1948-1990 - A Railroader's Career on Four Index Cards

Excessive heat, cold, stress from equipment failure and not always being able to trust the safety habits of your fellow employees, the possibility of hitting a rock slide, continuous disturbed sleep and disrupted circadian rhythm, a workplace of constant noise and vibration, daily occupational exposure to petroleum derivatives - topically and through inhalation, inadequate sanitary facilities, in desperation: standing at the controls to stay awake, untreated PTSD from killing people in a car who were taking a quick short cut home after work ...

This is not necessarily how a long-service running trades employee would describe their career in hindsight. They would likely remember 'the people', their greatest accomplishments (often unknown to, or forgotten by, others) and the particular things they loved about the job. 

However, the first paragraph was a rough sampling of typical experiences of a railroader in the late 1900s. It is intended to show that the 'human experience' of railroading goes beyond the happy engineer getting a suntan on his right arm who waves at a trackside photographer. 

Rolly Martin obtained a photocopy of the index cards kept on file for 40 years in the Division Office upstairs at Schreiber which documented key dates in his career. As I finally attempt to interpret these 'artifacts' ... it's just important to make it clear that 'key dates' do not give you the full picture of the typical life of a running trades employee.

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Rolly began his railway career as a sectionman at age 17. Aubrey is midway between Sudbury and Franz. In May 1947 he left the CPR for a short time, working on the section in the Hawk Junction area on the Algoma Central Railway. I think Rolly had a sibling in Sudbury, and Sudbury may have served as a base when he began his career (?)

He told me he had spent some time working at the CPR livestock rest and exercise pens at the White River yard, but he was soon in Schreiber working as a classified labourer and ashpitman at the roundhouse. Rolly was physically strong and if his Quebec farm background didn't provide this physique, his first few years on the railway certainly would have.

As he told me, Rolly's first paying shift as fireman was on the 3422 - the Schreiber yard switcher. His trial trips and previous jobs at the roundhouse would have given him good familiarity with firing locomotives and how things functioned in the yard. 

Rolly also spoke of his time in Lambton - he was only there for about four months in the winter of 1950-51. Probably, the post-war economy was taking off in this area of Ontario and former railway workers were finding less demanding and more family-friendly work in factories and on construction. This was probably coupled with an increase in demand for railway service to southern Ontario factories.

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In June 1954 Rolly was laid off for a month and it seems he took a leave of absence without pay for a month (or more, depending on how you interpret the Division Office's notation). We never got into details, but he may have used this time to travel east, to propose to Theresa in Drummondville, to get married, and to set up housekeeping back in Schreiber.

The boom/bust of staffing a railway division was a contemporary reality when I worked briefly in 1977. Superintendent Al Small came downstairs to speak to our trainman class. He'd never seen the railway as busy as it was. Personally, as a new hire on the spareboard, I would soon be going out on trip after trip - essentially working 'full time'. I was usually called for the unloved but extremely scenic 'east end' (to White River). The Superintendent told our class that in the future traffic levels might drop ... and we might be laid off ... but he urged us to go on the maintenance of way gang, or to otherwise use our laid off time to get 'the big picture' of the railway.

As you can see, firemen in the 1950s were also subject to the boom/bust cycles of traffic. To complicate matters, diesels were really catching on, particularly through Schreiber. The Canadian railways had enthusiastically calculated how much money they could save ... by hauling longer trains with multiple diesel units operated by a single engineer ... by eliminating firemen and roundhouse staff ... and by demolishing the soon-to-be obsolete facilities used to support steam locomotives.

These changes culminated in the firemen strike, below, in January 1957. Eventually a solution was found for the firemen. The more senior firemen were 'grandfathered' in to work as helpers to diesel engineers. With all the new (and sometimes problematic) technology being used, these diesel 'firemen' were trained in diesel locomotive troubleshooting. Rolly's course was at Schenectady. This helped keep the former steam engineers in the cab and the trains rolling. These firemen were increasing their experience with diesel operation challenges and they would be ready to replace the more senior men as the latter retired. Rolly said his first solo run as engineer occurred in 1973 - even though he was qualified long before that.

A cleaned-up, typewritten service card consolidated Rolly's record of service. 

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from: Uniform Code of Operating Rules, Revision of 1962; Board of Transport Commissioners for Canada.

