Between 1895 and 1924, by law, these photographs had to be copied to The Cloud ... and they were thus saved from a few disasters ...
Archival Science Disasters, Shifting Baseline, Artifact Lost and Found
In 1916, the huge Parliament Buildings of Canada fire began in the Reading Room. This was on the Parliament side of the Library fire door and the collection of books and newspapers there was lost. The 1953 fire in the dome of the Library of Parliament resulted in water damage to artifacts.
An ill-advised 1938 purge of Canadian Copyright Office artifacts was mandated ... because the new office had insufficient storage space. The woman who took dozens of photos of this wreck was very quick to have them copyrighted.
My cursory reading of Wiki suggests that the Canada Copyright Act of 1875 provided protection for 28 years, plus a possible 14-year copyright extension. This was long before Mickey Mouse, and corporate lobbying to incrementally extend copyright protection every few years to protect Mickey.
... see 'Shifting Baseline', below ...
Shifting Baseline Syndrome is essentially a measuring/judgement error which happens when people don't have a proper historical perspective regarding a given phenomenon. As a person interested in history, you probably already know about it or have observed it on your own. For example ...
... In Grade 5, we were told that Cabot (circa 1497) was sailing over the Grand Banks and the cod were so plentiful that the ships cold barely move through them. We kids couldn't really judge whether Cabot was telling the scientific truth or simply promoting his discovery of 'Newfoundland'.
Since Cabot, each generation of fisheries scientists and politicians have begun their careers with a lower fish population (my generalization). People needed work and trading a few extra fish today to avoid despair today didn't seem unreasonable. This happened over and over.
Finally, industrialized fishing techniques significantly outstripped the reproductive capacity of the remaining cod and it became clear to everyone that the cod fishery had collapsed.
... So compensating for a 'Shifting Baseline' ... we can historically and properly analyze apparent norms ... such as ... the normal risk-free interest rate, the average home size in square feet, corporate officers' remuneration, the darkness of the night sky, the 'Overton Window', embracing vaccination to avoid crippling or fatal communicable diseases, walking ten miles to school through the snow and it was uphill both ways, etc.
It would probably benefit our collective existence if more people 'wasted their time' learning just a little more historical perspective.
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A Book About Photographs in The Imperial Cloud
Between 1895 and 1924, by law, the British government required Canada to send one copy of all materials deposited at Ottawa for copyright registration ... to the Library of the British Museum (later, The British Library, London). Empires are going to be imperious, eh?
Being forced to gift this 'intellectual property' to Britain (aka The Cloud) wasn't necessarily fair to Canadian copyright holders. However, with historical hindsight, the British did know more about not burning up, hosing down and throwing out valuable Canadian artifacts than Canadians did. These materials were reverently enshrined in an archival zone known as 'The Colonial Dump' where several layers of dust provided welcome insulation.
That's part of the story behind this book and these four photos which were published in it. If you are interested in archival science and Canadian history you should have a look at this book:
Canada, The Missing Years; Patricia Pierce; 1985; Stoddart.
I bought the book when it was published, but this copy can be borrowed at archive.org.
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Four Intriguing Photos From the Past, Lacking Interpretation ...
We've been to Enterprise and Tweed and one can often sniff out a former railway presence in the layout of parts of a town. In the past, local interpretation of a town's railway history was often non-existent. Local librarians sometimes voluntarily took on the noble task of preserving essential artifacts from a town's history.
These photos (taken by Harriett Amelia May in 1903) have always interested me because the subject is so quaint and geographically removed from today's massive intermodal and unit trains pounding their handbrake-skidded wheels along the CNR's Kingston Subdivision.
The Rathbun-owned Bay of Quinte Railway (BQR) in Enterprise, Ontario was the scene of this wreck. On 24 November 1903, Edward Wilkes Rathbun died. In 1910, control of the Bay of Quinte Railway was acquired by Mackenzie and Mann as they expanded their Canadian Northern Railway network across Canada.
Connecting Tweed and Yarker, this segment of the Rathbun railway line existed through Enterprise between 1889 until 1941, when it was abandoned by Canadian National Railways.
Several maps are provided below.
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| from: Canada, The Missing Years; Patricia Pierce; 1985; Stoddart. |
Remember this view of this particular switch, probably with a sawmill behind it, and this stream for later ... when we finally get to the maps.
