Here is a press kit for the CNR's Transportation Training Centre at Gimli. Photos of the simulator and facility, and a variety of ready-to-use articles were made available in the kit.
Recently, my brother and I were reflecting on the contracting out of railway corporate history efforts to public relations firms ... and also the role of amateur historians in the preservation of railway corporate history. A few years ago, viewers of a cable TV history show involving Canadian Pacific were wondering what a 'Heritage Marketing Consultant' was - in the past CPR had its own in-house archives personnel. Perhaps North American railways - like most other corporations - find that preserving and interpreting their history adds nothing to their net earnings. So there is little need to keep those small departments and their artifacts in existence. On this particular railway artifact ...
Somehow, somewhere I purchased this set ... and it presents the CNR crown corporation using its funds to advance the development of new technology. I suspect CNR (see the articles) had turned down a bid from CAE - a very experienced Canadian designer and builder of aviation simulators.
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At this point in history ...
The 1970s represented a dynamic period in the long history of how locomotive engineers learned their profession ...
Working on the CPR, Rolly Martin - whose road career began as a steam fireman in the 1950s - received diesel locomotive vendor training. He also gained experience on the road with diesel locomotives for about a decade. He was finally 'set up' as a locomotive engineman in January 1972. With some steam firemen (like Rolly) grandfathered in and working as helpers and troubleshooters on the road, there was probably no financial incentive for many railways to find a more efficient ways to produce fresh crops of enginemen.
Sooner or later, the ranks of grandfathered locomotive firemen/helpers would be consumed. Given the scale and scope of the CNR's operations (and as some would point out - their access to capital) perhaps a more organized approach was necessary to replace retiring locomotive engineers.
So I think it is worthwhile to preserve and interpret aspects of the corporate history of the Canadian National Railways ... such as this interesting domestic technological development.
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Why Gimli? ...
A key demographic feature is that Gimli was established by immigrants who originally came from Iceland because of problems with volcanic eruptions. On a visit there in the 1990s we saw the Viking statue which commemorates this unique cultural feature.
The facility where CN located their locomotive simulators was originally an RCAF station. A CPR Winnipeg Beach Sub employee timetable from 1950 and a map from 1916 appears after the first article so you can see the location and the previous railway activity there.
This British Commonwealth Air Training Plan base operated at Gimli from 1943 until 1945, using Avro Ansons. This RCAF/CFB station/base was brought back into service for flight training from 1950 until 1971. As the press package documents, the facility was bequeathed to the province of Manitoba and it was with the province that the CNR made arrangements to set up their centrally-located training centre for Canada.
In 2014, Canadian National Railway opened new purpose-built training centres at Winnipeg and Homewood, Illinois.
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Avoid 'going on the carpet' in later life ...
Back in the 1980s, many of us wished we could have our own access to a facility like that at Gimli for 'recreation'. However, those being paid to attend the courses would probably find little recreation during their training.
At the time, a friend relayed one important element of the Gimli training he had seen on a CN corporate film ...
A successful young trainee was completing his simulator run in unfamiliar territory. He was confidently bringing his virtual extra train into a yard. Just short of going 'off duty' ... travelling within yard limits at a good pace ... he came swinging around a curve to see the caboose of another train on the track ahead.
... The press kit describes the innovative reproduction of accurate longitudinal motion on the simulator ... The realism of this simulation probably gave the trainee an experience he would not forget.
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Slack action without the surly trainmen ...
Continuing with a rough history of engineer training in the late 20th Century ... about 15 years after CN's initial class at Gimli for locomotive engineer trainees, Simmons-Boardman was marketing Train Simulator - a program furnished on a single 5.25 inch floppy disk which ran on the first desktop computers. Our own desktop had an 8 mHz 'clock' and required a 5.25 floppy with DOS in the A: drive every time it booted. Early PCs had little memory and no hard drives.
Using topographic maps I was able to program a profile (including curvature) for the Heron Bay Subdivision and I was able to experience some of the challenges faced by locomotive engineers. In addition to entering profiles, one could set knuckle strength (within limits), and tonnage and length variables for a train.
The Simmons-Boardman cab controls and gauges functioned (a colour monitor was recommended to be able to distinguish between brake gauge needles). The only moving trackside feature on the roughly pixelated and mainly black screen of a $1500 (in 2020's dollars) colour CRT was three 'telegraph poles' which endlessly cycled themselves at the right window of the cab to supplement the effect of the speedometer. This was very rinky-dink compared to later graphically-rich programs such as Microsoft's.
However, the S-B product was designed primarily to teach train dynamics to professionals. And when one was very focused on a simulation, the train dynamics and one's failure to control slack action ... and the disgrace of 'pulling a knuckle' seemed real enough. S-B made no effort to graphically represent a scowling trainman with a lantern and radio exiting the cab into the blackness, however.
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And now, back to Gimli ...
Many will know Gimli as the location where the 'Gimli Glider' forward-slipped its way into aviation history in 1983. This feat of aviation was made necessary after the customary cascade of failures which often leads to transportation incidents. A nice, complete Wikipedia article, under the aircraft's nickname, gives a lot of detail about this misadventure with an Air Canada Boeing 767 at Gimli.
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For the purpose of comparing the costs mentioned in the press kit articles:
$1 million in 1978 dollars ... equals $3.68 million in 2020 dollars.
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| from: Atlas of Canada; 1916; Minister of the Interior, Canada. |
