1959 - Railfan Organizations (n=96), 1959 Summer Fantrips, 1966 CNR Transportation Advice

The Hi-Ballers* Railroad Club, OERHA, CRHA, and UCRS are included in an article listing the US and Canadian railway clubs. The article is from Trains, June 1959. (*later the WCRA)

It is followed by a list of that summer's railfan excursions.

A 1966 CNR Transportation Advice document for a fantrip to St Albans outlines the consist, tentative schedule, general arrangements and circulation list for a cross-border fantrip on which we rode. 

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Between the late 1930s and the 1960s, railfans organized themselves into clubs. Using word of mouth, local newspapers and hobby magazines ... the word got out that people (generally men - article: 'a minority are misogynists') could join a larger local group which shared their rail interest. 

In exchange for the club membership fee, the postal service would deliver the organization's newsletter or bulletin. This would provide reminders of the dates of the organization's upcoming meetings and club news. Some clubs owned model layouts, prototype rolling stock, or were connected with a museum. 

If the club organized fantrips, the member would receive advance notice of these as well. In keeping with the paper-based technology of the era, a form from the newsletter would be returned with a cheque or postal money-order, and the member would eagerly watch the mail for the club's cardstock tickets to arrive. 

Until the late 1960s, railroad corporations were often quite public relations oriented and proud of the operations of their companies - including their passenger service. As long as corporate liability (for personal injury or death) was dispensed with through a signed legal release, railfans seemed to have privileges and liberties which the general public would never have thought to claim. A kind of infectious mob licence often possessed fantrippers as they climbed trackside structures and rolling stock ... and stood too close to moving equipment in the quest of a perfect photo. 

This physical jeopardy for position was done to take photos using plastic film. Separate hand-held light meters, careful aperture choices, and optimal shutter settings for the action level of the scene to be preserved ... were parts of the process. Others used point-and-shoot cameras or Super 8 movie film. Days later, the fans would find out if their photos were as perfect as they seemed when the shutter release was triggered at exactly the right moment. 

For a while, we lugged around a D-cell powered portable Japanese reel-to-reel recorder. Serious fans, parked full-size reel-to-reels right on countertops with nearby AC power in the open-door baggage car. Reverent church-sermon-quality SILENCE! was the expectation for those 'trespassing' near those serious railfans.

Getting back to the railroad corporations ... circa 1960, they often still had the shop equipment and shop staff necessary to support steam equipment. Today, steam-qualified running trades crew are, as a generalization, extinct on large railroads and anything which steams is embargoed with extreme prejudice. However, in the 1960s, there were still plenty of senior running trades employees who were familiar with steam operations because they had a decade or more of daily service working on steam.

Many excellent steam fantrips were operated out of Montreal by the CRHA on the publicly-owned, public-spirited CNR of the 1960s. The CPR had no interest in excursions after the end of steam - happy to be free of station agents, stations, steam, and all of the towers, tanks, shops, and expensive unionized labour which steam had required.

As a kid, I never gave much thought to the importance of having experienced crews available for 'the steamer' - not all of the professionals memorized the excursion engine's number like fans did. 

The CNR's roster of steam-heated heavyweight coaches - complete with opening windows - was also a great asset for fantrippers back then. 

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From the same issue of Trains ...

United States: $1 in 1959 is worth $11 in 2025 ... when calculating inflation.

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We were on this fantrip so this interesting document might have been picked up from a pile in the baggage car or at some other distribution point. Usually the club organizing the fantrip prepared a leaflet with the tentative schedule (and pleas for safe conduct by railfans) which showed runpasts and other scheduled stops.

It is difficult to imagine this kind of international in-and-out, in-and-out arrangement for excursion riders to the US today. It seems likely that border control was achieved by an official asking us collectively if we were all Canadian citizens. 

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Railfan Snapshots & Fantrip Safety

On Saturday, 23 May 1964, a NRHS wayfreight fantrip travelled from Montreal to St Hyacinthe and return. Here the train is southbound as it crosses the Victoria Bridge. 

With a lone guardian herding two children, aged 2 1/2 and 6, there was no possibility of leaving the single coach for some time in the 'observation car'. I remember there was a significant gap between the lowered gondola car end-door and the vestibule floor of the coach. On the far side, the gondola door provides a sort of 'cattle guard' for small-footed children.

However, we did get across at stops for switching to watch the action in the open air. 

LC Gagnon used a point-and-shoot camera and Ekachrome slide film for these two shots.

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Less than five months later, on Saturday, 3 October 1964, we are with CNR 6218 on a CRHA trip to Garneau. This view, in Joliette, is taken from today's Boulevard Sainte Anne overpass, looking roughly north-east. 

A one-day fantrip would often be operated over an entire subdivision or a similar 'regular run', to take advantage of established railway procedures for the duty-hours of crews, and existing railway facilities, and the familiar labour-intensive procedures required for steam locomotive maintenance during a run. 

Here, as part of the trip's planned operations (at a convenient half-way point), the fire department has been contracted to fill the tender with water. Generally, coaling (and the second of three tender water refills) was arranged at the same point where the train was wyed for its return. Coaling was achieved using a clamshell-bucket loader or continuous-belt elevator ... the railway coaling towers having long-since been demolished along with the trackside water tanks.

A number of local citizens have come to see the train. Although this trip was made only about four years after the end of steam, already, many of the local children would be too young to remember regular steam locomotive operations through town.

Notice that the recording end of the baggage car (right behind the engine) does not have any fans leaning and chatting at its door.