Portage la Prairie Lines, Part 6 - Portage Union Station and the Great Northern

It seems unfortunate that the rare and unusual so often receive the attention of railway preservationists - and the common and typical are lost. 

Nonetheless, ignoring my own lamentation, here is the story of a line which existed for fewer than 20 years as it was conceived by one of the great railway tycoons.

In the 1980s, I heard an engineer say he had switched a car into the 'Old Great Northern' at Portage la Prairie. I've always been curious where that was. Back then, I mistakenly assumed it was in the Canadian Northern section of the railway yard area. An image which Eric discovered and good old Google Earth helped me answer the question for myself. 

from: History of Railroads in America; Oliver Jensen; 1993; American Heritage Books.

Above: James J Hill in 1909, unknown location.

from: The Railway Builders; Oscar D Skelton; 1916; Glasgow Brook & Co.  edg

Here are a few samplings of contemporary railway news. 

As it says above, the Midland & Manitoba was Hill's company. 

The Grand Trunk Pacific was also enjoying some 'earned media' as it gave the Canadian Northern a poke.

Railroad Gazette 1905 11 10 - archive.org

Railroad Gazette 1905 11 10

Railroad Gazette 1905 11 17

from: The Railroad Gazette, November 1907; archive.org

The article in the Railroad Gazette was very long and was full of boring financial details. It was fine for James Hill and the Great Northern to be this ambitious, to rattle the cages of the CPR and CNoR, and to gallantly and publicly eschew 'spoon-feeding'. However, when reading the excerpt above ...

It is not obvious why the existing Canadian railway rates westbound from the Canadian Lakehead should be particularly cheap ... when compared to the rates via the Hill lines from Duluth. Manitobans had already learned the hard way (after the Battle of Fort Whyte) that eastbound grain was carried cheaper in Canada than in the US. 

So exactly why was Hill working so hard at building extra branch lines? So he could lose money by cutting his US rates ... as he tried to compete with established Canadian railways with lower rates?

Hill must have had some kind of genius 4-dimensional chess 'reason'. Or, perhaps he was just enjoying 'the game' he was playing with Van Horne, Shaughnessy et al - as a Canadian Rail article suggested. Life is short, enjoy it by keeping the other tycoons guessing.

• Hill was working to siphon off profitable near-border Canadian shipments with his many north-south branches across the west.
• Hill was threatening the CPR with the possibility of another southern Canadian transcontinental.
• Hill was even musing about building a line to Fort Churchill. Perhaps this was a swipe at the former Winnipeg & Hudson Bay of the 1880s, by then a charter in the Canadian Northern portfolio. But ... laying rails to Hudson Bay, or even just as far as The Pas, was never something which Mackenzie and Mann saw as a spectacularly profitable venture.

Perhaps if Hill had lived a little longer, he could have experienced delight 

as he threatened the Grand Trunk Pacific's pipedream of building a railway line to the Yukon. 

https://natural-resources.canada.ca/earth-sciences/geography/atlas-canada/explore-our-maps/map-archives/16868   *
* Time travellers from the future - this URL worked way back in 2023. Here are possible search terms if the URL does not work. 'Natural Resources Canada' 'The Atlas of Canada's Map Archives'

Above (1906) and below (1915) are pages from Government of Canada atlases - available at the URL quoted above. These are great atlases to look through.

You can see how the strategic picture changed for the Canadian Northern builders over the course of a decade. Where's the harm in a little more ruinous competition between tycoons when the Prime Minister is paying for everything?

Carman, Manitoba was quite a railway centre! The CPR build a branch there in 1885 and was followed by the Canadian Northern and the Great Northern. 

*  *  *

How does all of this relate to railway lines at Portage la Prairie? 

Where was the Great Northern Railway in Portage?

from: Scarborough's Map of Manitoba, 1918
https://www.flickr.com/people/manitobamaps/

The map above is made busy (and handy) as it shows the surveyed square miles which are part of surveyed 'townships' - the latter being 6 square miles in size. You can see part of the township numbering system printed above and below the US border. A square is 640 acres and a 'quarter section' is 160 acres. 

The map above will relate to the Google image below.

Above: The Great Northern line leaving Portage in a south-east direction passes just east of a distinctive large bend in the Assiniboine River before it reaches the station 'Dunn'.

Below: The large bend in the Assiniboine River has turned into an 'oxbow' (the one in the lower right corner) which has become subject to eutrophication or perhaps it has been filled in with earth. Where the Great Northern Railway was you will now find Angle Road which deadends at the Assiniboine River - in the lower right corner of the image.

*  *  *

Above: We've swung around and we are looking south-east from Portage, at Angle Road, and the embankment continuation south of the Assiniboine River.

