When the CTRC’s St Clair tunnel opened for freight at the end of 2023, the old OSW mainline to the Michigan Central Tunnel reverted to being a branch line, with, sadly, not much traffic at all. The west end of the branch – Comber to the MC tunnel – had no customers at all, so was promptly abandoned, while the rest of it was spun off into a shortline.
The Leamington & Saint Thomas Railway, a wholly owned OSW subsidiary headquartered in Chatham, exists to provide even more responsive locally run railroad service to the dozen or so customers on the line. Initially it ran from St Thomas west, but in 2024 it stopped service east of Blenheim in favour of interchanging with the Canadian Pacific & Canadian National in Chatham.
The L&ST also operates the ex-CNR Paynes spur – after the St Thomas Ford plant shut down, that line was relegated to car storage, and the CNR didn’t think it was worthwhile maintaining the ex L&PS line from London to St Thomas just to be able to use the disused yards on that spur for car storage, but did think it was worthwhile to sell the whole shebang (L&PS mainline, Paynes Spur, and the trackage left up to the ex-Ford plant) to the OSW, which then railbanked the L&PS and transferred the Paynes spur to the L&ST.
A pair of DL13m2’s (487,490) have been assigned to the L&ST –
490 was painted in L&ST colours before operations began, but #487
went into service still in the (patch-painted) D&H lightning bolt paint scheme – to operate the line out of Chatham, and a single DL10b to shuffled cars into and out of the storage tracks on the Paynes spur.