General Information: Built: 1947 Partially Removed: 2013 Beginning Point: Mileage 1.05, Red Deer Subdivision End Point: End of track General Direction: Southeast
Customers (c.1968) Borger Bros. Bird Construction Standard Brands Bonar & Bemis Gold Medal Feeds Royalite Oil Western Grocers Later Chemical McKen FR.
Map See my full map of every rail line to exist in Calgary here! Trackage coloured pink/magenta indicates the LA Lead
More on the LA Lead The first LA Lead track was built in 1947 to serve Calgary's somewhat-famous Fleischmann's Yeast plant in the Inglewood/Ogden area. The LA Lead was named after the L Lead, as the LA Lead served industries southeast of the Red Deer Subdivision, while the L Lead served the area northwest of it. Today the oldest track on the LA Lead - the track into the Fleischmann's Yeast plant - is the only part of it that still exists. It was abandoned in the late 2000s and cut off from the main line in 2014.
But the most interesting part of the entire story of the LA Lead is how one industry (Chevron Asphalt??) stopped receiving service from CN and began receiving service from CP via the LA Lead in 1978. When CN was shortening the GTP Industrial Branch even more in in the mid 1970s, an customer of the line in Inglewood was going to lose service as it likely wasn't profitable enough for CN to maintain such a long track to serve a single customer. Most customers at the time likely would have given up with rail service and switched to trucking. But things were were different for this company. So CP extended a small bit of track from the Red Deer Subdivision to connect to the existing track in their industry, thus making it a part of the LA Lead. This was done around 1978.
Track layout in 1977.
CN's GTP Industrial Branch serves the industry.
Track layout between 1978 and 2002. CP's LA Lead serves the industry.