Weekend Report: New Rolling Stock Appears on the Miniature Railway!
Click on each image for a closer look! . We had another fine weekend at the Toronto Railway Heritage Centre with a steady stream of visitors all weekend long. Our volunteers did a terrific job despite the City declaring an "extreme heat alert" as temperatures reached the low 30's Celsius and into the 40's with humidity added into the calculations. . Of special interest this weekend were the first appearances of two new pieces of rolling stock on our miniature railway as featured in these set of images. . The first is a riding car especially designed to allow the engineer operating our mini-Whitcomb to ride behind it without having to be the first rider on the following passenger car. This car can also be used as a training car allowing the trainer to ride behind the student on one of our steam engines, for example. . The second new piece of rolling stock is not actually completely new as Michael Guy built the first version several years ago as as a miniature railway dining car and ran it successfully on the Golden Horseshoe Live Steamers track in Hamilton, Ontario. It has now been rebuilt into a longer car using the same trucks that we now use for our miniature railway passenger car. In the attached images we find it in service feeding our staff! . The Assiniboine Valley Railway, a miniature railway club in Winnipeg, Manitoba in western Canada have featured an annual dinner train at their track as shown in the photo in the lower right from their website.. Each time the train completed a loop of their track, a new course was served! . Posting by Russ Milland; Pictures by Lance Gleich .
Field Trip Report: Part 3 of 7 – New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York
Click on the image for a closer look! . Following Strasburg was an early evening visit to Altoona, where we discovered that Horseshoe Curve is now completely shut down for visitor access after 5PM. The staircase is closed off and you're not even allowed to park anywhere near the place! We parked on the side of the road and sat on a picnic table near the visitor's center, where we could hear a freight train going through the curve with only fleeting glimpses of the train itself. . The next morning the Railroaders Museum in Altoona relieved the cumulative disappointments somewhat. The display is extremely well done and focuses on the people in railroading rather than the trains. They are currently building a new roundhouse and turntable although the museum almost shut down this year due to a lack of funding. The economic downturn in the U.S. seems to have hit Central Pennsylvania very hard. . #6- A plan of the new roundhouse and turntable, which appears to be completed although it wasn't operating the day we visited. . Access more info on the Altoona Railroaders Museum by clicking here. . To read Part 4 of this series, click here. To return to the first installment of this news posting, click here. . . Posting and Pictures by Derek Boles, TRHA Historian
Field Trip Report: Part 2 of 7 – New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York
Click on each image for a closer look! . The following day, August 4, I rode various commuter trains around the Philadelphia area. In my opinion Philadelphia is the most interesting city in North America to experience a wide variety of rail passenger transportation and mass transit. I had ridden most of the commuter lines on previous trips and this time I traveled from Center City Philly to Wilmington, Delaware along the Northeast Corridor. Along the way, I snapped two photos of the old Baldwin Locomotive Works site through the window of the speeding SEPTA coach. . #4- The Baldwin works were located in Eddystone, PA, a few miles southwest of Philadelphia and these were the boiler shops. From 1831 to 1956, Baldwin produced over 70,000 locomotives. The company made 535 steam locomotives for CN, about 13% of their roster, as well as hundreds of locomotives for CN predecessor companies, including the first locomotives used in commuter train service in Toronto in 1878. . #5- The administration building was built in 1928. Baldwin was far less successful with its diesel locomotives than with steam. One of its 1948 diesel products was CPR 7069, currently residing in Roundhouse Park. There have been several unsuccessful attempts to develop the site since Baldwin went out of business in 1972. . Time was also spent visiting the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania on our way to Buffalo, New York. The museum had a display called the Railroad Education Centre that I was interested in photographing for ideas for the Toronto Railway Heritage Centre. It was aimed towards educating the general public about the role of railroads in society and was economical and compact in its presentation. Unfortunately this has now been displaced by a day care centre and Thomas play area, a telling sign of the direction that railroad museums are moving towards these days. . Another disappointment was the bookstore at the Strasburg Railroad, which I remember as the best and most comprehensive bookstore for railroad titles I've ever seen. The store has been moved to an outlet mall closer to the main highway three miles away and the book selection has been considerably reduced. It was also a mess with books all over the place and clearly no one had bothered to clean it up in days. . The Strasburg operation itself was, as always, interesting. I usually marvel at the different ways that they manage to extract money from visitors, usually a couple of new schemes every time I visit. My Pennsylvania friend went for a bike ride around Amish country and I sat on the passenger platform watching the steam locomotives. There were three of them in operation that day, including a CN engine, and it didn't cost a dime to watch them! . Click here to read Part 3; To return to the first installment of this news posting, click here. . Posting and Pictures by Derek Boles, TRHA Historian
Field Trip Report: Part 1 of 7 – New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York
Click on each image for a closer look! .
