CPR 1961 Trains at Montreal West

My family had not yet purchased its first car, so public transport was used for longer sorties from our apartment in Lachine. Conveniently, the CPR station at Montreal West could be reached by boarding a single Montreal Transportation Commission bus. In 1961, my father had just started taking colour slides with a snapshot camera. Montreal West was a good location to photograph passenger trains as they all stopped here ... commuter, branch line routes, intercity trains, trans-continental trains.

from: Canadian Railway Atlas; 1991; Railway Association of Canada.

Above, in 1991, you can still see the CPR lines (red) which radiated to the four points of the compass from Windsor Station via Montreal West. Montreal West was initially named Montreal Junction.

• South over the CPR Lachine Bridge to Delson.
• North, East and West through St Martin Junction.
• West via Lachine.

*  *  *

from: Lovell Arrow Map & Street Index; 1960; John Lovell & Son.
Red = locations of Canadian Bank of Commerce. 

Above, looking at the infrastructure as it existed when these photos were taken, the station grounds (blue rectangle) ranged from Elmhurst Avenue to Westminster Avenue. A few of these photos show trains which have swung around to pass under the overpass at Westminster Avenue (blue square). 

And you can see a little 'passenger intermodal transfer location' ... a little circle on Sherbrooke Street which is just over the word 'station'. This is the location of the last photo.

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March, 1961.

The Atlantic Limited makes its stop.

An interlocking tower (preserved at 10 Westminster Avenue) controlled train movements at the junction.

Given the frequent starting and stopping of passenger trains close to a public road,

another towerman worked in the small tower at the right to manually actuate the crossing protection on Elmhurst Avenue.

Except for emergencies, whistling was prohibited on the Island of Montreal.

Highball to the tailend.

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Train Number 1 makes its station stop in June 1961.

In the distance is the crossing protection tower ... and far beyond and down the hill is Windsor Station.

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The Delaware & Hudson train for New York City arrives in June 1961.

This train will swing left and cross the Lachine Bridge for the south shore.

You can see the train order signal of the station at the left margin.

During an evening visit when we were watching from the 'far' platform - beyond the D&H train - I remember the baggage wagons adding to the excitement. There were many people on both platforms. Some were travelling themselves, others were seeing off or meeting passengers from the trains.

As sometimes happened, an eastbound train would occupy the track nearest the station until a westbound was approaching the station. As the westbound rolled in with hot brake shoes, the baggage attendant had the perilous task of winning the race with 'his' train - across the two sets of crossing timbers in front of the station - as he pulled the wagon full of luggage.

*  *  *

At the Westminster Avenue overpass in June 1961.

The centre tracks at the right travel due south.

The track coming down the grade comes from the junction.

Notice the presence of roofwalks on the freight cars and the required 'telltales' to alert trainmen 

of the restricted overhead clearance of the Westminster Avenue overpass.

Looking from the other side of the Westminster Avenue overpass, these tracks are aligned due north.

There is an intriguing spur at the right.

Today, this area is quite overgrown - however, these distinctive signal bridges still exist.

*  *  *

Above and below, the train for Quebec City passes.

The reinforced locomotive pilot comes in handy - particularly out west.

*  *  *

The train above, in August 1961, is not documented in the my father's log. 

The track assignment suggests it will be passing under the Westminster Avenue overpass.

*  *  *

I am not an expert on any railway topics ... and I am far out of my league when describing the Montreal Transportation Commission's operations of the past. 

The cobblestones and rails ghosting through the new pavement would probably have been the turning terminus for #3 St Catherine-NDG streetcar, which provided day & night service. All streetcar service in Montreal had come to an end by August 1959.  

This photo was taken in June 1961, probably after we watched that exciting baggage wagon handling I mentioned above. You can see the 'far' platform's shingled 'umbrella shed' roof behind the brown bus.

Seeking to compete with General Motors buses, Canadian Car & Foundry redesigned its buses from the ubiquitous body design of that brown CD-52 built in 1957 ... to the ultimately less-common appearance of that silver TD-51 built in 1960. The 'family resemblance' between the models is quite clear when you look at the details of both.

... At the time, this new design was a novel and exciting development. However the familiar 'brown buses' seem more worthy of nostalgia today. They provided hours of entertainment and they allowed me to hear a lot of Quebec French. Happily, my ear would finally catch up with this 'fast Morse' 30 years later.

*  *  *

After posting, Jim Christie reminded me of this video link he had previously sent showing a Canadian Car & Foundry 'brown bus' in absolutely beautiful, restored condition at a car show in Granby a few years ago. 

... Elton McFall is the master of the 'one-take' video about Montreal transportation subjects. His narration is unconventional and he does not follow 'the style book', but he really knows his vehicles and it's really nice to have this remembrance of these buses.

Brill/CC&F ex-MTC bus

CPR 1960s 'Like The Canadian Through Hudson!'

