My father saved an article from the CPR Spanner of April 1958 about the new station which had recently been built there. Twenty years later, I would meet one of the workers mentioned in the article.
Until circa 1924, I believe that White River had been the headquarters of the division - that is, where the division superintendent, his administrative staff and the main dispatching office had been. I also believe that physical space limits for more expanded shops and yards, and the periodic flooding of the White River itself, precipitated this change. When I 'came on brake' in Schreiber very briefly in 1977, Schreiber was well-established in its role as the Division Headquarters and it seemed it had always been that way.
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| from: White River - 100 Years, Pictorial History, 1985, Mary Houston. |
My main intention with this post is to pass on and preserve the 1958 article. However, I am including a few other images so readers can understand some of the changes to the station facilities over the years. Mary Houston's wonderful 1985 book - prepared with the help of the people of White River and their photographs - shows the earliest station facilities.
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| from: White River - 100 Years, Pictorial History, 1985, Mary Houston. |
A photograph taken in July 1911 by a CPR civil engineer shows the addition of a second story and of an extended platform and passenger shelter. The Spanner article below adds details about the station's modifications through the years and I have not included all of the station photos in Mary Houston's book. You can imagine Division offices upstairs and dispatchers running a few hundred miles of railway by timetable and through train orders sent by telegraph.
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| Unused postcard, circa 1955, my collection. |
About fifteen years after King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (later, the 'Queen Mother') did a walkabout on White River's platform, a diesel stands ready as a westbound passenger train arrives at the building.
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| from: Canadian Pacific Railway, Spanner, April 1958, collection of LC Gagnon |
The sled on the platform appears in Mary Houston's book.
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| from: Canadian Pacific Railway, Spanner, April 1958, collection of LC Gagnon |
There were only a few eastbound stock cars at the headend of some freights by 1977 and the animals travelled without 'rest' enroute.
After the running trades, I did a brief internship with Bob Mura on his overnight shifts. He was a great guy and I can imagine him saying with vigour that something was the 'best thing that happened since someone invented the wheel'. A relative of his whom I met on the internet told me that yardmaster Linklater was Bob's father-in law and that the yardmaster's nickname was 'hot cakes'.
On the pegboard behind Bob are 'trains' and cuts of cars. The IBM punch tape representing a given consist, was wrapped around the thumb and pinkie finger to form those 'figure of eight' loops. To 'couple' a local lift, you could run the train tape through an off-line machine, followed by the lift, and have the machine produce a copy in the form of a new one-piece tape. The train tapes were fed through an on-line machine to update the car control folks at the other end of the wire in Montreal.
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| from: Canadian Pacific Railway, Spanner, April 1958, collection of LC Gagnon |
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| from: Canadian Pacific Railway, Spanner, April 1958, collection of LC Gagnon |
I tried, but could not resolve the details of the items within the display cases on the far wall. I think I could see a commemoration of the Royal Tour of 1939, however.
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| from: Canadian Pacific Railway, Spanner, April 1958, collection of LC Gagnon |
Ahem! Mary Houston went to great lengths in her book to prove that this famous thermometer was broken and that the temperature in official records for that day was not quite that cold.
The 'coldest spot' legend comes from the old days when weather data was sent by telegraph wire and when big city newspapers printed what was available. The modern 'discovery' of the militarily strategic arctic after World War Two cleared up any confusion about the fact that there were colder locations in Canada.
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| from: Canadian Pacific Railway, Spanner, April 1958, collection of LC Gagnon |
In the interest of preserving this piece of history, I 'tuned' the image up as much as I could.