I was on another PLA-NET! - Sam Kinison, 1980s.
Like a salmon swimming upstream, gathering its strength to surmount a turbulent waterfall and jumping squarely into a bear's gaping maw ... I am always drawn back to work with these slides.
Unlike that salmon, I get more than one try - and I've had many over the years.
... Back in the 1980s, I followed the advice of my local camera store. I bought a blue filter from them, projected the slides on a white wall, and photographed the images with my SLR.
As you already know, microchips have revolutionized everything since then. Computers and upload speeds get faster, large images become easier to handle and store, websites become larger but continue to remain cost-free, editing software gets better, truly valuable supplementary resources appear on line.
... And, as I've already exhausted all the wrong approaches, I get a little smarter about how to harness all this miraculous technology.
A veteran of black and white photography with his own home-built print-enlargement set-up. My father (LC Gagnon) started shooting colour Ektachrome slides using a Kodak Brownie Starflash in late 1960. Some of these were 'bad Ektachrome' which discoloured in just a few years to take on the appearance of the slide image at the top of this post.
As a former CPR employee, he had had at least one authorized cab ride in a new CPR F-unit. In April of 1961, he took me on what would have been a long bus trip (from 45th Avenue in Lachine to Rachel Street) ... to photograph the steam dead line through the Frost fence at Angus Shops.
Around the time that I turned four years old, LC Gagnon saw an 'end of an era' article in the Montreal Star about the lines of CNR steam engines awaiting scrapping at Turcot Yard. On Monday, 17 July 1961 he, his father George Gagnon, and I went on another bus trip (my parents were saving to buy a 1962 VW Beetle) to Turcot. This was the first of three visits there. George Gagnon came along on the first two.
As a matter of 'blog policy' I've recently worked to use proper names for some immediate relatives. Generally, I think these people deserve to have a 'body of work/accomplishment' on the internet associated with their names ... rather than solely identifying them as 'my relative'.
I do not wander around in railway yards and I do not recommend that you do so either.
It seems funny today that a high school teacher and a retired elementary school principal would take a four-year-old to a realm of exposed asbestos and broken glass. I do remember the novel experience of being up 'so high' on one of the running boards.
... George Gagnon was born into a large family in 1899. In a rural environment it was necessary to learn to manage physical risks. LC Gagnon had had that previous experience on an F-unit and I think he recognized a unique opportunity which he wanted to share with me.
Map showing Turcot Yard in 1952.
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| from: Lachine sheet, east half; 1:50,000 topographical map; Government of Canada; 1952. |
Above: North of the large letters E and A, you can see an O-shaped roundhouse (CNR Turcot)
and a C-shaped roundhouse (CPR Glen Yard - primarily a coachyard).
This map was obtained by LC Gagnon.
Below: A larger area of the same top map.
It is included so you can see how Turcot was integrated into the railway system.
Angus Shops is beyond the top right portion of the map,
however, you can see the new CPR St Luc Yard.
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| from: Lachine sheet, east half; 1:50,000 topographical map; Government of Canada; 1952. |
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Aerial survey photos from 1947-8 of part of Turcot Yard.
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| from: Canadian Pacific Air Lines Ltd, Aerial Survey Division 1947-8 .. at .. https://archivesdemontreal.com/ |
The first time I saw a much smaller, coarsely pixelated image like this on an urban planning website I thought I had won the lottery. I carefully preserved it. One could make out very few details.
The top right corner shows teardrop-shaped Glen Yard, complete with its loop tracks for turning coach consists. It took me a minute to realize that I would find no stainless steel Canadian consists in this 1947-8 image.
These images were from aerial survey series which were sequenced so they could be arranged as 'stereo pairs'. Using a stereoscope, contour lines of elevation could be drawn by a skilled operator for topographic maps. These images were not designed for railway equipment identification or to be beautiful. I have joined the best two adjacent images to present the two yards. It's kind of rough, but it works for this purpose of showing the area in which these Turcot Yard slides were taken.
Glen Yard is at the top of the escarpment and Upper Lachine Road travels along its southern side. We arrived by MTC bus on Upper Lachine Road and followed the switchback path, near the roundhouse, down the escarpment. You can see many terraced community gardens arrayed on that unusable piece of industrial land.
The long dark building (left edge) at the foot of the escarpment is the coaling dock. A switch engine would run hopper cars of coal up a long ramp. At the top of the ramp was a level covered track with hoppers on each side. The coal would be dropped into the building's coal hoppers - perhaps sorted by quality, on occasion. For refueling, an engine would be spotted with its tender's coal section under one of many chutes (you can see over 20 chutes on the north side, I think). Coal would refuel the tender using gravity - a spray of water might reduce the size of the cloud of coal dust. LC Gagnon had an enduring interest in this piece of technology.
