New computer-assisted hump yard complexes using mechanical retarders were sources of pride for Canadian railways in the 1950s and 1960s.
Smaller humps, employing small armies of yardmen, to ride the cars and act as human retarders, had been used for decades in Canada. One of Adolf Hungry Wolf's books shows this type of operation at Fort William in 1952. And in one of the CPR textbooks prepared for employee self-study (Factors in Railway and Steamship Operation, 1937) their Winnipeg terminal is described as using a small hump during slack times ... and during peak times (I assume during the fall 'grain rush') they used 'hump riders' 'with the movement considerably accelerated'.
Switching cars by 'kicking' them down sidings was a practice which probably began deep in the mists of railway history. In contrast to kicking, you can imagine that gently uncoupling cars at the top of a small hump and letting them roll away ... saved wear and tear on both the car draft gear, and on the engineer operating a steam-powered switch engine involved with kicking cars.
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At the end of the steam age in Canada, circa 1960, the old technologies - such as 'plain bearings' (brasses within journal boxes holding car oil) and refrigerator cars using ice or heated with charcoal - were still in use.
The industrial manufacturing techniques and metallurgy of the previous decades, and the tendency of railway technology to have a very long service life ... meant that good surveillance was required to spot mechanical defects on what were often 'legacy' railcar systems. Some of those cars had even survived the deferred maintenance of the Great Depression and the extreme service demands of World War Two.
Railway carmen were key to maintain the safety of railcar systems and to repair defects.
When major switching operations were conducting on the consist of a through train at a terminal ... the rules in force in 1959 on the Canadian Pacific Railway (and the CNR, too) required a No 1 Test (Initial Terminal) to be conducted. A carman would check the piston travel and proper brake application on each car of the train.
Prior to this - for example on arrival - the cars would be checked for defects like cracked wheels, broken springs, and unsecured brake rigging. For cars without roller bearings, the journal oil on each car (8 locations) would be checked and/or topped up and the waste (the cotton holding and wicking the oil) was checked and repacked as necessary.
Operating crews conducting switching at the terminal might also spot car defects requiring attention.
So with individual car inspections and routine car maintenance ... and outgoing train consist inspections ... and defect repair ... carmen had lots of work to keep them busy.
Traditionally, most of this work was done outside at the Repair In Place tracks. Kneeling in the snow to attend to car truck components was a common pastime at major terminals ... and at points all across the railway.
Considering all of this, you can imagine the productivity and quality of work life benefits that came from the facilities described in the following short CPR Spanner article from 1965 ...
As most of us are conditioned to look at it first, I tried to ensure that the motive power in the photo below would be easy to identify.
However, once I looked at the other rolling stock ... I think one could argue that ALL of the cars in the photo are obsolete today and would no longer be found on major Canadian railways.