The lightened rectangle near the horizon contains a little pink Google map pin at Carman.

Above: Returning to Portage to show north at the top of the image again, Angle Road comes in at the lower right corner. The Great Northern shared the new Grand Trunk Pacific station which you can barely see in the top left corner. This long rectangular building, surrounded by windbreaks, is the current 'beside the CNR ex-station building', to be exact. It was referred to as a 'union' station, because both Great Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific shared the facility. 

(Whether it was the Grand Trunk Pacific ... or Portage boosters ... claiming a 'union' station in Portage, I don't know. I can't see the GTP diluting their British-American grandeur by going halfsies with Hill's dinky little line. But that ship will soon hit an iceberg, as many of you already know.)

A century after the Great Northern line into Portage was abandoned (in 1926) the former railway land use is still echoed in the land use and zoning. Above, to the west of the railway area you generally find residences. On the north-east side of the line's gentle curve to line up with today's CNR ... you can still see industrial use of the land.

*  *  *

Portage la Prairie fire insurance map 1959
from: https://www.flickr.com/people/manitobamaps/ 

About 30 years after the Great Northern left Portage, it is possible that some of the former Great Northern real estate is being used by McCall Frontenac and North Star Oil and their siding. With a wooden raised platform around the union station, the Great Northern passenger trains probably discharged passengers on the south side ... while the Grand Trunk Pacific trains used the north side. Unfortunately, these fire insurance maps do not show all of the railway buildings and facilities at Portage.

*  *  *

Portage la Prairie image from 1908. archive.org

Above and below are south-facing images which show the relative positions 

of the Canadian Northern, Grand Trunk Pacific and Great Northern in Portage la Prairie.

The image above comes from a 1908 Portage-boosting booklet which will appear in Part 7.

The image below is one of my favourite postcards because it was the first image I ever saw which showed some of the history of these lines in Portage.

I think the well-treed street to the right is 1st Street NW.

Unused, undated postcard.

* * *

Here is the legislative chain which enabled some of Hill's railway activities in Manitoba. 

I think item 1913-782 would include the four railways' joint use of Winnipeg Union Station.

(Counting the National Transcontinental and the Grand Trunk Pacific as 'two'.)

from: A Statutory History of Railways in Canada 1836-1986; Dorman & Stoltz; 1986; Canadian Institute of Guided Ground Transport.
Note: The charter of the Brandon, Saskatchewan and Hudson's Bay indicated it would build to The Pas.

To summarize the abandonment of the Great Northern line to Portage:

• Portage la Prairie to Carman was abandoned in 1926.
• As noted above: Carman to Plum Coulee was turned over to the CPR in 1926.
• Plum Coulee to Gretna was abandoned in 1926.
• The CPR abandoned Carman to Plum Coulee in the 1970s.

*  *  *

The following data is for the Portage, Morden and Brandon lines and comes from 1915.

from: Altitudes of Canada; 1915; James White; Commission of Conservation, Canada.

*  *  *

From November 1920, this handy pocket-sized reference shows the mixed train schedule.

James J Hill died in 1916, so his 'vision' for this particular line had probably been altered. 

If one was not in a hurry, the 7-hour northbound running time of the mixed train would have been quite pleasant on a nice summer day. Except for the presence of freight cars, wayside switching work and the fact that only a single coach was probably employed, the experience and equipment might have been quite similar to an excursion on the Prairie Dog Central.

Part 7

1989 Portage la Prairie - On the CNR Side, Part 2

Here are some CNR freights pounding through Portage, as well an employee timetable for that era. 

Here is East Tower circa 2014 via a Google image. Originally, an interlocking tower controlled the junction between the Canadian Northern and the Grand Trunk Pacific at this site. After the Canadian National Railways settled in, it was still the site of crossovers between the North and South main tracks of the CNR line from Winnipeg as they reached Portage.

In the 'middle' of the CNoR yard at Portage were significant steam locomotive maintenance facilities. Probably this postcard - now over a century old - was photographed from one of them (or a grain elevator). Looking south, you see the historical orientation of non-CPR lines in the Portage railway yard area. From the north: Canadian Northern, Grand Trunk Pacific, Great Northern. I recently sent a copy of this postcard to my uncle (a resident of Portage for about half a century) and he noted that none of the cityscape in the postcard is recognizable today. 

*  *  *  *  *

Inserted after this post was assembled ...

As someone who is never smart enough to stop researching something hopeless ... 

After I finished most of this post ... I think I found the postcard location ...

As seen via Google from Portage la Prairie circa 2020 at Tupper St N and Saskatchewan Ave W ... here is a good match for a steeple/church roofline in the postcard (it is the steeple nearest to the right edge of the postcard) ... today's Trinity United Church. The street with the well-treed sidewalk at the right margin of the postcard may be today's 1st Street NW. 

