From time to time, someone will find this little operation while looking for something else.
... If they're looking for something better, that probably happens a lot!
Sometimes, newcomers to the site have specific questions for me and I feel unhappy when the question is beyond my ability to provide help. There was a case of a person who was more comfortable writing in French and asking if I could help with their search for old employment histories associated with CPR Angus Shops. While the railways had stored this type of record, they had probably disposed of routine personnel and business documents long ago.
We had a great travel agent. Between us and VIA's summer space assignment practices in the 1980s, she spent a lot of unnecessary time on the phone. We were always looking for 'lower opposite roomettes' on The Canadian for our trips across Canada. The lower beds sway a little less, accessing the toilet at night is less likely to result in serious injury from a falling steel bed ... and the opposite roomettes meant you could both enjoy 'the better side of the train for scenery' in privacy. One time we were too clever and found ourselves located right over a hammering skidded wheel. The Canadian equipment's responsive disc brakes had probably been applied hard by a CN engineer, who had more experience with conventional brake shoes. In that era, CN and CP equipment was generally mixed in VIA consists going out west.
... Invariably, we'd plan our trip in late winter ... for a trip in June ... and our travel agent was working for a month or two in the spring until VIA was finally able to sell us tickets. But she was kind enough to say that once she had worked on the challenge for a while, that she was 'really getting into it'.
* * *
I've dropped my planned post for the week because my deadline came up and I was involved in some rewarding research - just in time for Canada Day.
This week, I received a short message regarding a shipment which was put on a named express train at a small, unincorporated settlement ... and destined for another town which was about 250 miles away. This happened in the middle of World War 2. Did I know of a source where my correspondent could do an on-line search on the records of the railway to perhaps find out about this shipment. It had not reached its destination and the only data they had was the date of departure of the express train.
(We had actually travelled through this area, and I had posted photos of our trip in a blog post.)
My excuses began with an unsolicited explanation of the role of the station agent and the fact that 'he' often lived with his family above the station. I explained how much commerce and mail moved as baggage and express back in the 1940s - for example, rural orders from the Eaton's catalogue. And if Amazon used a paper system today, just imagine all the paper which would be found aboard the trucks, at the warehouses, and copied to head office. So the railways probably purged their paper business records on a regular schedule so they could still get in the front door.
... While the railways have since turned over their materials to government archives ... I continued ... the latter are only able to digitize and post a small amount of the material - generally photographs.
* * *
On the following day, I realized that I had the appropriate public timetables for the same season but of the following year. At least I could try to understand the route better. Two railways were involved in this journey of about 250 miles, I discovered. Looking at a map ... after only six hours of travel on the express train, the shipment would need to be transferred to another train.
By the end of the day, I was able to provide an itinerary which used the quickest, most direct route and the tightest connections based on the 'last documented position' of the shipment.
To travel 250 miles, two separate trains were used on one railway, another train of another railway was necessary AND motor vehicle express shipping of the latter railway would have been necessary for the final leg. Given the 'Except Sunday' nature of many railway schedules - back when many people only had Sunday off - an extra day of no movement was added to the itinerary I had prepared.
Had this typical itinerary been followed it would have taken four calendar days to travel 250 miles.
This email included images of all the related tables from the public timetables from the Second World War and a couple of railway maps to show the relative positions and routes of the two railways' lines. Also included was a map and timetable which showed that the express train was going off in another direction six hours after it departed the station of origin.
After forwarding that information, the research continued with a 1927 book on baggage car instructions ... and two rulebooks of instructions for train conductors - one from each railway. The latter books were from the 1950s. Together, these three books enabled me to bracket the Second World War period and suggest a consistency of Canadian regulations on certain baggage car traffic from the 1920s to the 1950s.
This turn in the research led to anger.
* * *
* * *
On the final day, I recapitulated the itinerary previously emailed.
Copies of all the relevant passages from the baggage and conductor rulebooks were scanned, prepared and sent. I'm certainly not an expert and if I make a wrong interpretation, at least the person receiving the document copies I've cited can see that I'm reading or interpreting the artifacts entirely incorrectly.
I explained, again, that the Canadian railways 'had seen it all' after 80 years in business so their rules were as seamless as possible because the bosses didn't want to deal with complaints, irregularities, public scandals and the crushing weight of government regulators working in response to concerns about railway company gross negligence raised by the public.
There were rules to ensure that items like consigned boxes of books or bicycles didn't disappear or get lost. The railways would make no money operating huge lost and found departments for baggage and express packages which had been lost or misrouted by railway employees.
* * *
The particular rules copied and forwarded by email indicated that particular paperwork MUST be completed for this type of shipment.
In addition, one of the railway's rulebooks stated that TWO first class tickets MUST be purchased for this type of shipment. ONE was for the item in the baggage car and ONE was for the adult responsible for the shipment.
This Escort for the shipment MUST be on the train to accompany the item for EVERY leg of its journey according to the rules of both railways.
Bicycles or books travelling alone could conceivably slip through the cracks, not arrive at the destination and end up in a lost and found department.
However, it seemed inconceivable that this type of shipment could be put on an express train (according to the documentation furnished to the recipients) and never be seen again.
What about the person required to be the "Escort" for the shipment?
By now, you have probably concluded that it was a coffin.
A young girl (a relative of my correspondent) had died at an Indian Residential School. The body had never arrived back at her family's home. All the family had known through the years since the Second World War was that the remains had departed on that named express train on a particular date.
Students who had attended the school in question were quoted a few years ago in a well-known Canadian magazine as witnessing 'midnight burials' there.
* * *
Up to this point, I've been getting appreciative feedback. Sometimes people don't write back at all. My final message has not yet been read and digested.
I can never prove anything about this case conclusively and we'll never know the answer. However, on Canada Day, I'll have someone from 82 years ago in Canadian history to think about.
