Railway Equipment Suppliers - In Search of Hiram L. Piper

 

It has been a week of interesting transportation correspondence and research with the names Hanley, Davis, Fairbanks Morse, Richardson, Piper, McAvity, Ashton, Ashcroft, Adams & Westlake and Dietz coming up at various times. (Dorval, Douglas and TCA also came up - but that will be on Lachine Peas.)

My guess is that it was in 1962, during the December school break, that my father got me into the Volkswagen Beetle and we drove from Lachine to 'St Remi'. Back in those days, one could just look in the city phone book to locate the offices of railway equipment suppliers. 

People could saunter in to places like Hiram L Piper's office and buy unused oilers; engineer's torches and 'tallow pots'; flagging kits; kerosene everything: marker lamps, switchlamps, trainman's lanterns etc. Maybe you can get these things new from Amazon now ... I don't know.

In December 1962, during the dark, cold hours of a winter break afternoon ... you would enter the warmth of an office that smelled of stale cigarettes, oil and paint. Back then, everything - from Budd cars to Sunday School - smelled of stale cigarettes.

If you were my age at the railway equipment vendor, you wouldn't be able to see over the counter. You'd be in walled off from most of the action and light. The light came no further than the counter's surface.

If you were my father's age, you might already own Dietz kerosene railway lanterns and a Piper flagging lantern. The latter was assembled from a 'Turcot Yard kit'. The metal skeleton was found discarded on the ground in one spot ... the miraculously unbroken red globe was found on the ground in another. 

At the Hiram L Piper company counter, in addition to obtaining a catalogue of all their wares, my father bought something that seemed like 'the latest thing' - a battery powered trainman's lantern. 

Thus began my family's long association with the Hiram L Piper name. 

In the late 1970s, the company followed us ex Montreal to also set up shop in Kingston. My father recorded their old Kingston number on the cover of the original catalogue.

Conveniently, 'track torpedoes' are also listed under their more traditional name 'fog signals'. Some of Piper's non-railway sidelines seem a little funny, but you can see how they had an area of specialty in self-illuminated optical devices.

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Using two mapping technologies 60 years apart... let's see where Hiram L Piper had his factory and office ...

If one enters the address from the catalog, it produces the red pushpin at the right. The beautiful elegance of their location really surprised me ...

If you know Montreal, and what used to be where the Turcot Interchange and the Vendome (top left) station are, you'll see it too. My father lived only a couple of blocks north of the latter location when he was a child.

Above (1960 map), you'll see the Lachine Canal, then the CNR, and finally the CPR lines 'eastbound' (to the right) into downtown Montreal.

If you locate 'St Remi' at the bottom right of the map, and follow it up to the corner of Dagenais, you've arrived at Hiram L Piper's.

Turcot and Pullman streets (based on my cursory research years ago) are not named after railway activities conducted locally. The track triangle near Pullman shows the two tracks leading into the Turcot Yard roundhouse turntable. The track loop to the north belongs to the CPR's Glen Yard with 'station' marking the location of CPR's Westmount station.

There are some happy rewards of historical-geographical research in 2020: 

... Any time the Stores departments of either railway needed something offered by Piper, a horse-drawn vehicle or a motor vehicle could be dispatched for those wooden crates of fusees, oil cans or flagging lanterns - badged for your railway. The geographical proximity between Piper and both railways' main terminal Stores departments made things convenient for everybody.

While the steam-era buildings of Turcot, (and even the 'half-concreted' warehouse/lofts building to the east of the roundhouse - which appears in so many Montreal steam engine photos) are gone, a pleasant surprise is that the Hiram L Piper building still does exist!

The building from so many steam locomotive pictures taken beside Turcot Roundhouse exists only in small corners of the Googleverse. Here is a final 2020 grab of the 2014 view of it - looking west from St Remi. The roundhouse was just beyond it.

 

For posterity, while it still stands, here are a few Google views of the former Hiram L Piper building.

St Remi runs through the left margin of the photo - 'north' toward the tracks.