It's great to see a station beautifully restored and put to good use!

Hudson Village Theatre website

We can all name favourite railway stations which have gone beyond the state shown in my 1994 photos below.

Visiting with my cousin and his wife, and a point and shoot camera, the future of the station didn't look good. 

Inspired by recent museum experience, I worked to document all aspects of the station.

Above: As you'll see, this is a time-honoured photographic location.

A number of stations had added verandahs for the resident agents and their families. The added freight shed probably reflected the expanding industrial and commercial importance of the area and perhaps the mail-order catalogue business (in Canada, it was Eaton's).

from: Golden Jubilee, 1869-1919: 1919; T Eaton Co.

Above, looking timetable west at Hudson, below is timetable east.

*  *  *

from: Historic Hudson, Part II; Roderick L Hodgson; 1993; Hudson Historical Society.

The view above is from circa 1900. 

Notice the old-style train order signal. 

I believe the black and white object to the right of the tracks is a wooden switchstand.

I think I have seen Historic Hudson (see photo caption) in readable form on the internet - perhaps on the historical society's website.

The book's three interesting sections cover the history of Hudson's fire department, the local railway history and the natural ice harvesting business.

LC Gagnon took this photo of Number 1 at Hudson, circa 1961.

On a typically hot Hudson-visiting day, it shows the operation of the locomotive air conditioning.

However, this engine is ready for anything in winter. It's got the pilot-plow and roof-mounted bars to break hanging masses of ice in tunnels before they damage the dome cars. 

The two-beam, overhead nighttime scenery light was one of the initial '1950s-style' attractions of the Canadian. It could have been used to advantage along Lake Superior's shores and in the western mountains. The light appliance is mounted behind the horns and between the icicle bars. 

... My distant past experience was that VIA (in contrast) often shooed passengers out of the Park dome at night - using 'liquor regulations' as a 'reason' (not that I'm bitter, or anything). 

Originally, LC Gagnon photographed the Canadian at the Como crossing, however, with a 1962 VW Beetle we were all able to attend the daily event at Hudson. 

*  *  *

In June 1961 (before the car) this would have been one of my first encounters with The Canadian (Number 1). During this period, a trip to Montreal West was the source of many wonders. It was an MTC bus ride from our home in Lachine. It had the giant Elmhurst Dairy cow heads (3-D models). There was a tower-based grade crossing protection operator - because of the frequent stopping and starting of passenger trains on or near the crossing circuit. 

In the evening, passenger trains would create a flurry of activity. All the tracks were accessible, so we could cross the timbers to another platform if a train was expected there. Passengers and their friends or family gathered on the various platforms and the baggage personnel would be straining to move the wagons loaded with suitcases and trunks for placement in the trains' baggage cars. 

It didn't mean much to me at the time, but there was also an interlocking tower at Westminster Avenue - which is preserved today.

Providing better colour than the defective Ektachrome slides of 1961, are the two views, above and below, from September 1968.

The whole thing about seeing Number 1 at Montreal West was that it was only about 13 minutes out of its terminal at Windsor Station. It was predictable and dependable. 

And Hudson was reached when the train was only 32 miles into its run, so it made an exciting break in our visits to Como. 

... My maternal grandmother retained the family's cottage on the Ottawa River at Como after her spouse's death - I never met my grandfather. He had been in the Railway Construction Corps from April 1915 (he would have graduated as a civil engineer in 1916 had he stayed in McGill) and finally got back from military service in Europe in 1919. After living in Lachine, my mother's parents moved to Valois and my grandfather commuted by train to his job at Stelco in east-end Lachine from there. 

However, visiting at Como was my mother seeing her mother and remembering good times at the cottage and there were no 'railway war stories' of any kind. So, when 1430hr rolled around we were getting excited about going to Hudson for 15hr to see the Canadian - leaving my mother and my grandmother in peace for a while.

Here's the timetable ...

CPR public timetable, April 1958.

Give yourself 100 bonus points if you - like I - doubted my claim of seeing the Canadian at 15hr at Hudson. Wasn't it was scheduled to be in Ottawa by then?

Back then, the railways had some kind of 'attitude' about changing their clocks twice per year. 

... I mean, they made such a big deal of fiddling with official Standard Clocks every day with the Official Time Signal ... and whenever operating employees showed up for work. What's two more annual fiddlings, considering how much railroaders liked playing with their timepieces every time they had an excuse to do so?

... So you'll notice that the summer timetable above says 'Eastern Time' not 'Eastern Daylight Saving Time'. If we were serious railway passengers we'd be happy to make the necessary conversions every single time we looked at an April to October timetable. Canadians may live in EDST for half the year, but the CPR is a serious organization which uses only Standard Time!

*  *  *

You have Mike Gammon and Jim Christie to thank for the maps below. I guess Mike found this website, told Jim, and then Jim passed it on to me. It has a collection of historical, digitized Canadian topographic maps of Ontario.