A recent vacation in July of 2010 to visit a friend in the Philadelphia area provided an opportunity to see much of railroad interest. Unfortunately an Amtrak trip to Philly from Toronto was not in the cards since it's impossible to get there in one day, hence Porter Airlines to Newark. The sightseeing began a few miles from the airport with a visit to Ellis Island in New York Harbor, the famed immigration depot near the Statue of Liberty for millions of people arriving in the U.S. I was more interested in the fact that the ferry departed from the old Central Railroad of New Jersey station in Jersey City, used by generations of commuters who crossed the Hudson River by ferry, then boarded CRNJ trains for home. The station and grounds are now part of Liberty State Park. . #1- The Victorian headhouse was built in 1889 and closed in 1967. It was incorporated into Liberty State Park in 1976. Between 1913 and 1918, this was the New York terminal for the Lehigh Valley Railroad, which maintained a downtown Toronto ticket office and operated several sleepers a day between this terminal and Toronto Union Station via the Grand Trunk Railway. . #2- The Bush style train shed was added in 1914 and is similar in design and construction to the shed at Toronto Union Station, now being rebuilt. Park authorities have allowed vegetation to fill the abandoned shed and tracks, which creates a surprisingly agreeable ambience. . #3- The Jersey City Bush shed was the largest ever built, at 308,000 square feet, slightly larger than the Toronto Union Station shed. Unlike Toronto, skylights were built over the platforms, part of the original Bush design, but eliminated in Toronto to reduce expenses. (photo by bridgepix)
More information on this structure can be found here. . Click here to read Part 2. . Posting by Derek Boles, TRHA Historian
Book Signing at Don Station - The Craigellachie Kid
Click on each image for a closer look! . We mentioned in an earlier Field Trip Report that the young lad in the famous picture shown here of the driving of the last spike at Craigellachie, B.C. would be the feature of a future post. . Ray Argyle has written a book about this boy. It is titled "Boy in the Picture - The Craigellachie Kid and the Driving of the Last Spike". Here is more information from Ray Argyle's website about the book and the boy: . "The Boy in the Picture: The Craigellachie Kid and the Driving of the Last Spike, is a Young Adult book about the adventures of Edward Mallandaine. He's the boy seen peering out in the iconic photo of the driving of the Last Spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway, taken on November 7, 1885 - 125 years ago this year. . Edward had just turned 18 when he left his home in Victoria, British Columbia, to join the Canadian militia to fight Louis Riel in the North-West Rebellion of 1885. Hired to ride dispatches over the unfinished stretch of railway in British Columbia, he meets highway men, high officials, men of the North-West Mounted Police, and the denizens of saloons hidden away in mountain passes. He survives the lawlessness of remote towns and railway camps, rubs shoulders with Chinese labourers struggling to blast a right-of-way through the towering peaks of Eagle Pass, and makes a freezing midnight ride by railway flatcar to reach the outpost of Craigellachie just in time." . This Sunday, August 29th, at 4:00 p.m. Ray will be hosting a book signing at Don Station and will also be interviewed by Derek Boles, TRHA's Historian. . If you present the invitation found by clicking here, you may print it off and use it for a free ride on our miniature railway at the book signing event. You may visit Ray Argyle's website by clicking here. . Click here to read the next of our series of TRHA News postings on the 125th Anniversary of the driving of the Last Spike on the CPR. . Posting by Russ Milland
Historic Note: #4803 Donated to the City of Toronto by CN
Click on the image for a closer look! . Derek Boles, TRHA's historian, publishes a daily posting on the Toronto Railway Heritage Yahoo Group List. These postings document major railway oriented events that happened on that day of the year. One of today's items is as follows: . "August 26, 1984: . The Canadian National Great Lakes Region presents diesel-electric locomotive No. 4803 to Mayor Art Eggleton and the City of Toronto to mark the municipality's sesquicentennial. The GP7 was built by General Motors Diesel of London, Ontario in 1953 and operated all over Canada before being retired in 1975. Over 2700 units of this model were built in the U.S. and Canada and many of them continue to operate in secondary service. A brass plaque commemorating this event was also prepared and held by CN pending th e establishment of a Toronto railway museum. No. 4803 remained at Spadina roundhouse until its demolition in 1986 required the engine to be transferred to the CP John Street roundhouse, where it is now one of the principal displays, along with steam locomotive No. 6213. . If you wish to read these daily postings from Derek, simply join the Toronto Railway Heritage Yahoo Group List by clicking here. . Moving counter clockwise from the upper left, the images show:
#4803 in action on the road in Edmonton, Alberta in June of 1970 - Photograph by Richard Yaremko from the Helmut G. Osterman collection
#4803 in residence at the CN Spadina Roundhouse on May 20, 1985 by John Vincent
#4803 in residence at the John St. Roundhouse by Russ Milland
#4803 below the CN Tower in Roundhouse Park by Russ Milland
#4803 in Roundhouse Park in front of the CP Roundhouse by Russ Milland
Close up of the cab of #4803 by Russ Milland
. Posting by Russ Milland; Pictures as attributed above .