The Dagenais side looking toward St Remi - where the cherry picker is parked.

Above and below - the front - the long St Remi side of the building. 

The street number from the catalogue is seen over the original, arched doorway.

Above: the side facing the 'north'.

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100 Years of Stable Prosperity (?)

In my correspondence this week, I was thinking about the good 100 years or so - during the height of the steam era - when business was generally great for everyone producing all the essentials to keep the railways operating. Yes ... lubricants and lighting oils changed from animal to mineral sources; fuel changed from wood to coal (and bunker oil); wood for car building was replaced by steel; air brakes, pintsch gas and passenger train steam heat saved lives ... but things were pretty stable for a century until dieselization. (Canada's cold climate notwithstanding ... today the internal combustion engine is probably nearing the end of a similarly prosperous century of dominance.)

Fueled by King Coal

The enormous demand for coal as a fuel was phenomenal. And it was so practical. You got it from the ground using very cheap exploited labour. You 'cleaned' it of rock and broke it up. Gravity and rough, open containers could be used to handle it in bulk at virtually every stage of its transportation until the coal found itself in the firebox of a locomotive - or the coal bin in a house's basement.

Forever? ...

Coal was essential ... for early electrical generation applications and the production of town gas ... mineral smelting ... manufacturing ... moving Canadian grain and mined commodities for export to Britain or the US ... travel ... 

Most economic activities absolutely needed the railways (and the coal they transported) to provide reliable all-season transportation in Canada. And the railways also owned steamships - extending their reach even further.

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So, during most of 'that' century, the vendors (and purchasers) of railway equipment had a lot to be happy about. Canada's metropolis, Montreal, was the traditional railway capital of Canada (at least for the GTR, CPR, and later the CNR). 

Incorporated in October 1918, the Canadian Railway Club in Montreal was organized to promote education through the presentation of papers on railway subjects. Secondarily it was also to enable those employed by, or associated with, railways to meet on informal and cordial terms. Unless the Club requested an educational presentation on the subject, members who were suppliers of railway goods were strictly prohibited from promoting their products at meetings.

H.L. and R.H. Piper were both members of the Club.

The following pages come from a bound volume of the Canadian Railway Club proceedings May 1923 to May 1929 which I purchased.

Jim Christie made me aware (of the results of his always skilful research) that you can also look online at the archived volumes of this organization's meetings ...

Canadian Railway Club Proceedings

Setting the stage ... it was almost 100 years ago ... Monday, December 10, 1928 started as a clear, cold day with an overnight low of -14 C. The temperature rose to a daytime high of -7 and stayed there for the following night. The walk up from Windsor (Street) station to the Windsor Hotel would have been quite pleasant for the CPR employees attending ...

Postcard mailed in 1905.

from: Vanishing Canada; Rick Butler; 1980; Clarke, Irwin & Co.

The grand dining room of the Windsor Hotel in 1878.

If you're interested, here is what Sir Henry had to say that night ...

CNR 1928 Sir Henry Thornton - Speech to The Canadian Railway Club

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To complete this post, here are some of the more interesting advertisements 

from the pages of the Canadian Railway Club records during the period.

And a reference to Hiram L Piper in the February proceedings of the club.

CNR 1928 Sir Henry Thornton - Speech to The Canadian Railway Club

The Canadian Railway Club met monthly at Montreal's Windsor Hotel. For the May, 1928 meeting, Sir Henry Thornton, President of the Canadian National Railways, was invited to attend and speak after the reading of the winning research paper.

from the Record of Proceedings of the Canadian Railway Club.

The Canadian Railway Club's competition call for papers resulted in over 100 being submitted. H.G. Heisler of the Sleeping, Dining and Parlor Car Department, Canadian Pacific Railway, Winnipeg, read his winning paper entitled "Employee Education".

from: Beatty of the CPR; DH Miller-Barstow; 1951; McClelland and Stewart.

Edward Beatty and Sir Henry Thornton, November 1923.

