In 1913 the tracks reached Goat Island across the North Channel from Little Current.  Goat Island had been chosen as the yard location for the Little Current end of the line for a number of reasons.  Unlike some areas that turn-of-the-century railroads built into, Little Current was already a thriving town when the railway got there.  

The town had been built on land owned by the Sucker Creek Indian Band, but as development has been ongoing for a number of years all of the land near the waterfront was

Ontario Archives
This 1952 aerial view of the Turner yard complex clearly shows the loading dock, the coal piles and the shop and locomotive servicing facility

already taken.  The only lots available to the railway were in the east end of town off Meredith Street.  The original purchases of land had likely been made during the initial 1901 to 1903 construction period when much of the land required south of Espanola had been acquired.  During the final construction of the line, the Algoma Eastern realised that more property would be required to complete the Little Current terminal.  There ensued an interesting and lively exchange between the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Railway's lawyers to obtain the  property.  Some was purchased through the bureau, some was purchased privately  Although there was sufficient area for a depot and team track, there was not enough land available for the size of yard that the railway anticipated would be need.  This land is also about 30 feet above the water level, making dock access difficult.  

Goat Island however was ideal for the railway's purposes.  It was flat, contained enough land for a modest yard and was only a few feet above the water level making dock access easy.  Best of all, it was unsettled and thus available.  The Algoma Eastern Railway lost no time in constructing the new facility which was ready prior to the new Swing Bridge to Little Current being completed.

The track enters onto goat island from La Cloche Island via a 40' through plate bridge.  South of the bridge the line swings around almost 90 degrees to  head west

	Ontario Archives
	This view, taken sometime prior to 1966, since the coal loader is still present, is looking northeast and clearly shows the relationship between Turner (Goat Island) and Little Current.

into the yard.

The layout of the yard has changed over the years.  In 1913 the coal loader was a smaller 400' facility and the commercial dock with its Algoma Eastern Terminals warehouse was accessed via a spur which ran off the west end of the yard. In 1929 the coal facility was tripled in size by process of filling in the open water between the coal dock and the commercial dock.  The commercial dock was now serviced by extending the tracks servicing the the coal.  The tail track on the west end of the yard  became a short stub.  

By 1930, a new warehouse had appeared west of the Algoma Eastern Warehouse on the commercial dock and the track had again been extended to service it.  This warehouse was owned by Abitibi, the then owners of the Espanola Paper Mill.  The presence of this warehouse indicates a fair amount of traffic to, or from the paper mill.  The entire yard complex is 80 pound rail with the exception of the log spur branching north off from the base leg of the wye.  This track was 1892 feet long of which 993 feet was 60 pound rail.  The log spur was reached by a #9 rigid frog switch controlled by an intermediate switch stand.  

All track in the Turner yard complex, with the exception of the Log spur, 407 feet of the coach track north of the engine shop, 91.5 feet of the east leg of the wye and 61.5 feet of the coal dock track was owned by the Algoma Eastern Terminals, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Algoma Eastern Railway.  All other track was owned by the AER.  The yard tracks, which were all 1695 feet in length used #8 rigid frogs. Access was gained to all other tracks via rigid frog #8 switches, except the cinder pit track and number 1 shop track which used #9 rigid frogs.  Switch stands were generally intermediate except for the number 2, 3 and 4 yard tracks, the numbers 2 and 3 shop tracks and the tail track of the wye which used low switch stands and the west leg of the wye and number 4 shop track which used high stands.

The longest track in the complex is the 3088 foot number 1 coal dock track.  Its companion siding, known as the commercial shed track is 1751 feet long.  The main shop track is 1593 feet long while to coal chute track is 661 feet long and the cinder pit track is 405 feet in length.  The coach track north of the shop is 994 feet in length.

As coal traffic during and after World War II, more tracks were laid north of the current yard to handle the stockpiles of coal kept there.  Piles were built via the simple expedient of laying a track, dumping coal around it and then raising the track on top of the coal.  The 1952 aerial view of the yard shows these tracks. 

The sixties and seventies brought many changes to the Turner yard.  The coal unloader was dismantled in 1966 and replaced with an Iron Ore Pellet loader which was used to load Lake Freighters with Iron Ore out of Inco at Copper Cliff.  The warehouses were long gone, and the original Wye at the east end of the yard, while still connected to the main line, has been taken out of service and replaced with a balloon track running around the west end of the yard on the original pre-1946 Highway 6 road alignment.  Even the yard trackage seems to have been changed with an extra track and the scale moved to a stub end track, albeit the west end of the scale track shows evidence of a former connection to the rest of the yard..

Turner continued as an active yard until the early 1990s when Inco closed the Iron Ore Recovery Plant and the final traffic to the harbour disappeared.  Since rail traffic across the bridge ceased in the mid-eighties there is no longer any requirement for a yard at Turner.  By 1997, the end-of-track was just west of the Highway 6 crossing and all the yard, service tracks and railway owned structures had been removed.  In 1998 the Government of Ontario  realigned Highway 6 to cross onto Goat Island from LaCloche Island on the old Algoma Eastern right-of-way.  The Pellet Loader was removed in 1999.

The site remains empty and is almost certainly likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future.  Years of outdoor coal and iron ore storage on the property has almost certainly resulted in a polluted soup of waste chemicals in the soil.  There has been a small cleanup operation running intermittently but a full scale clean up will likely run into the millions of dollars.  Canadian Pacific at one point apparently approached the Huron Central with the idea of refurbishing the line to move a few thousand rail cars of contaminated soil out of Turner, but the freight and refurbishing costs were apparently too much for the CPR to handle.  If and when a clean up takes place, the contaminates will probably be removed either by ship, or by truck.

In the meantime a large fenced pile of contaminated soil removed during the road realignment sits to the east of the Highway as you approach the swing bridge.  The tarpaulin covered pile makes a rather odd entrance gateway to Manitoulin Island.