the foreground, with the CNR grain elevator at left across the harbour, and I guess that’s Lantic Sugar at far right. Photo from the New Brunswick Museum, object 1989.83.534, from the Louis Merritt Harrison Collection.
You can see other interesting photos on the NBM web site by going here and entering terms like “grain elevator” or “pugsley”.
Nicely done. Things change quickly and it is easy to forget what was there.
Interesting post, Steve. In this post:
https://tracksidetreasure.blogspot.com/2015/05/cgmx-covered-hoppers.html
I profile the Lantic operations between Montreal and Toronto. Interestingly, in 2000 I found a few CGMX covered hopper cars heading to Saint John! Thereafter, billed to Montreal East, coinciding with your dates.
Eric
This is just a guess, but if something is labelled “scow siding,” I would think it had to do with items being unloaded to or from a barge. I have only heard the word scow used once, and that was for the iron barge that somehow became marooned in rocks in the Niagara River right before the Horseshoe Falls. The tourist information always referred to the barge as the iron scow. It hung in there in the raging rapids for many decades before finally coming apart a while ago. So possibly the scow siding has something to do with items being transferred to or from barges in the harbour?