I actually find your experience hard to believe. I have been in Canada myself recently and made pictures from locomotives and trains at various locations. I was in Fields and Golden, at the CP railyards in Calgary and Vancouver, at the Union station in Toronto, actually 5 yards from the tracks in Jasper and nobody asked me what I was doing, why I was doing it or anything else. Railroaders were quite relaxed, i.e. it was an athmosphere known only from Europe.
Of course I didn't trespass, but in some of the locations I was really only a few yards from the tracks and I was seen by rr personnell - no questions asked but a nice wave from an engineer of a AC4400 in Fields as he rode by and passed me. Oshawa is a nearly abandoned looking place in comparison, I have been there on my way to Montreal but I didn't see a train there at all, despite it being the end of the line for Go Transit. They only run trains there once per hour or so, maybe the lady was kidding you?
Overzealous off duty security guard maybe.
I take my photos pretty much anywhere up here. A note though about other things. Do see about getting some kind of a permit to photograph around the refineries around Sarnia ON. They are very careful about issues.
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
Probably a visiting American.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
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