... Beatty was a lawyer by training and President of the CPR from 1918 to 1942. Beatty was thus a rival of Thornton and, by definition, a critic of the taxpayer-owned CNR. Even so, Beatty was later shocked by the shoddy treatment Thornton received at the hands of some federal politicians in the early 1930s - at the end of Thornton's railway career.

Thornton was among the first of the 'educated railroaders' in America - in an age when most were promoted up through the ranks. After working for the PRR and LIRR, he was hired away - across the Atlantic, in 1914 - and was working as General Manager on the Great Eastern Railway of England when the Great War began. He was promoted during the war, winding up as Inspector-General of Allied Transportation. He was later knighted for his wartime work. 

If Thornton's speech seems unlike that of a typical railway executive from the 1920s, or today, it's because he wasn't. 

In his posthumous 1935 biography, the following events are recorded as coinciding with Thornton's arrival and departure from Britain.

In 1914:

'The first time representatives of Union Labour waited upon the Board of Directors during his regime, he had electrified the meeting by saying to a clerk, "See that some chairs are provided for these gentlemen." Chairs for the gentlemen! Such a thing had never been done before.'

In 1922:

'Before he left, he was presented with a membership badge of the Railwaymen's Union. It was the first - and so far the last - time that any railway executive was accorded that honour. It remained one of his most prized possessions, and thereafter he wore it always on his watch-chain.'

1928 - The Canadian Railway Club

The Canadian Railway Club was established in Montreal in 1902. 

Then, Montreal was where these two large railway systems had their headquarters. 

Here are the Canadian headquarters of the Grand Trunk Railway on an undated postcard. Located on McGill at William, this building still exists. After nationalization, this was used for a few decades as the headquarters of the Canadian National Railways.

The CPR headquarters, or course, were here - seen in a circa 1920 postcard image.

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When the Canadian Railway Club was established, this is how a British atlas presented the railway map of North America.

from: Handy Atlas of the World; 1904; JG Bartholomew.

The CPR was the only Canadian transcontinental system, with western connections to Chicago.

The Grand Trunk was well-established in the east, particularly between Montreal and Chicago.

A great deal of Canada's commerce moved east through Montreal to Europe, making Montreal Canada's largest and most important city ... and Canada's railway capital into the 1960s. Naturally, associated with the headquarters were the main locomotive and car shops. Around the offices and shops of these major railway installations were clustered the suppliers, big and small, of the things railways purchased. So all these 'railway people' were clustered in a city nearing a population of one million.

Probably in a good-hearted effort to figuratively build bridges between the employees of rival companies, railway clubs like this were set up in Canada and the US during the great railway age. The CRC was the first Canadian club of this type, preceding the Toronto Railway Club by about 30 years.

My own interest in the CRC is that I purchased an original bound set of the club's records of proceedings from 1928-1929. This was just on the eve of the Crash and the Great Depression. I purchased this artifact 'for the price of a daily cup of coffee' ... x two days.

Canadian railway clubs still exist today. If Canada still has a railway capital, it moved to Toronto - though probably it is thoroughly 'continentalized' now. 

Looking back at its membership, the old CRC would have had many members born in the British Isles. Between the 1920s and today, visually, the demographics of upper level railway personnel have changed about as much as couplers - they are superficially the same.

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At the last meeting of 1928 the most visionary CNR President, American Sir Henry Thornton, was the principal speaker. 

This first reproduced page from the 'proceedings' gives you an idea of the variety of backgrounds of those associated with running the club from its earliest days.

Here is a more recent postcard of the location for the CRC's meetings: Montreal's Windsor Hotel.

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Do members usually read the constitutions of their organizations?
As a historical document, the CRC constitution helps explain what this organization was trying to achieve.

The paper is thin and frail and not all pages of the monthly booklets in this bound volume scanned well.

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Here are some of the papers presented at CRC meetings during the 1927-28 season.

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The opportunity for commercial networking at the CRC was reflected in the interesting old ads found in these booklets
 ... which helped fund the club's activities.

This ad was only placed once in the form showing all the lab data.
Having 'good water' was essential for the efficient operation of iron horses.

Another advertisement from this publication ...