You can see the 'Brownie Point' system in action on the card above. After 12 months, the December 1964, Rule 87 infraction was zeroed out by the replacement of his lost points. I reproduced the text of the rule above. 

... I don't know any of the particulars of the recorded incident but it would have been before the installation of centralized traffic control on the subdivision. Guessing about the proper course to be followed: Rather than making a run for the siding and arriving without achieving the five minute buffer ... the crew should have had a headend flagman run out (and a tailend flagman drop off behind, I imagine) to provide protection. Depending on the visibility/grade characteristics of the line at that point, this flagging distance was to be 1500-2000 yards (i.e. over 1.5 kilometres) - which was calculated by counting trackside 'pole lengths'. 

... Flagging protection probably would have been required by the rules for both ends of the train. Once the late train was protected ... preceded [~1.5 kilometres] by the headend flagman holding a red flag (or a white lantern by night) and armed with torpedoes and fusees ... the late train should have followed him with due caution and met the opposing train at the siding.

Generally, a whole train crew was called on the carpet for an infraction - with union brothers usually being reluctant to incriminate their fellows. Calling in the whole crew was probably the most efficient way to conduct an investigation and administer discipline, with the most Brownies being awarded to crew members in the positions of greatest responsibility.

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I met Rolly on a snowy night freight trip to White River, and, after we returned he packed me up from my motel and moved me into his upstairs apartment - a significant saving of rent for me. I had been keenly interested in his Van Horne's Road-based narration of the Heron Bay historical features on the daylight trip back ... and this probably helped him confirm his decision to take me in. 

... I mention this because these events occurred just weeks after his 31 January 1977 action to report the broken rail (+ 10 Brownies). He was really proud of this action being recognized and told me all about it. 

... One wonders if the prevailing railway culture should have allowed officials to 'catch their employees doing something right' more frequently.

The last note on the photocopy of Rolly's service record is his own. He documents the date of his last run and the engine number of his consist on Train No 2. 

An 11 Ton Cheese on a Flatcar and Other Border Stories

The 1939 shop floor of the CLC, and a flatcar holding an 11-ton cheese for the 1892 Chicago World's Fair are included as we look at a few 2025 issues as they were seen in the past. One school of thought says that history is not just a sterile record of the past - battles and dates - but an effort to understand how people reacted to change in the past.

Below you'll see a Prime Minister and President riding around together and shaking hands over the new bridges of friendship and understanding which have been built between good neighbours. 

The first few images come from this annual look at Canadian progress as documented by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics.

 

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Then, as now, Canada's energy production was dispersed across the country. However, rather than national energy independence, cross-border flows of energy were preferred when it made economic sense.

Beyond coal ... petroleum and natural gas deposits were being developed and distribution systems were evolving - where economically feasible - to get them where they could be put to work.

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from: The Rideau, a pictorial history of the waterway; Ed: Adrian G Ten Cate; 1981; Besancourt Publishers, Brockville ON. 

This bridge in Kingston's harbour is gone, but some might like to see this photo. 

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from: The Rideau, a pictorial history of the waterway; Ed: Adrian G Ten Cate; 1981; Besancourt Publishers, Brockville ON.

Tariff this!

The international trade bugaboo of Canadian supply management was not an issue in 1892. Cheese, made at local cheese factories, preserved and stored perishable milk protein for consumption during the winter. This was in an era before the mechanical refrigeration of bulk milk ... and also before the road transport of bulk milk was made possible by internal combustion vehicles and paved roads.

As Canadian farmlands developed, milk cans were transported on wagons or sleighs drawn by horses to meet the morning 'milk run'. This all-stops train would take the milk to the urban dairy. The subsidized provision of fresh milk to urban schoolchildren in their classrooms prevented calcium-deficiency disorders. 

During winter, hay and sileage was fed to the dairy cows who were stuck indoors for months and many might go 'dry' during this period. When they finally hit the new grass in June, a surplus of fresh milk was produced and prices for milk would be depressed.

Starting in the 1960s, AI* enabled the selective breeding of cows. Using this method, their freshening could be scheduled to occur throughout the year, preventing boom (June) and bust (winter) cycles of milk production.    *Artificial Insemination

Supply management helped preserve consistent reasonable rates of return for family dairy farms and ensured that production was evenly spread out through the calendar year through the use of 'over quota levies'. The latter were applied when a farmer produced too much milk during a given month. 