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| from: Canada, The Missing Years; Patricia Pierce; 1985; Stoddart. |
The train apparently had a single locomotive pulling it. There was speculation a cow had derailed it.
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| from: Canada, The Missing Years; Patricia Pierce; 1985; Stoddart. |
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| from: Canada, The Missing Years; Patricia Pierce; 1985; Stoddart. |
If you don't guard the derailment sight,
someone will steal wagon wheels, cut circular pieces of glass,
and make a fortune selling rustic coffee tables!
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| from: Atlas of Canada; 1915; Government of Canada. |
Finally a Map! Donald M Wilson Adds Critical Details
Both Patricia Pierce ... and Donald M Wilson in Lost Horizons - The story of the Rathbun Company & The Bay of Quinte Railway; 1983; Mika ... say the cause of the wreck of the artillery train is unknown.
Wilson explains that the 11th and 16th Guelph Field Batteries were making their way to annual field exercises at Deseronto.
The CPR line along Lake Ontario through Belleville did not exist until 1913 (the map above is from 1915). The trip from from Toronto to Tweed (north of Belleville) took place on the CPR's existing line through Peterborough.
At Tweed, the Rathbun BQR took over, and the artillery train would have travelled through Marlbank, Tamworth, Enterprise, Yarker and Napanee before reaching Deseronto. This is quite a 'scenic' and roundabout route.
... I have chosen plain language city/town names instead of subdivisions and antecedent railway names because the latter will not be helpful to readers not specializing in railway history.
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| 1932 topographic map from Historical Topographic Map Digitization Project. https://ocul.on.ca/topomaps/collection/ |
The track arrangement through Tweed was quite interesting on this map, which shows the area about 30 years after the wreck. The CPR travels roughly west-east. The successor (CNR) to the BQR is aligned roughly north-south.
There are wyes and interchange tracks which railway modellers could duplicate here. They could certainly develop challenging 'time-saver switching puzzles' with this infrastructure!
If this was the track arrangement in 1903, it looks as if the artillery train would have been reversed from the CPR bridge over the Moira River, and then over the 'downtown wye', in order to face south for the BQR leg of its trip. This operation, with its unusual consist, would have attracted a large audience of town residents!
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| 1916 topographic map from Historical Topographic Map Digitization Project. https://ocul.on.ca/topomaps/collection/ |
The Beautiful Art and Science of Canadian, Early 20th Century, Mapmaking
And so we finally reach Enterprise on this map created about a decade after the trainwreck.
A great amount of militia-relevant, interesting to us, historical detail about buildings and railways was included on these maps.
The legend for this map is reproduced below the following map segment which enlarges Enterprise.
Canadians couldn't have foreseen the conditions in which they'd fight in 'the next war' - 11 years after the 1903 wreck.
But they remembered the War of 1812, the Fenian Raids, and the Boer War ...
the Rebellions of 1837 & 1838, and the Red River & North-West Rebellions.
They studied the Crimean War and US Civil War.
So topographic maps were designed to help them fight all these old conflicts on Canadian soil.
If you've watched the 1993 movie Gettysburg,
you'll remember that everyone back then,
always went around saying things like ...
' This is good ground [solemn pause for emphasis] '
With a good Canadian topographic map, you'll know in advance where the 'good ground' is!
Shhh! ... and don't let any of 'them' get our 'good ground' maps!!
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| 1916 topographic map from Historical Topographic Map Digitization Project. https://ocul.on.ca/topomaps/collection/ |
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| 1916 topographic map from Historical Topographic Map Digitization Project. https://ocul.on.ca/topomaps/collection/ |
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What can we see today?
On the current Google view above, you can see how some railway features are still preserved and observable - even 80 years after the rails were lifted.
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| from: Lost Horizons - the story of the Rathbun Co; Donald M Wilson; 1983; Mika. |
Here is the BQR station at Enterprise, looking north-west, circa 1895. A train seems to be approaching - hidden behind the Grand Trunk boxcar. The waiting passengers and the shadows of the photographer and assistant are visible.
The shapes to the left of the railway property seem to be farmers' (wood) rail fences. Another twin-chimneyed building with a similar 'railway character' appears beyond the 'two-door public conveniences' and the freight shed portion of the station. These railway dwellings were sometimes provided for local railway employees, such as those in charge of the area's track maintenance gangs.
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The railway concrete they made back then was virtually indestructible and I believe the surviving concrete station platform appears on the Google image above.
