Rolly Martin Country: ACR 1947 Algoma Central Railway Employee Timetable

Rolly Martin Country is encompassed on the geological map included in this post.

This employee timetable came from Rolly Martin. For a brief time, he worked as a sectionman on the Algoma Central. As he gave the timetable to me with a mass of other railway publications during one of our vacation visits, I didn't get a chance to ask if the other pages were culled during or after his service with the ACR. At any rate, the most important operating pages survived.

Of particular interest to me is the Michipicoten Subdivision. On different vacations, we travelled to both Hawk Junction and Michipicoten Harbour.

Here are a few photos: Hawk Junction in 1991

Having a farm boy's practical experience with applied mechanics and good physical strength, Rolly told me a few times that he once single-handedly changed a rail out on the Michipicoten Sub.

How?

I suspect that this was an emergency repair and thus it was permissible to leave the defective rail on the ties and between the rails ... until other sectionmen were available to heave it clear of the track. So the replacement rail would be levered 'normally' off the side of the handcar - outside of the rails.

(If it was mandatory that the defective rail be cleared from the track area by Rolly, I've guessed that chaining the end of the replacement rail and levering the handcar out from under it might have worked. Then the defective rail could be levered off the end of the ties and down the ballast ... and the replacement levered from the centre of the track into place.)

from: Geology & Scenery, North Shore of Lake Superior; EG Pye; 1969; Ontario Department of Mines.

To make things more interesting, I chose this map to show the line of the Algoma Central Railway. The map includes the Heron Bay and Nipigon Subs of the CPR. Except for a brief period working out of Lambton, this map encompasses all of the railway lines of Rolly's railway career ... Rolly Martin Country.

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I don't think there was anything special about their 'Hayes Derails' - it was just a commercial product which one applied using a switch stand, or flopped onto the rail manually. Perhaps, in that culture a 'derail' evoked a fancy split-rail design as is seen on British railways and railways built during the Colonial period (India, Pakistan, etc).

Notice the 'ring codes' for various stations on the dispatcher/operators 'party line' telephone throughout this timetable.

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from: Algoma Central Railway; OS Nock; 1975; A & C Black Ltd.

Above is Hawk Junction (undated photo), looking timetable north. Beyond the yard tracks, you can see the main line swinging to the right of the photo. The Michipicoten Sub cutoff is the track climbing to the left of the main line.

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from: Altitudes in Canada; James White; 1915; Commission of Conservation, Canada.

This mileage and elevation data could be used to draw a rough profile of the Michipicoten Sub.

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from: Algoma Central Railway; OS Nock; 1975; A & C Black Ltd.

Michipicoten Harbour handled different bulk commodities during different periods of its existence. A 2024 check via Google Maps suggests that the main dock is still used for some bulk commodities transported by road. The most typical bulk commodities would have been iron ore from the nearby Helen Mine and coal. The undated image above shows the 'new' coal bridge - this coal stockpiling area eventually became considerably longer. You can also see dredging activity in the harbour.

Before this modern coal bridge operation was built, a wooden pier with gravity hoppers below was used to load ships. OS Nock's caption suggests that that wooden dock was in place between 1900 and 1939.

I think you can see the 'runaway' track curling around that grove of trees beyond the coal bridge (see the Michipicoten footnote paragraph above: "A terminal brake test as provided ... "). As the movement backed down the grade to the harbour, the tailend brakeman would have kept the SAFETY SWITCH lined for that track until the engineer whistled that he was in control of the movement.

This failsafe process was followed on the CPR's original Big Hill near Field. In 2024 on YouTube there is a British-built railway location in Pakistan requiring a full stop ... before a switchtender will emerge from his shack and line the main line switch away from a spectacular steep runaway track ... for the main line.

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from: Algoma Central Railway; OS Nock; 1975; A & C Black Ltd.

For me, this is the most charming and interesting image of the set. This is Brient - timetable east is to the right. It was the terminal for 'unit trains' operating to the dock at Michipicoten Harbour. You can see a coaling tower and a water tower. An engine occupies the tail of the wye. A small shop area with stockpiles of spare parts can be seen with its own stub track near the west leg of the wye.

While the features of Brient are no longer visible on the satellite images of Google Maps, the underlying basic map still shows the wye and tracks there (below).

Notice on the map below, that the track I suspect as being the 'runaway track' at Michipicoten is tangent with the main track ... while the dock is shown on a diverging route.