The Gulf Canada Little Current Agency was located at the end of the Little Current team track. In the mid-seventies it was the smallest of the active bulk plants in the Little Current terminal area. The picture at the left was taken in 1976 and is looking towards the northwest. The corrugated metal clad building in the centre left of the photo is the agency warehouse, which also contained the agent's office. The fuel storage tanks were on the north side of the warehouse and interestingly enough were outside the fenced in area. The tank car off-loading pumps can be seen inside the fence to the east of the building to the right side of the right-hand truck. The truck loading rack is directly behind the right hand truck. Since there is a small access road between the agency and the end of the team track, the unloading pipes were buried under this road and surfaced on the north side of the track about 25 feet from the end of the siding. They are visible in front of the insul-brick clad building. This building is identified as the CO-OP building on the 1976 track plan of Little Current (see the "Little Current - General" page and is described elsewhere. Although there was room to spot two or three cars past the Texaco Agency on this siding, Gulf was only able to unload the single car parked in front of the unloading pipes. Fuels were generally received in 10,000 gallon cars which originated at Gulf's Clarkson refinery in southern Ontario. Shipping costs in the mid-seventies were about 7.5 cents per gallon. The agency was supplied year-round by tank car, although supplemental volumes were occasionally trucked in from Sudbury if product was needed in a hurry. Packaged lubricants and grease were all received by truck, never by rail.
The second photo, taken in 1976 from the road between the track and the agency, shows the view eastwards down the team track. Gulf's unloading hookup is to the left of the track. The "bumper" consists of kinks in the rail and a few old rotten ties thrown across the end of the track. The track itself is pretty well ballast free, or rather mud ballasted which turned into a quagmire after a rain. The Texaco Agency, described elsewhere, can be seen down the track a hundred yards or so. In 1930, according to the AER Plan Book, this team track consisted of 743 feet of 80 pound rail and was owned by Algoma Eastern Terminals Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the railway. By 1997 all that remained of the Gulf (now Petro-Canada) agency was the fenced compound containing the warehouse and the truck loading rack. The bulk tanks and tank car offloading pumps are long gone. There is now little or no sign that the team track ever even existed.
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