Are photo shoots part of our future at the museum?
Click on each picture for a closer look! . There are a lot of amateur and professional photographers who love taking pictures of trains and everything related to trains. As you may seen in many of the pictures that the photographers among our TRHA volunteers have been taking, our site is very photogenic especially given the dramatic backdrop of the city skyline. . Some of our volunteers felt that working towards a photo shoot in the future to be held as dusk fell and into the night would be a great idea. The museum is impressively lit at night currently as we reported earlier in the News postings here and here. By selectively using additional temporary lighting the effects could be very dramatic. To that end, our photographers came out on Sunday evening to experiment with lighting equipment and locations at the roundhouse and the accompanying pictures provide insight to the possibilities. . To read about the Night Shoot that was held on September 26th, 2010 and view some of the fine images captured that evening, click here . Posting by Russ Milland; Pictures by Stephen Gardiner .
Weekend Report:: Steady Stream of Visitors Despite the Rains!
Click on each image for a closer look! . This past weekend saw steady visitor traffic despite rain showers on both Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday we operated the miniature railway until 6:00 p.m. to accommodate late afternoon visitors. On Saturday morning a TRHA volunteer work crew addressed a number of outstanding items on a lengthy list of "to-do's" as well. . The accompanying pictures highlight the weekend's operations. In the picture at the lower right, it appears that a woman has fallen in front of the train on Saturday. In fact, she has not. She had laid down in front of the train and then assumed a pose of a terrified woman caught on the tracks for the photographer in front of her. Perhaps we should be planning for photo shoots in Roundhouse Park in future as yet another attraction! . Posting by Russ Milland; Pictures by Russ Milland & Stephen Gardiner .
Field Trip: Kaslo & Slocan Railway in the Kootenays
Click on each picture for a closer link! . On August 5th, we published a quiz question with a number of photos of a pair of mystery stations. Two of these colour photos are repeated here. Stephen Gardiner was quick to respond with the right answer as follows.
"The sign in the picture with you is the giveaway, you were ghost towning in B.C. The station you are standing at is Cody B.C., a mine ghost town on the Kaslo & Slocan. The replica is in Sandon, just up the line. Once I saw the name on the picture, Google filled in the gap with a quick search, no points for knowing, just for being able to look stuff up!!" . What Stephen did was to zoom in on the Cody station picture where I was standing in the doorway. If you do, you can barely read a sign on its side that says "Cody BC". Later Josh Soles also identified both stations as being at Cody which was not quite the right answer. I spent two great weeks in July in Sandon B.C. which is pretty much a ghost town now with perhaps only three people living there year round. . Cody and Sandon were established shortly after the discovery of zinc, lead and silver deposits in 1891 in the valley in the mountains in which they nestled. The CPR first built a railway line from Kaslo Lake to the foot of the valley at a place called Three Forks. Not to be outdone, the Great Northern Railway built the 3 foot gauge Kaslo & Slocan (K&S) Railway starting at Kaslo in the next valley over and climbing quickly up 3.35% grades high on the mountain and then circling in on Sandon bringing railways directly to that city and on to Cody further up the mountain. The CPR quickly responded by extending their railway using numerous steep switchbacks up the valley to compete with the K&S. Dropping metal prices plus destructive forest fires and massive landslide eventually did the railway in by 1910 and remnants eventually were regauged and became an isolated part of the CPR sytem. . In the attached black and white photos above , we see trains in Sandon and one of them at the Sandon Station when the railway was operating. Below we see photos of the most spectacular part of the railway where the railway clung to the side of Payne Mountain far above the valley floor. Part of the railway is now a hiking trail and I could still see remnants of the many trestles and even some rail here and there. . More on the K&S can be found here and in a great book called "The Sky Line Limited". .