Below, showing the same platform area, the distinctive quarter circle of concrete curb around the manual water pump (or standpipe) in the 1895 photo can be seen, along with part of the former station's concrete foundation.
This general location is shown in a lightened rectangle in the centre of the image below.
This probably marks where the tailend of the consist stopped on the rails.
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This view looks north-west from 1523 Lake Road in Enterprise and includes the east end of the wreck site.
It appears in the lightened rectangle on the image below.
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Two More Photographs From Donald M Wilson Provide Intriguing Details ...
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| from: Lost Horizons - the story of the Rathbun Co; Donald M Wilson; 1983; Mika. |
Donald Wilson includes eight photos from the wreck in his book. One artillery horse was killed with several from the same stock car being badly injured. A cow in a trackside barn was also killed. There were no serious injuries to any people on the train or in Enterprise.
Two of the photos from Wilson's book shed much more light on the circumstances of the derailment.
Seeing that 'the locomotive' was actually the trailing locomotive, and seeing that the leading locomotive remained on the rails ... was interesting to me in suggesting a possible cause. Before checking Wilson's book, I didn't realize there were two locomotives on the train. Here, you can see that the trailing locomotive was still under steam when the photo was taken ... suggesting it was taken just after the derailment.
Wilson notes that the BQR was equipping its rolling stock with air brakes that year and you can see an air brake main reservoir under the engineer's side of the cab on the trailing locomotive. It seems that most or all of the cars - most were from the CPR - were air brake equipped. The air brake system was probably operative at the time of the wreck.
There seems to be no available evidence that the lead locomotive was air brake equipped, so control of the air brake system may have been given to the engineer of the trailing locomotive.
... This seems irregular to us today, however, this generation of railroaders operated before air brakes were available. It must have seemed so efficient and powerful that you didn't need to wait for a handful of brakemen running along the roofwalks to slow or stop a train. Just an engineer with a brake handle!
The added safety provided by air brakes for the artillery movement might also have been a demand of the military ... as a condition of the move taking place on the BQR.
Wilson also writes that the second locomotive left the rails at the frog of the south switch at Enterprise. If you look at the very first photo of this piece, you'll see a switch stand with locals sitting on a wood rail fence beside a stream. The map suggests that this waterside switch was probably the switch involved.
Compared to today's railway track and equipment, the BQR rolling stock and track structure would have been quite primitive. Metallurgical science, rail and fish plate quality control, crosstie quality and ballasting ... would have been adequate for the BQR's regular traffic - but much different from what would have been generally considered appropriate for branch lines in the 1950s. While the cars seem to have had Janney couplers, I only see evidence of link and pin technology between the two locomotives. Single or combined failures of any of these items could have contributed to a derailment.
Given the presence of a second locomotive, and considering train dynamics, it would be interesting to know how often the BQR operated doubleheaders. The Poors Manual of 1902 says they had a total of 6 locomotives. With the lightness of the 56 lb rail, I'm wondering if the lateral forces of the two engines on the curve at Enterprise might have been sufficient to break, spread or roll the outer rail - assuming there was an underlying track flaw there.
The pattern of the derailed rolling stock below seems to show a lot of the consist strewn on the outside of the curve ... as well as some in the characteristic zigzag pattern we often see at derailments.
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| from: Lost Horizons - the story of the Rathbun Co; Donald M Wilson; 1983; Mika. |
So That's It ...
I realize that there are many, many different photographs of this trainwreck available all over the internet. I've just looked at the ones I have ... in the order in which I 'found' them. I still think these six are the most salient images to understand this event.
There's no possibility of any of us turning this into a Transportation Safety Board-quality analysis to definitively identify a single cause. Someone else is most welcome to follow up with more sources and/or to write a book about it - but this bit of work has completely satisfied me after all these years of looking at those first four photos.
It is wonderful that we have so many modern on-line tools to help an amateur slap together some kind of perspective regarding an unusual event which happened so long ago.
Harriett Amelia May certainly left us a historical gift with the extensive documentation she did of this accident ... and her decision to preserve it through having it registered under copyright.
Whether electronic storage in The Cloud ... will prove to be as durable as statutory Imperial Cloud storage ... only time will tell. The copies stored in London were apparently fortunate to escape WW2 incendiary bombs and probably other unnamed archival jeopardy ... languishing for years, as they did, in 'The Colonial Dump'.
