Our second visit to Turcot occurred two days after our first. On this visit, the hostlers were turning CNR 6153 over to its engine crew for an excursion. LC Gagnon was a member of the Canadian Railroad Historical Association and he knew about this excursion either from their newsletter or from the railfans at Lachine High School - where he taught.
The defective Ektachrome slides return! The primarily red images are their natural state. On the image below, you can see a recurring peril. My intrepid Epson V600 is beginning to flame out. You can see a typical bad scan element (a red vertical line) just touching the left side of the numeral 6 below.
The technique I have used for this series is to make a second scan with the slide inverted. The defective pixel is not located dead-centre. After revealing the 'red line' on both images, I rotate the inverted image 180 degrees to 'normal' it. The 'good 60%' of the image below is on the left side. The 'good 60%' of the inverted-slide-scan will be on its right side. I join the good parts of the two to eliminate the bad pixel element.
I do not wander around in railway yards and I do not recommend that you do so either.
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| 6153 - Built by MLW Apr 1929. Disposition: Exporail, Canadian Railway Museum. |
Displaying a rear marker, 6153 will soon become Passenger Extra 6153. Notice that the blower is on and the exhaust is clean. You can see where bricklayers have surgically removed part of a wall so some valuable roundhouse tool could be extracted and perhaps re-installed at the CNR's new Montreal Yard shop.
In contrast to 2023 - probably all of the people here (here with authorization, that is) are steam veterans.
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On the map below ...
A map from 1904 shows the area of Turcot Yard and is labelled with the names of some CNR and CPR railway subsidiaries and predecessors, and the 'cotes' of Montreal Island. You can also find locations such as Windsor and Bonaventure stations and the GTR facilities at Point St Charles.
The future GTR main line through Lachine has 'loop line' status and is labelled with the locations of three stations in the east end of Lachine.
The general area chosen for Turcot Yard has the labels 'Grand Trunk Railway' and 'Montreal and Champlain Railway'. The meandering course of the St Pierre River can also be seen, terminating in straight, engineered drains.
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| section of: Island of Montreal; J Rielle PLS, 1904; BANQ. |
A few details about Turcot ...
At about the same time that the Grand Trunk was double-tracking its main line and making improvements to its track profiles, a new yard and roundhouse were planned for Montreal. Previously, the GTR had used an engine house, shops and yard at Point St Charles - but the space had become inadequate.
The 187 acres of land acquired for the new yard were purchased from Philippe Turcot (1791-1861). A place referred to as Turcot Village had existed on part of the site of the future yard. A significant feature of this real estate was the poorly-drained valley of the St Pierre River. Artificial drainage and millions of tons of fill (including material excavated from the enlargement of the Lachine Canal) were used to provide the area needed for the yard. The yard's original design was for 2000 cars, but this soon increased to 2500 cars. In 1909, the yard was enlarged from 4000 to 15,000 car capacity.
The roundhouse first opened with 40 stalls in 1906 and quickly expanded to 57 stalls. Turcot had the distinction of being the largest roundhouse in Canada. It retained this status throughout its existence - until 1962 when it experienced two fires and was subsequently completely demolished, as originally planned by the CNR.
The Turcot Story; Michael Leduc; 2004; Michael D Leduc Enr. ... is a valuable reference for anyone interested in this facility and its development and operation. It was the source of the information above.
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My grandfather and I pose at the pilot.
LC Gagnon is holding his father's box camera while the latter takes this photo.
Here you can see that a couple of the cab's 'air conditioning' units are on - those white gaps above.
As many of you know, by holding the handrail along the cab roof, facing the cab and shuffling your toes along that white ledge ... the running board of the engine could be reached while the engine was in motion. You can see this arrangement better on the photo below.
... Occasionally, one of boiler-mounted appliances might need attention as the train rolled along. Perhaps a few small children were also scooped off the tracks over the years by a daring cab-to-pilot scramble when visibility was good on tangent track ... but a train was too heavy to stop in time.
The light bulb below the cab was for the engineer's benefit - before wheel slip lights were ever invented for diesels. For example:
At night, when cracking the throttle open to start a heavy train, the ground would often be observed to be moving as expected ... before the first exhaust was heard.
Or ... if a slip occurred when starting at night, the engineer would quickly close the throttle and, already having observed the movement of the ground below, judge how far to re-open the throttle to match the 'ground speed'. Etc, etc.
Time to go!
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As we were 'just leaving' ...
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| 6063 - Built by MLW Oct 1944. Scrapped Dec 1961. |
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| 185, 182, 187 - Built by English Electric for National Harbours Board, 1924-1926. |
Acquired from NHB in 1942. Series renumbered from 180-188 to 6716-6724 in 1969. Retired 1971-1995.
At the left is the Turcot coaling dock from which the 6153 would have been fueled.
A clamshell bucket was often used for coaling at the 'turnaround point' of these day excursions.
You can see the roundhouse in the distance.
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| 46 - Built: MLW for GTR in 1914. Disposition: Museum, Vallée-Jonction, Quebec. |
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| 1138 - Built by MLW, 1913 for CNoR. Scrapped: Aug 1961. |
... Coupled to the rear pilot of the 46.
This particular engine is also shown on Page 79 of Canadian National Steam Power; Tony Clegg & Ray Corley; 1969; Railfare.
The end of our second of three visits.
We'll be back again in August 1961!