The Turcot roundhouse is seen at the right. There are some outdoor overhead crane gantries visible to its west - if you look closely, you can see their shadows. At the roundhouse's 'five o'clock' is the inverted 'T' of the Administration building.
The photos below were taken between the coaling dock and the roundhouse.
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Slides taken by LC Gagnon on Monday, 17 July 1961.
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| 6218 - Built: MLW Sep 1942. Disposition: Museum, Fort Erie, Ontario. |
In the captions, I have noted basic roster details from Canadian National Steam Power by Anthony Clegg and Ray Corley (Railfare, 1969). In this process, it was pleasing to discover that LC Gagnon's small sample of apparently random photos of a few good-looking steam locomotives provided a representation of most of the CNR's predecessor railways.
The photo above has always been blurred and it will always be blurred. LC Gagnon was probably quite excited that we made it here, and he was probably communicating with us. This photo has certainly been good to me. As an 11-year-old, I won the public speaking contest for my school using it and a couple of others to explain my enthusiasm for this particular engine, my lifelong association with it, and my hopes for its future.
In later years, LC Gagnon explained why so many photos were taken involving our party and the first, curiously isolated, engine we encountered. He thought we might be noticed and booted out at any moment.
The CNR's public relations excursion engines of the era were 6153, 5107 and 6167. These were hold-overs from before the formal end of steam - so they had not required (I believe) overhauls to enable them to provide excursion service. There were strict regulations regarding how long locomotive boilers could be used before overhaul.
... Our next visit to Turcot (two days later) included watching 6153's last-minute preparations before pulling an excursion.
I think: One hand on the automatic air brake and the other on the cutoff. It seems the independent air brake handle has been removed. This was the first steam locomotive I had ever been aboard. A kind B&M switcher crew had given us a cab ride in the US ...
It was a hot, hazy day and I remember the engines being almost cold inside. Perhaps this was due to the fact that large masses of steel will be at an average temperature and never reach the peak daytime temperature. It is also possible that some of these engines still had water in their boilers and tenders - making them even more resistant to heating up on a hot summer day.
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Moving on ...
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| 8392 - Built: Point St Charles, Oct 1930. Scrapped: December 1961. |
While I may straighten the image and crop foreground tracks (the Brownie took square photos) - I try to leave as much peripheral detail as I can. If you notice black margin strips - I am just showing that you are seeing the whole photo and that I didn't deprive you of any interesting details.
A couple of flangers mixed in with some snow plows.
These photos are presented in LC Gagnon official slide order ...
but he may have numbered them to craft an interesting slide show story.
(Notice all the fresh puddles above.)
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| 8439 - Built by GTR, 1923. Renumbered: from 8212 in 1957. Scrapped: Aug 1961. |
It may seem strange to renumber locomotives just before they are all scrapped.
However, CNR probably needed long series of contiguous numbers
freed up for all their new classes of diesels and Budd cars.
Consider that there were several companies operating in Canada which manufactured diesels back then.
The CNR was probably expected to be politically even-handed and open minded,
as it purchased these complex machines and provided hi-tech Canadian jobs.
Ambushed by a sudden Montreal summer thunderstorm, someone had the idea to take shelter here. One thing which is interesting to notice is that everyday standard steel pipes and fittings were used to put together cabooses such as this.
If you never had the opportunity of seeing Ross Robinson's carefully restored GTW caboose 77137 at Smiths Falls (today at St Thomas), you might be interested to notice here that there is no 'chair' for cupola occupants, just a platform with a sloped back - on which I am standing.
The storm passed quickly - but you can imagine the humidity.
Notice the cupola handrails - back then they wanted you on car rooves, if only to give and receive hand and lantern signals.
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| 1406 - Built by MLW for CNoR in 1913. Scrapped: Nov 1961. |
Notice the sand plant behind the engine's tender.
On this functional little engine, the first rounded dome is the sand dome.
You can follow the sanding pipe from it, to its discharge point in front of the leading driving wheel.
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| 5137 - Built by MLW Jun 1920. Scrapped: Sep 1961. |
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| 4193 - Built: Alco-Brooks, USRA design, for Boston&Albany 1919. To CNR Aug 1928. Renumbered: from 4207 in Aug 1928. Scrapped: Dec 1961. |
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| 46 - Built: MLW for GTR in 1914. Disposition: Museum, Vallée-Jonction, Quebec. |
This may be the Administration building.
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| 3293 - Built: CLC for Canadian Government Railways 1918. Scrapped: Nov 1961. |
Like Sam Kinison's retired lunar astronauts struggling to cope in a world of unbearable Arizonan trailer park banality, no railway experience since Turcot has had the same gravity. Distance from this experience only increases its significance.
I think I return to these slides because they represent my own lost world of immense forsaken machines which had collectively travelled millions and millions of miles to places and times in history which I will never see.