Here is a very nice old film. I suppose it belongs in the rail fanning section, and the moderators can move it, but it has some portrayals of older practices. Takes me back to our village station that was a junction point and also had three section crews, and healthy freight and passenger activity.

https://www.nfb.ca/film/station-master/

Great Western -

Interesting flick. Thanks for posting it. From a preservation standpoint, Angus shop built 4-6-2 # 1201 is the engine shown on the passenger train heading to Montreal. She was the last Canadian Pacific home-built steamer, built in 1944 and fortunately preserved. The unloading from a Soo Line single sheathed boxcar was interesting too. I seem to recall that a few of those old wood outside-braced Soo cars have been saved. The New York Central passenger train headed by an RS-3 was interesting too, along with the fact that the NYC apparently still had a section hand using a hand powered car to check the right-of-way and kerosene lit switch markers to boot. Wonder how long that line remained in service after that 1954 film was made?

Les

Mr. Beckman,
The "Ottawa Division" was evidently abandoned in 1957, but that needs confirmation.
I have a June 13, 1948 NYC passenger timetable showing service between Helena (NY) and Ottawa. Train number 61 left Helena daily ex Sunday at 07:25, arriving Ottawa at 10:30. Train 62 left Ottawa at 16:00, arriving Helena at 18:48. 62.6 miles.
Stops were made at Cornwall and Finch. Not seeing any connections at Helena.

Here is a very good timeline for the route:

https://churcher.crcml.org/Articles/Article2003_5.html

Great Western -

Thanks for the history of the line. Amazing that the New York Central line was still seeing a passenger train at that time, even if only during the winter months.

Les

The St. Lawrence Seaway is what did the line in.

While still marginally profitable to operate (At least for freight), the US and Canadian governments didn't want to replace the Central's bridge across the St. Lawrence on the US side.

So they offered the Central money in exchange for abandoning it. Enough cash to make it desirable for the Central while still being significantly cheaper than the replacement cost of the bridge.

Edit: I see that link goes into that. To add something that isn't a repeat, the segment between Rooseveltown and Helena NY was never abandoned. While silent now, it's still CSX owned and for many years served the now closed and demolished General Motors plant and the now shuttered Alcoa East plant along the St. Lawrence River (The former Reynolds facility, with Alcoa's original plant still operating nearby as Alcoa West).

Last significant use was hauling contaminated soil and debris out during the environmental cleanup of the GM site, but it's still intact with the hope of attracting some industry to the location now that it's been remediated.

Very neat film and CPRR information. Thanks for posting.
BTW that "hand car" is called a velocipede, and I think once were fairly common. I didn't think they remained in service into the diesel era though.

I find it interesting that the clock in the tower has Roman numerals on its face, I thought all standard clocks were required to have Arabic numbers.

There are a number of other interesting films there as well:

End of the Line
https://www.nfb.ca/film/end_of_line/

Railroaders
https://www.nfb.ca/film/railroaders/

Railroad Town
https://www.nfb.ca/film/railroad_town/

Trans-Canada Express
https://www.nfb.ca/film/trans_canada_express/

The Railrodder (With Buster Keaton)
https://www.nfb.ca/film/railrodder/

Buster Keaton Rides Again
https://www.nfb.ca/film/buster_keaton_rides_again/

Train 406
https://www.nfb.ca/film/train_406/



The Road Taken
https://www.nfb.ca/film/road_taken/

Dennis -

But did you notice when the guy went up into the tower and past that clock, he took his wristwatch off and hung it in front of him. Probably the wristwatch was certified by the local jeweler under contract to the C.P. to confirm it kept accurate railroad time.

Les

But did you notice when the guy went up into the tower and past that clock, he took his wristwatch off and hung it in front of him. Probably the wristwatch was certified by the local jeweler under contract to the C.P. to confirm it kept accurate railroad time.

