It's time to pay our final visit to Turcot Yard.
A month has gone by and it's a nice day, so we'll take the bus to Upper Lachine Road
and make our way down the escarpment one last time.
First Visit to Turcot Yard, Montreal, 17 July 1961
Second Visit to Turcot Yard, Montreal, 19 July 1961
Having just turned four, I will be taking neither photos nor notes.
However, I'll respond to every request of my father to get on the pilot of each engine and wave at the camera
... so my apologies in advance.
I do not wander around in railway yards and I do not recommend that you do so either.
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| 1521 - Built by MLW for CNoR in 1905, numbered as 1274. Renumbered in 1957. Preserved at Middleton Railway Museum, Middleton, Nova Scotia. |
Notice that the bell and glass number plates have been removed. An impressive amount of piping is shown here on the fireman's side of the boiler. This engine was originally sold to Andrew Maclean of Gravenhurst to attract attention to his antique shop.
Most of my data comes from Canadian National Steam Power; Tony Clegg & Ray Corley; 1969; Railfare.
Through the miracle of the internet, the museum corresponded with me about this image a number of years ago and subsequently posted it on their Facebook page. LC Gagnon would be pleased to see his photos spreading out over the internet.
You can get an idea of some of the scale of the scrapping process as you look down the deadline. One wonders if the CNR would have undergone a partial steam renumbering process in 1957 if they had known how quickly the new diesels could take over operations. They did need to open up blocks of roster numbers for the new diesels, but still ...
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| 5061 - Built by MLW for GTR in 1913, numbered as 181. Scrapped Sep 1961. |
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| 3345 - Built by CLC for Canadian Government Railways in 1918, numbered as 2945. Scrapped Sep 1961. |
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| 5268 - Built by MLW for CGR in 1918, numbered as 496. Scrapped Nov 1961. |
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| 4193 - Built by Alco-Brooks for Boston & Albany in 1919, numbered as 1107. To CNR in 1928, numbered as 4207. Renumbered Nov 1957. Scrapped Dec 1961. |
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| 6189 - Built by CLC in 1940. Scrapped Oct 1961. |
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| 6212 - Built by MLW in 1942. Scrapped Dec 1961. |
At the left, you can see the bottom of the ramp ... up which engines and hopper cars of coal ran to load the coaling dock.
Right behind the tender, in the distance, you can see the roundhouse.
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| 6212 - Built by MLW in 1942. Scrapped Dec 1961. |
As I/we remember events, it was at this point in our visit when a CNR Constable cordially invited us to leave the property. In early 1962, a couple of fires happened (were set) in the roundhouse. So in retrospect, 'we' understood that visitors didn't belong here.
The roundhouse was scheduled for demolition and part of the infamous Échangeur Turcot would be built squarely over its former location. In the 1990s, my father and I returned and determined the spot where it had stood.
* * *
Here is the article which precipitated our visits.
If you look at the date of our first visit, it is the following Monday.
Two days after the article appeared.
Our planning department must have been in overdrive to organize three generations of us for that first visit.
My father was excited about the fact that 'people can go and take pictures of them'.
(The previous April, the two of us had visited the CPR's Angus Shops
where he had photographed the dead locomotives through their chain-link fence.)
It isn't clear that the CNR intended that image of a photographer to be an invitation to all.
The elements of the article are enlarged below.
This may be J Norman Lowe, the CNR historian.
"It's dirty work."
Dozens of white bricks of asbestos boiler lagging
can be seen falling off the boilers of the two engines.
