In May 1986, Eric went to the headend and introduced himself to the engineer of No 1, The Canadian, who was going off duty in Thunder Bay. Eric had been working for several hours to photograph the Heron Bay and Nipigon Subdivisions - you can see his excellent photos via the Rolly & Algoma radio button, above. The engineer confirmed that he was Rolly Martin and Eric explained his connection to me. Thus began the one enduring contact with my brief period spent on the Schreiber spare board.
In December 2004, Rolly Martin's health began to fail and I was determined 'to do something with the internet' to associate his name with a railway website that I would put together. Because of the literary 'power of three', the current website name just came into my head and it seemed like a simple, practical choice. My first account of his career came together quickly and it was posted 20 years ago under the name 'Rolly Martin Country'.
In the past, I had mentioned the idea of writing a short biography of his life and career. However, we lived 1400 kilometres apart. Other activities kept both of us busy and the project never developed.
Rolly had worked at the CPR cattle exercise pens at White River, 'on the section' on the ACR, as a CPR ashpitman ... and then up through the ranks aboard locomotives, including working as an instructor ... culminating in passing his 'cabooseless-qualification' in 1989. He began his retirement when No 1 was discontinued through Schreiber. Throughout his career, he had been an actively-interested professional ... getting the 'big picture' of the railway ... and he had worked on a really interesting progression of railway motive power.
During my training in early 1977, a number of people had warned me that he was exceptionally strict - demanding that his headend trainmen call all the signals. Local practice was only to call the signals which were not 'clear'. However, Rolly's demand didn't seem unreasonable to me, given the kind of work we were doing. Called to run east to White River one night, I walked through a snowstorm with my backpack to the yard office. Walking into the booking-in area, I was impressed that the engineer was wearing immaculate pinstriped overalls and an engineer's cap. A toothpick in his mouth, he was squinting and looking very serious as he sized me up.
Returning to 2004, a Netscape HTML composer and a public domain File Transfer Protocol program were used to present the posts via DSL under his name. That whole free website was limited to 100 MB by our local hosting ISP.
I had told Rolly what I was working on. My intention was to mail him a printed hard copy of the pages ... we both knew he would never use the internet.
... But Canada's CPR community is a well-connected group and it wasn't long before there must have been a single URL 'forward' via email to an account in Schreiber and his website became as 'viral' as one could get in the small railway-built town of Schreiber in 2004. Initially, this circumstance shocked both of us, but I should have expected it.
His friends and acquaintances were kidding as they asked how much he was paying to have nice things written and posted about himself. And, during all those years, people hadn't realized they had been living in his 'country'! He was retired at that point and his former 'mate' on No 1 predicted that Rolly would 'still be in this business for some time to come' via the website.
His next door neighbour invited Rolly over to see the whole website on his computer. To my relief, Rolly was pleased with what he saw. He was justifiably proud of his career and all the effort and sacrifice it had required over the years. That's exactly what was presented in my first account of his railway career on that first 'Rolly Martin Country' website.
Even Rolly's extensive railway career might not have furnished enough material for 500 posts, but many of the artifacts used here to communicate aspects of railway history have come from him.
He'll still be in this business for some time to come.
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