Canadian Corner: Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Steam Locomotives

Posted on September 13, 2020 by rockontrains

Featured subjects this month are Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway steam locomotives in various Quebec and Ontario locations:

: CPR #2426 – Montreal, PQ – 12/25/59 (Credit: Ron Wright)

: CPR #1271 – St. Luc – Montreal, PQ – 12/26/59 (Credit: Ron Wright)

: CPR #2820 – At the Glen – Montreal, PQ – 12/24/59 (Credit: Ron Wright)

: CNR #5302 – Toronto, ON – 9/1/58 (Credit: Ron Wright)

: CNR #1541 – Hagersville, ON – 8/10/57 (Credit: Ron Wright)

: CNR #2627 – Merriton, ON – 12/26/58 (Credit: Ron Wright)

All photos courtesy of Ron Wright Railroad Photography.

Rock on Trains © 2020, Tom Rock + T.D.R. Productions. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from Tom Rock is strictly prohibited.

My Train Recollections: Allan Bishop

Posted on May 20, 2020 by rockontrains

This month’s train recollections come to us from Mr. Allan Bishop. Thanks for sharing your memories, Allan!

AllanB “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.”

Canadian Corner: Canadian National Railway Steam Locomotives

Posted on April 17, 2020 by rockontrains

Featured subjects on April’s Canadian Corner post are Canadian National Railway steam locomotives in various Nova Scotia and Ontario locations:

: CNR #6179 – Truro, NS – MLW 1940 – 1951 – (Credit: Don McQueen)

: CNR #6252 – Being serviced @ Niagara Falls, ON – MLW 1943 – 2/15/58 (Credit: Ron Wright)

: CNR #3480 – Coaling up @ Niagara Falls, ON – MLW 1913 – 8/15/58 (Credit: Ron Wright)

: CNR #6304 – Caledonia, ON – ALCO 1927 – 8/10/57 (Credit: Ron Wright)

: CNR #6034 – Caledonia, ON – CLC 1924 – 6/14/57 (Credit: Ron Wright)

: CNR # 91 – Simcoe, ON – CLC 1910 – 8/10/57 (Credit: Ron Wright)

Photos courtesy of Mr. Don McQueen & Mr. Ron Wright.

My Train Recollections: Bob Mitchell

Posted on April 17, 2020 by rockontrains

April’s train recollections come to us from Mr. Bob Mitchell. Thanks for sharing your memories, Bob!

Bob Mitchell Photo “Windsor, Ontario, the Canadian city on the south shore of the Detroit River, was (and still is) a major industrial city like its big brother on the north shore. In the 1940’s it was laced with railroad tracks, both Canadian and American, having such names as Canadian National, Canadian Pacific, Chesapeake and Ohio, Wabash, New York Central and Essex Terminal, the latter being the tie that bound all the others together. This was my birthplace and hometown and having come from a railroad family, I was steeped in and passionate for steam locomotives and everything that was associated with them. In fact, I loved all things that traveled on steel rails. The narrow gauge railroad that ran through the Detroit Zoological Park qualified for this. This was reached after a quick trip through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel and an exciting ride on the old Peter Witt and PCC cars of the Detroit Street Railways. They glided and clanged up Woodward Avenue from Campus Martius towards Royal Oak where the wonders of this great zoo and its superb railroad beckoned.

My love of all things rail began with my grandparents. Granddad was a station agent with the Canadian Pacific Railway at Indian Head, Saskatchewan, way out west. The dreaded disease called Polio was so concentrated in the Detroit-Windsor area in the 1940’s and it affected so very many kids. Because of this, my Mom, who loved trains even more than I did, having been born in the upstairs residence of a CPR station, took me off to western Canada with her every summer for several years for a visit to Indian Head. There the outbreak wasn’t so bad. Did you know that the baggage cars between Windsor and Toronto carried an Iron Lung for transporting polio-stricken kids to Sick Childrens’ Hospital? West from Ontario, we enjoyed the comforts of the splendid heavyweight tuscan red sleepers and diners available to us on the crack Train #7 – The Dominion – pulled by beautiful Royal Hudson steam locomotives unique to the Canadian Pacific. The dining cars of the day were something to behold with their tables clothed in white linens and adorned with flowers in crystal vases, their cherry-wood paneling, brass fixtures, and the heavenly smells from the kitchen that were beyond belief! The service was impeccable with rules of serving having been set down long ago by William C. Van Horne, famous president of the CPR responsible for pushing the railway across Canada and through the Canadian Rockies. The train delivered us right to Granddad’s platform at Indian Head, the station being a regular stop on the transcontinental main line of the CPR. During one of those visits, we arrived at the height of one of those violent prairie storms. The power was out, and there was my rain-soaked Granddad, complete with railroad lantern, greeting all detainees at the step box. I spent many a wonderful day watching the activity around the “prairie skyscraper” grain elevators that lined the track and the comings and goings of the mainline freights from Granddad’s bay window. Mike, Granddad’s Irish Setter, was my pal. He met the dining car of each passenger train in his quest for table scraps and leftover bones. All the crews along the line knew Granddad and Mike.

Back in Windsor, I saw my first diesel locomotive at the Pillette Road crossing of the Wabash. It was a London-built GMD F7, resplendant in the famous blue and silver livery with the Wabash flag on the nose. These engines were manufactured exclusively for use between Windsor and Buffalo.

Over the years, I studied everything I could about North American railroads, specializing in the age of steam. I was a volunteer with the Canadian Railroad Historical Associations’s now-defunct Salem and Hillsborough Railroad in New Brunswick, Canada where we operated a very fine dinner train and a steam excursion train for many years. I also worked with a wonderful group of volunteers, the Southern Ontario Locomotive Restoration Society, that cosmetically restored ex-CNR 5588. This is a 1911 Grand Trunk product that sits on Windsor’s riverfront overlooking the beautiful Detroit skyline. It marks the spot where the first train arrived in Windsor (and to Detroit from the east) in 1854. How fortunate I have been to have had a life-long love of trains. I now share this by teaching Canadian railroad history with ElderCollege, a southwestern Ontario educational enrichment group associated with Canterbury College of the University of Windsor.”