... so the boxcars in the postcard are located somewhere to the west of the location of the today's CNR station (ex-Grand Trunk Pacific).

end of insert

*  *  *  *  *

At the west end of the traditional CNR yard area is the switching plant at Kearns. This view is via Google from 2018 or so. The yard lead, at the left, blends into the two main tracks through Portage. The track in the left foreground is the first few feet of the Gladstone Sub - it goes west to Dauphin. The track to the right carries on as the Rivers Sub, through to Melville, Saskatchewan.

Above is my photo from September 1989 showing the area of CNR West Tower at Portage. Kearns is just behind the camera and the camera is facing west. The tracks, left to right, are: VIA connector, Rivers Sub, Gladstone Sub. You can see the CPR Carberry Sub crossing the CNR tracks westbound from right to left.

A forest of absolute signals! Let's go through them from left to right ...

• 1. VIA connector protecting its switch and showing switch alignment/occupancy via Kearns.
• 2. Rivers Sub protecting the VIA connector switch.*
• 3,4. Rivers Sub, protecting the CPR on both sides of the diamond.
• 5. Gladstone Sub (eastbound), protecting the CPR on the diamond.
• 6. Gladstone Sub (eastbound), protecting Kearns.*
• 7. Gladstone Sub protecting the CPR on the diamond.
• 8. CPR Carberry Sub westbound protecting the CNR on the diamond.

(*The signals for eastbounds located east of the diamond also show switch alignment/occupancy via Kearns. And some of the 8 signal masts shown are certainly designed/wired to protect the rear of preceding trains. Imagine the fun of being an engineer who designs railway signals!)

Before supplying an employee timetable which is nearly contemporary with the photos, here are a couple of freights ...

*  *  *

On September 8, an afternoon freight is westbound at Kearns ...

On September 9, a refreshing vacation rain meets a morning eastbound intermodal as it is about to pass by the Portage CNR station. Bonus points if you spotted a problem with the class lights. 

*  *  *

Below is the employee timetable. A Portage vacation photography binge generally involved the two miles of track between West and East Towers. As the CPR/CNR diamond (with a 20 mph speed limit) was also where the rival lines converged, one could argue that Kearns was the place to be.

Below, you'll notice the First Class trains - the Supercontinental, 'the train to Churchill', and the Canadian. As mentioned in Part 1, the Canadian departs the Rivers Sub via the VIA connecting track to the CPR Carberry Sub. 

Above and below: Also, you'll see that the CNR still maintains an operator at Portage for clearances, etc.

Below: Items 2.2 to 2.6 cover operations at Portage ... and Item 3.3 .

Under 7.1 you'll notice Great Northern RG 42. I once heard a crew refer to having put something into the 'old Great Northern'.

The VIA connecting track comes up in 7.2 .

*  *  *

Above and below, on September 9, a westbound coal empty crosses the CPR at West Tower.

Above: On September 9 at 14hr, an eastbound potash train is seen at Kearns.

Above: During the late afternoon of September 10, an eastbound grain train passes by the Portage station.

September 13, 1989

After a race to Moose Jaw and a sweep east along the border, we're back!

(To see half a dozen posts on the history of that area, old maps, and our trip, just press the Portage Interlocking 01 radio button at the top and click on anything with 1989 in the title.)

These three photos show a westbound on the afternoon of September 13 at Kearns.

*  *  *

No doubt being amused at how some people from Ontario choose to spend their vacations, 

this equipment move was kind enough to pose on the Rivers Sub for a portrait of both sides ... 

... Actually, he was probably waiting for the CPR to release the diamond.

In the background, I think you see the Gladstone Sub ... in the foreground, the VIA connecting track to the CPR Carberry Sub.

Finally, we have a westbound at Kearns, with the CNR maintenance of way equipment located just west of the station. 

Dare we suggest that it is on the roadbed of 'the Old Great Northern'?

Port of Vancouver (Vancouver Harbour) in 1923

This federal publication provides data for both sea and inland harbours. While basic maps are provided, it is assumed that the user has access to the appropriate nautical charts. The photographs come from this publication.

Included below, from other sources, are maps from 1915 and 1927. The latter is a bird's eye view map with many local features labelled - it is the last image in this post. 

As always, it is often necessary to run the slider bar to the right to see the entirety of large images.

Postcard mailed 1916 Vancouver to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The sender had come through the Rockies, with a day at Lake Louise. 'With the Orient ahead!'

from: Government of Canada Atlas, 1915.

from: Vancouver, The Way it Was; Michael Kluckner; 1984; Whitecap Books.

A 'bird's eye view' style map from 1927,