Rolly Martin Country: CPR 1972 in the Official Guide. Includes from Algoma Central to White Pass & Yukon

In this post, many of the railways are illustrated with published photos from this era, or earlier.

... Some of the large format 'trains of Canada' books which sold in bookstores (such as Coles or WH Smith) for $10-20 in the 1980s offer interesting views of some of the more obscure railways.

... Known in our household as 'Books by the Pound' these 10 x 12 inch books were about an inch or more thick and often contained public relations department photos which must have been incredibly cheap to use. Photos were often enlarged to span the gutter ... to help pad the book up to the necessary one inch thickness.

... Often they were printed in Hong Kong or other exotic locations. A little bit of text written by a generalist who knew something about railways was added. Thus you had an affordable book which was suitable as a gift to 'someone who likes trains'. Laypersons understandably believed that train books were train books.

Not included: Single-railway books (which included rosters or timetables) and which were written by authors who had researched the history of a particular railway in depth would rise above this broad class. Mika, Railfare and Boston Mills-type books would definitely not be defined as 'Books by the Pound'.

To be unusually reasonable with this post, I stopped before illustrating ALL of the Canadian railways listed in the Official Guide pages. I did think that the inclusion of photos might make this post less dry. Hopefully some of the photos will make some readers curious about railway companies (and there are many) which they never saw in operation.

As an example of extinct operations, the Canadian Pacific entry lists many railway and transportation subsidiaries, and facilities, which have since been spun off or shut down. As in the case with the previous CNR 1972 Official Guide post, CPR lists their 10 hotels (and 2 'motor hotels').

from: Encyclopedia of North American Railroads; Aaron E Klein; 1985; Bison.

The Canadian at Morant's Curve, undated, but probably late-1950s.

Notice the three stop-gap coaches with clerestories.

from: Great Trains of the World; PB Whitehouse; 1975; Hamlyn.

Dominion Atlantic Railway at Kentville, Nova Scotia, September 1972.

from: Canadian Pacific Railway; Patrick C Dorin; 1974; Superior Publishing.

Undated photo of Esquimalt & Nanaimo Train 1 at Nanaimo.

from: Ribbons of Steel; Ena Schneider; 1989; Detselig Enterprises.

Undated view of Northern Alberta Railways Train 76 near Venice on the Lac la Biche Sub.

In the early days, I believe the NAR was essential in the delivery of the dimensional loads needed to begin bitumen sands mining and upgrading. I think three of those loads are visible in this consist.

If you sometimes enjoy virtual visits to locations via Google maps, you will find that the Venice Heritage Park has a really interesting school photo from Halloween 1932. Their Heritage Park website (accessible from the map side panel) outlines the development of Venice and neighbouring Hylo.

Going along the tracks to Lac la Biche, you'll find their museum has a 1:48 model of the two-stack Empress of France on display.