Switching question / CP Rail

[RobertInOntario]

I take my son to guitar lessons every Thursday. Interestingly, his lessons are very close to the CP Toronto (Agincourt) Freight Yard, so we get to watch CP trains & some switching, etc., just before he goes in for his lesson!

Yesterday, we were watching what I think was some switching. Several times previously, we have watched a small switcher with two (what I think are) GP38's behind it. You can watch this trio of locos move back and forth with many freight cars behind them as we've often seen them in this area.

We saw these three engines yesterday up close and, as far as we could tell, there was no crew aboard any of the engines. The windows of the small switcher at the front were completely boarded up as well, and we could not see any engineers or conductors inside the two GP38's.

So, these units must be controlled remotely! I understand this is fairly common but it was interesting to see.

Workers at CP Rail are also on strike, so maybe this partly explains the situation! This area was unusually quiet yesterday apart from this switching.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or feedback.

Rob