Les[/quote]


I still have mine. A Universal Geneve R.R. 1205 bought at the T. Eaton Co. in Toronto. It takes a licking and keeps on ticking!

The thing that went through my head as I saw this is just how many men (and all men) it was felt necessary to keep a railroad running. It resembles, in some ways, a socialist country that "guarantees" employment for all, whether the job is truly necessary or not.

Yes, the railroad did more back then--parcel delivery, small-scale mail transport, etc. And they still ran steam, and they still had labour (Canada, eh?) agreements with unions to abide with. But still, I can show people photos of crews of "last runs" at the start of Conrail, etc. with three or four men across the back of the caboose, or five or six crew members posing before a three-car local, and people today would say, with great justification, "No WONDER the railroads went broke back then!!!"

This may all be true, but I fail to see any reason for your bringing it up in this particular thread.

Les

Edit: the "socialist" comment is highly date sensitive. At one time, the displayed labor was the necessary and required labor to get the job done. As time went on, there were other methods to accomplish the same with less labor. The "socialist" comment is only valid if we are looking at a picture of work done using obsolete methods solely to employ persons. In some cases, the comment is accurate. Remember full crew laws? Amtrak's founding legislation had all kinds of labor protection agreements for porters and dining car crews. Discontinuing trains did not end the labor budget.

Extremely relevant - very graphic evidence of the difficulty in keeping all of the historic services - passenger, carload freight, LCL, post, etc. - available with the traditional technology. The video provides first hand evidence of the problem. Some parts are solved by technology - welded rail, radio, centralized computer dispatching - but other parts are not solvable- Put a cake in a box and ship it by rail to the city?

I also thought in interesting that the tower was not manned continuously. The tower agent leaves his post to help with tasks around the station. Who answers the telegraph?

Would you rather I used the even more polarizing term "Communist"?

In a sense, such "over-employment" was becoming obsolete even in the era when this film was made. For whatever reasons (labour unions, government mandates, slow-to-react management, whatever), we saw inefficient labour usage on railroads from the end of World War Two right up to, say, labour agreements in the era of deregulation and Conrail, and the Rock Island and western half of the Milwaukee Road disappearing. Virtually all the "unfathomable" horrors predicted by the "Professional Iconoclast" in Trains Magazine--one-man trains, articulated double-stacks, dispatching across a continent, unit trains' domination, and the potential for automated trains--have come to pass, and then some.

A modern person--millennial and younger--is going to look at this film and wonder what farce this was. It literally looks like the ugly (and usually false today) stereotype of ten city workers leaning on shovels watching at the eleventh fill a pothole. TELEGRAPHS? The phone, old as it looks, is right there! Sending a package on a train? Are you kidding???
The same sort of thing applies to British heritage lines. In an era when I have seen certain American rail museums operate with a skeleton staff of 3-4 (and even one if no trains are being operated, there are major British heritage lines that need on the order of 20-30 staff to operate, manning all the signal boxes, stations, locomotives, and trains in an "authentic" Victorian or Edwardian fashion--and that doesn't include gift shops, buffets, bookstalls, or pubs!

The questions are likely to arise, if you honestly address history as well as offering just a cool/scenic train/trolley ride. Are you properly prepared to answer them in as inoffensive and uncontroversial a fashion as possible?

I really enjoy many of your posts - but maybe this time pour a drink and relax?

I think you would agree there are many reasons for old technology to linger. My examples: a) the service has no future, and they are just running out the last years of the infrastructure (DRGW narrow gauge), b) a big infrastructure investment is coming, and they don't want to invest in an interim technology (Steam traction on the BR network southwest before electrification), or c) "too big to fail" infrastructure, manual signal interlocking that is so complicated and heavily trafficked, that it is very difficult to find the pauses in traffic to make the upgrades.

The reality is that many of these old technologies persisted because they could not be changed with a snap of the fingers, and because the management did not want to make an incremental technology upgrade, they wanted to make an upgrade 2-3 steps further.