Imagine the workload on a typical family farm - cows need to be milked twice daily, 365 days per year. Feeding and other 'material needs' also need to be tended to ... 365 days per year. 

Some experts point out today that Canadians pay more than Americans for dairy products. These experts would probably not turn in their laptops in exchange for the Canadian 'dairy farm lifestyle'.

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from: Cartoons by Macpherson; Duncan Macpherson; circa 1963; Toronto Star.

In the 1950s, there was a 'Rooshan' under every bed ... and under the ice. There was great fear that bombers of the USSR would be flying over the north pole to drop atomic bombs on us. People built backyard fallout shelters and stocked them with canned goods.

In the early 1960s, the US could use their new nuclear-powered subs to patrol under the ice of the Canadian arctic. While I don't know all of the details which prompted this editorial cartoon, you can see that arctic security was a priority for our American neighbours.

In the late 1980s, Canadian Minister of Defence Perrin Beatty opened talks to buy nuclear patrol submarines from France. France received a gentle nudge from the United States discouraging them from supplying submarines which could patrol under Canada's polar ice.  

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from: Cartoons by Macpherson; Duncan Macpherson; circa 1963; Toronto Star.

[Corrected for inflation, $1.2 million equals about $12.2 million in 2025 dollars]

In keeping with the enduring idea that bombers will travel over the north pole ...

The Lockheed Starfighter was a high-altitude supersonic interceptor which (like the Avro Arrow) had been designed to attack the nuclear bombers of the USSR as they sneakily approached North America over the north pole. 

After Sputnik, the Starfighter became kind of useless - but Canada still bought them and Canadair built them under licence providing unionized high-tech aerospace jobs for Canadians.

... Sure, the Starfighter was still a really cool piece of hardware, but the 'rockets' (i.e. missiles) of the inspiring and exciting US/USSR Space Race were really all about the ability to drop nuclear weapons on your enemy with greater and greater precision. Except, with nukes ... precision doesn't matter as much as the wind direction which transports the radioactive fallout.

... While many (including some politicians) still picture the Dr Strangelove image of attacking bombers coming over the north pole ... since the 1960s it would have been more likely that massive warheads would have arrived silently by missile.

What this cartoon doesn't foresee, is that the RCAF Starfighter, as part of the NATO mission, was going to be repurposed as a short-range treetop-level bomber. 

As detailed in Canadian Nuclear Weapons; John Clearwater; 1998; Dundern Press, this high-altitude interceptor would race at near treetop level (to avoid radar) from West Germany ... before delivering its bomb to one of the Warsaw Pact countries as directed by the US and NATO. This type of flying in this aircraft was probably as safe for RCAF pilots ... as running a racing motorcycle at top speed along a biking trail through the woods!

Within particular RCAF bases in West Germany there were separate US military compounds housing the nuclear bombs. Upon proper authority, an RCAF Starfighter would enter the US compound, get bombed up by the US personnel ... and head off toward its target.

Upon reaching the target area, the Starfighter would 'zoom' up to a relatively high altitude, and use a rudimentary computer to release and 'loft' the bomb upward on a parabolic flight - which might be slowed by a parachute on the way down. Given that it was designed as a supersonic interceptor, the Starfighter's nuke could only be slung under the fuselage. The RCAF Starfighters carried 3 or 4 different designs of bomb, each with many more sub-options to enable the US personnel to tailor the bomb's yield before bombing up the aircraft.

So ... during the mission ... the RCAF pilot would have to avoid controlled flight into the ground, avoid getting shot down, avoid nuclear fratricide by all of the other weapons going off nearby ... but ... the pilot could at least outrun the shock wave ... in his supersonic fighter. 

However ... the plane could not outrun the burst of gamma radiation from the detonating bomb. This is why the it was released high in the air with an upward trajectory - to give the aircraft time to dive and thunder away, to escape most of that radiation. The survival of a pilot in this complete scenario seems very unlikely. 

But you have to have some hope ...

Historical lesson? Canadians purchased a US-designed plane which had become kind of useless because the nature of warfare had changed ... so ... with American help ... they found something else for it to do ...