This month’s train recollections come to us from Mr. Allan Bishop. Thanks for sharing your memories, Allan!
“I was born and raised in eastern Canada near Moncton, NB. I grew up in Albert Mines where the old abandoned rail bed of the Salisbury to Albert branch of the Canadian National Railway ran through our back yard. It actually went all the way to Alma at one time but only briefly. My great grandfather was an Engineer for CNR and drove steam engines right up until he retired in ’52; my grandfather was a Hostler for CN at the Moncton shops up until he retired in the late 80’s, and my great uncle worked in the shops as a machinist, so I guess you could say the railroad was bred into me and running through my veins right from the beginning.
I never knew my great grandfather (he passed away two years before I was born), and I was neither close with my grandfather nor that side of the family, so my personal interests start from memories from the late 60’s and early 70’s, before the railroad started to disappear in the Moncton area. Moncton was known as “The Hub of the Maritimes,” as it didn’t seem to matter where the trains were going to, they had to go through Moncton. My fondest memories are of looking through the car window at all the different cars in the small yard next to the river as my parents would drive to town to go shopping. Even at the age of 5 or 6, I remember seeing the CNR “Maple Leaf” logo on the older cars and thinking I liked it a lot better than the modern “Noodle” style. My other fond recollection is when the branch line was still running to Hillsborough — I recall seeing what I believe was an F unit hitting the snow banks at the Weldon crossing, thinking how cool it was to see the snow exploding into the air.
At around 10 years old, I received my first train set for Christmas and have never lost the love for modeling since then. Teen years spent with a girlfriend and then my wife all kept my interests away from the hobby. On September 5, 1989, I quit my two pack per day cigarette addiction for good; I told my wife I was going to take the money I’d been wasting on cigarettes and spend it on my train hobby. Our first baby came along and a couple years later our second, and the train hobby was once again tucked away. As the years went by and the kids got a little older, I built a small plywood layout, but wanted more. With the help of some of my train friends, my home layout started. I worked on a plan and when the space became available — my oldest graduated and moved out, and my youngest was in his last year of high school — I started building. The build went fast for the first 5 months, but tragedy hit our family on the evening of January 2, 2012: my 17-year old son passed away in a car accident. The passion just isn’t there like it once was for the hobby, and the layout gets worked on as I feel like it, but in the past several months it has been proceeding at a more “regular” pace.
My modeling interest is kept between the 40’s up to the early 70’s as I have very little interest in modern diesel locomotives. My current modeling involves a Maritime based modular group known as UMG and my home layout WVR. The UMG group is an HO Fee-mo type (not exact Free-mo) modular group; we attend and set up at maritime club shows and operate our layout with a bit of a twist. We actually let some of the kids get involved by handing them the “throttle,” showing them how it works, and then we act as the Conductor as the become the engineer. My home layout, Wolf Valley Railroad, is an N scale layout. If you’d like to know more, you can follow my blog: wolfvalleyrr.ca.”
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