CNR 1922 CD Howe's Terminal Grain Unloader

Having seen my post about the grain doors and end doors used with wooden boxcars, Jim Christie thought I might be interested in this piece he found some time ago, from our favourite professional journal Canadian Railway and Marine World ... Page 175 of April 1922 ... if you go looking for the original at archive.org .

Clarence Decatur Howe (1886-1960) was an engineering consultant in the grain trade. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1935 at age 50. Over the years he was ... Minister of Marines, Railways and Canals (i.e. Transport); Minister of Munitions; Minister of Reconstruction (after the War); Minister of Trade and Commerce. 

He was a cabinet minister under Mackenzie King, and later St. Laurent for a total of 22 years and his accumulated wide-ranging power and authority resulted in the nickname: 'Minister of Everything'. 

In the beginning ...

Howe was born in Waltham, Massachusetts and graduated from MIT in 1907. His engineering specialty in grain elevator consulting began in 1916 at Port Arthur. So this 1922 article finds him early in his grain elevator consultation period.

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It is with a great deal of humility that I tiptoe into the subject of terminal elevators at the Lakehead. In spite of owning many postcards, I cannot accurately describe the location, corporate builder, changes of ownership or current status (standing or demolished) of most of the elevators shown in my postcards.

I believe that the two postcards in this post represent the elevator in CD Howe's article. Elevators are long-lived assets which are often subject to considerable alteration to modernize their automated systems. At least one catastrophic explosion, with loss of life, caused significant damage to this elevator, as well. 

If I understand some of the excellent websites which document these buildings (and the article text), part of this elevator was constructed not of poured concrete but multiple layers of tiles. Some fascinating photos of the tile bin interiors can be found on the internet.

You should start here:

https://friendsofgrainelevators.org/

Postcard mailed in 1912.

from: Guardians of Progress; Thorold J Tronrud; 1993; Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society.

While this map shows some aspirational real estate developments, I believe it accurately positions the grain elevators on the waterfront. As there was only one 'CNR' back in 1914, the postcard image shows the postcard elevator by the 'O' in Superior.

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Jim Christie's article appears below. CD Howe writes in straightforward engineering terminology. You can see his ability to cut to the essential as he describes the cumbersome power shovel work when compared to his gravity dumping system. 

The article details at some length the description of the mechanism and the rationale for its design. Much of the value of this post comes from the images, so you may wish to concentrate on them if the description becomes too abstruse.

I have tried to make the text as legible as possible and the illustrations as clear as possible. I have provided the images early in the article as it may make your journey through the explanation a little easier.

The serial number of the Valentine postcard below suggests a 1927 publishing date.

It seems to show the opposite view (the lake side) of the elevator.

Unused postcard. The date may be the date purchased.

end

Trans-Canada Air Lines 1946

Canadian National Railways had controlling ownership of Trans-Canada Air Lines when it was first established. Here is the government's account - from the Canada Handbook of 1946 - of how Canada's 'flag carrier' began.

Canadians had desired an 'All Red' route for their first transcontinental railway. Before that, crossing the continent expeditiously might have involved using existing American railroads for part of the trip. 

A similar situation had evolved with North American aviation. As a technology of war, great progress had been made in the development of aircraft during the Great War. However, travelling over large expanses of wilderness, or mountains, during a Canadian winter ... required technology beyond that of the Sopwith Camels, SPADs and Fokker triplanes - or even that of a Vickers Vimy, the first aircraft to make a non-stop crossing of the Atlantic.

Canada's vast, largely empty, wilderness was an impediment to setting up airways and aviation infrastructure. And economic activity to support a Canadian transcontinental commercial operation was lacking on most route segments.

However, float planes were just the thing for flying in supplies and people to remote northern mining locations. The Great War aerial photography techniques used to document enemy trenches and artillery could be adapted to finally map Canada's undocumented interior. 

After the worst years of the Great Depression, the establishment of a Canadian transcontinental airline became justifiable to the Government of Canada. To what extent Transportation Minister CD Howe was anticipating another European war is not stated. Certainly, TCA became essential to the Canadian war effort.

It should be noted that the Canadian Pacific Railway and its subsidiary, Canadian Pacific Air Lines, became involved in setting up the wartime trans-Atlantic aircraft ferrying system. This began by transporting American-built aircraft to Britain via Gander, Newfoundland. Ferrying avoided the inefficiency of aircraft disassembly for shipping and subsequent reassembly in England - freeing valuable British industrial labour for other duties. As well, ferried aircraft were safe from German U-boat operations - the latter were destroying a lot of convoy shipping early in the war. In 1941, with the Battle of Britain over, and the threat of German invasion of Britain less of a danger, Ferry Command was taken over by the Royal Air Force. 

On page 122 of the second article (below) CPA's activities are described.

The first article gives a lot of detail about the early years of Canada's national airline - TCA.

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Also from the 1946 Canada Handbook, an overview of Canadian air transportation:

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My father obtained and preserved a Trans-Canada wartime schedule.

Notice below that passengers were prohibited from using cameras.
This language persisted in the schedules printed after the war as well.

1951 Canada Handbook Photos

from: Canada: A History in Photographs; Hall & Dodds; 1981; Hurtig Publishers.