Click on each image for a closer look! . Canadian Railway Observations was founded in 1989 and now has 7,000 readers world wide and many more on Facebook. It focusses on capturing railway events as they happen in Canada but also includes historical information. Their monthly publication is available at their website for downloading at no cost. They also publish downloadable special reports on focussed topics such as those shown in the attached images. . The image above depicts a great special report with many fine images from the CRHA Niagara's Longest Day railfanning trip which was featured in our last TRHA News Posting. Click here to access that report from the Canadian Railway Observations website. . Posting by Russ Milland . .
Click on each picture for a closer look! . The Canadian Railway Historical Association headquartered in Montreal at Exporail, is a national organization with local chapters throughout Canada. The CRHA Niagara division has been an active chapter of the CRHA for many decades. Their most popular activity is railfanning, a "sport" whose history waas documented by Derek Boles of the TRHA in an earlier TRHA five part series of news postings called "A Brief History of the Railfan Hobby in Canada". Please also note that Derek Boles publishes a "Guide to Railfanning in Toronto 2010" which can be accessed from the Resources Page of the TRHA website. . CRHA Niagara has tradition of organizing a dusk to dawn railfanning expedition on a day close to the Spring equinox, the longest day of the year. I was able to join them this year (unfortunately) only for the first hour or so of their great expedition. The attached pictures were taken at Bayview Junction, perhaps the premier train viewing location in Ontario. This year, they began their journey by cooking a breakfast for all attending. While I was there, we did capture for posterity a VIA train passing by. As I left, I noticed that one of the crew was quite serious in thier railfanning with their van being suitably lettered for the task as seen in the attached picture. . Posting and Pictures by Russ Milland .
Historic Notes: 1873 Union Station Clock and TTC's first Peter Witt
Click on the images for a closer look! . Derek Boles, TRHA's historian, publishes a daily posting on the Toronto Railway Heritage Yahoo Group List. These postings document major railway oriented events that happened on that day of the year. Two of today's items are as follows:
"August 17, 1927: . The clock from the center tower of the 1873 Union Station is removed prior to demolition of the building and presented to the people of Huntsville, Ontario for installation in the Town Hall where it survives to this day. The new Union Station had opened a week earlier. The 100-foot high clock tower was long a prominent feature on the Toronto waterfront, which lapped up just south of the station when it first opened. An observation gallery below the clock was a popular vantage point for Torontonians to view the city and the lake. Over time, the waterfront moved further south and the clock tower was obscured by the 1890's rebuilding of Union Station." . This clock was featured in an earlier TRHA News item: Artefacts At Work - "It Just Keeps On Ticking". . "August 17, 1962: . The Upper Canada Railway Society charters TTC Peter Witt car No. 2300 for a three hour circuit of car lines in the west end of the city. No. 2300 was part of the first order of streetcars delivered to the newly formed Toronto Transportation Commission in 1921. In 1951, 2300 became the Commission's official training car and was withdrawn from revenue service. The car was shipped to the Canadian Railway Museum in 1963 and returned to Toronto in 1974 for possible use as a "tour tram." When this plan did not ma terialize due to the necessity of costly repairs, the car was displayed at the CRHA Toronto Railway Museum at Harbourfront. When that museum dispersed its collection, 2300 was moved to the CP John Street roundhouse. Following unsuccessful efforts to preserve 2300 in Toronto, the car was returned to Montreal in June 2008." . The move of the Witt streetcar to Montreal was featured in earlier TRHA News items as follows: “TTC's first Peter Witt Streetcar Leaves the Roundhouse! “ and 'The Canadian Railway Museum - Toronto Opens in 1975”. . The Peter Witts which are preserved and operational at the Halton County Radial Railway Museum were also featured in these news items – Click here and here. . If you wish to read the daily postings from Derek, simply join the Toronto Railway Heritage Yahoo Group List by clicking here. . Posting by Russ Milland; 1873 Union Station Image from Toronto Public Archives; Peter Witt image by Dan Garcia
Click on each image for a closer look!