Canada's wartime 'Minister of Everything' in 1943 -

at the wheel of the 500,000th Canadian vehicle for the war effort.

Yet another of 'The Official Handbook of Present Conditions and Recent Progress' provides the illustrations for this post. Here is the Foreward from someone whose name you might recognize ...

The 'Canada' Handbook Series was initiated in 1930 to supplement the field of the Canada Year Book by offering to teachers and pupils in the public schools and to Canadian citizens generally a brief and attractive record of current economic conditions at a price within the reach of all. The Year Book is primarily a detailed reference work and is not designed to meet the need for a popular medium of this kind. 

The past two decades have seen expansion of the national economy in every direction and, since a considerable proportion of space in the Handbook is allocated to illustrations, the editorial task of giving a well-balanced presentation in a publication of this size and at low cost becomes more difficult each year. Currently many thousands of copies are being distributed abroad through our Diplomatic and Trade Commissioner Services and it is desirable for this reason alone that the Canadian economy should be explained fairly completely. 

C.D. Howe, Minister of Trade and Commerce

Shorter version: 

The Year Book of 1933-34 (for example) is almost 4 inches thick with a hard cover ... with 2/3 of the book being tables of statistics. There are no photos. 

These Handbooks have plenty of industry-donated photos with just a few tables of numbers. They are paperbacks and less than an inch thick.

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This book was published so long ago, that the boy standing in the aisle probably retired just after the turn of the century. Many intercity passenger trains would soon be going out of style in the US and Canada. You can see the smoking/non-smoking sections partitioned by glass. This is described as an 'air-conditioned day coach'.

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Trolley buses were perhaps a compromise between the tried and true street railways and the new Brill, Mac, CC&F and GM diesel buses. As a kid I rode on trolley buses in Montreal and Vancouver a few times, and they were very quiet and emitted no exhaust. They had exceptional acceleration.

The diesel bus salespeople will tell the transit authorities that diesels can be dispatched anywhere to meet new needs and that they don't need expensive catenary. 

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This may be a CPR boxcar wheelset getting turned - guessing from the chalked number on the wheel. In addition to being a good administrative practice, getting the wheelsets back to the original cars prevented asymmetries between truck wheelsets, which could lead to hotboxes.

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'The CPR freight terminal opened at Montreal in July, 1950, provides facilities for better and quicker handling of freight. Approximately 3000 cars pass through the terminal every 24 hours.'

'Cars being pushed up the hump are inspected from an undertrack floodlit pit.'

'Cars moving down the 'hump' into the classification yard are electrically braked and switched to their destined positions.' 

... in fact this looks like the early testing and calibration of the yard equipment. Perhaps they are working with a combination of pneumatic and electric retarders. The freshly-dug trench suggests that the hump yard is not shown in its final form.

Hump yards - with human riders working as 'car retarders' - had been used for decades. Post-war technology brought about advances in power switching and power retarders - hard couplings were notoriously bad for fragile cargoes which had been factory-loaded in boxcars. Eventually modern sensing and computing power enabled the automation of most of the processes ... at least after the cut lever was actuated by a human at the top of the hump.

With many hump yards now taken out of service, one could argue that high-horsepower flat switching is the favoured way of sorting cars for their destinations. Beltpack remote control of switching locomotives still requires careful work planning ... and enough people to protect the ends of the movements.

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With the 'freedom' brought by post-war automobiles, Ottawa could get rid of its streetcar system and move its smoky and dirty downtown union railway station where it 'belonged' ... away into an industrial park somewhere. The future of transportation would be in autos and planes!

Below: Freedom!
This kind of freedom can be scaled up to fill as many traffic lanes as one might build.

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Notice the shine on this domestically-produced locomotive.

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There was a Canadian elementary school reader story which described a thin and agile man who worked to get grain samples from each corner of the boxcars. Being thin was beneficial, as there was little clearance between the top of the grain load and the ceiling of the car for him to work in - an illustration was drawn to show the dark and claustrophobic working environment. This CD Howe Handbook photo doesn't quite match my childhood images of this type of work.

The worker at the door is leaning on a 'grain door' - assembled from boards at the country elevator and set inside the door frame to enable regular 40 foot boxcars to carry grain. Once the grain door was secure and made 'grain tight' with burlap, heavy paper, or other suitable material, the country elevator loading pipe was placed into the car, and the grain load would put back-pressure on the grain door. Levelling the load with shovels was part of the routine. The density of the type of grain loaded would determine the level to which the car was filled - and the filling levels for common grains (e.g. wheat) were often stencilled inside the car. The boxcar doors could then be latched and sealed in the normal manner after the car was loaded.

At its terminal elevator destination, the regular boxcar door would be opened, and the whole boxcar would generally be seized and tilted by mechanical jaws. The grain doors would often be broken before or during this process. Shovels could be used to finish the job.

Consider the ambient light outside. This is the best lit boxcar these two have ever worked in! 

" ... remember that time the Grain Board photographer came with all his lights? ha ha ha "

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'Toronto's subway under construction. In the foreground the decking has been completed, while for the next two blocks top-lift excavation is under way. Beyond that traffic is proceeding normally.'

from: Wheels of Progress; TTC; 1953.

from: Wheels of Progress; TTC; 1953.