Historical Topographic Map Digitization Project

I've joined two maps below 1909/1910 and skewed them counter-clockwise so the railway line runs across the screen better. At the right side is Vaudreuil (Dorion, if you prefer) which is located past the western tip of Montreal Island (and Ile Perrot). Continuing westward, you pass Como. My grandmother's place should be immediately west of the river-side sawmill (SM) ... in case young family members are looking in. And west the track goes ... to Hudson, Rigaud and Ottawa. 

Bonus: You can see the track providing CPR 'commuter' service to Point Fortune (notice the wye) with the ferry across to Carillon. To the west of Carillon is the Carillon and Grenville Railway.

Half of our paternal side comes from just north of St Andrew's (East) - just so everyone can get into the picture.

Below is the same April 1958 public timetable. Make sure you convert to Daylight Saving, eh? 

Before the development the highway system and the 'necessity' of owning an auto, you can see how many trains Vaudreuil hosted. Hudson saw more passenger trains in a day than many large Canadian cities see in 2023.

CPR public timetable, April 1958.

*  *  *

The map from 1945 (above) is kind of neat for what it shows. You can see the Hudson station positioned on the south side of the track exactly midway between the two roads which lead from Hudson to the river's edge. On those spurs are the two natural ice companies which harvested ice from the Ottawa River. 

Below is a YouTube link featuring amateur film of the whole process, including the CPR siding and the switching necessary to begin the region-wide distribution of the ice.

The Wilson Ice Co, Hudson, Quebec, c.1940s

Jim Christie and I had some interesting correspondence about these operations. He discovered old advertisements and articles from an Ottawa ice company which promoted artificial ice as being healthier. Today, we might think of the environmental efficiency and elegance of harvesting winter ice and using it for home ice boxes, railway refrigerator cars, etc. 

However, as Jim discovered, there were all sorts of problems with water-borne diseases in those days which were linked to the Ottawa River and this (and affordable mechanical refrigeration) eventually contributed to the end of ice harvesting on the Ottawa. 

Here are a couple of his discoveries:

Ice Factory at Ottawa

Ottawa Artificial Ice Co ad

*  *  *

Like The Canadian through Hudson!

The employee timetable from April 1958 shows ABS operating from Vaudreuil to Rigaud, and passenger trains being limited to 50 MPH on curves. 

Above, the Canadian is shown in July 1961.

Coming along this stretch of tangent track, 

the front of the lead unit would flash repeatedly as it came into the sunlight 

and out of the shadows of the mature trackside trees.

There would be a great deal of whistling for the numerous level crossings.

In its wake the train would draw paper litter and other light items from the right-of-way.

... Occasionally, when someone in my family wanted to describe something or someone (eg. a high school vice principal) approaching and departing with a great deal of speed, effect and consequence, we'd finish the description saying 'with bits of scrap paper blowing behind them - like the Canadian through Hudson'.

Google Earth, 2023 image looking timetable east.

*  *  *

Here's another hot day in June 1966 with the family quarters upstairs being ventilated.

The sun is reflecting off the lead unit and there is lots of diesel smoke in the air.

The train is whistling as it fully occupies that crossing and there is another crossing behind the camera.

The train blasts by in a cloud of its own hot haze.

In the front seat, my sister has had enough of the whistling!

CPR 1967 Montreal Terminals - Employee Timetable, Snapshots, Map

 

from: Montreal, Then and Now; Bryan Demchinsky; 1985; Montreal Gazette.

The CPR's Montreal headquarters were originally referred to as the Windsor Street station (the contemporary name of the street extending to the right). For the purpose of the rules, the station is Montreal in the employee timetable which follows.  

The photo above was taken circa 1910. Notice the photographer's note between the rails of the streetcar track in the foreground. The distant section was opened in 1889. The extension in the foreground opened in 1913.

For the train schedules, I've preserved the 15-inch span of the timetable as it maintains the flow of the original document. Be sure to slide all the way to the right to see everything.

If you are a regular reader of employee timetables, you are probably missing the mileages beside the station names. As the trains go west (Lachine), south (South Junction) and north (North Junction), respectively, after reaching Montreal West ... there are different subdivisions involved with their own mileages. 

On page 22, the Winchester Sub - where the lakeshore commuter trains run - is tucked in like this: without trains or footnotes.

from: Canadian Railway Atlas; 1990; Railway Association of Canada.

Above, is a map from 1990 which shows the CPR in red. 

If you follow the line west from Montreal (oh! ... OK ... 'Windsor') you can see the lines splitting south, west and north.

Below, Montreal West station is at the blue transit symbol in the top right corner 

... Windsor station is far beyond that. 

The Winchester Sub goes west over the bridge. 

The other branches curve: north (left) and south (right).

The photos are extracted from 3x4 inch prints taken by LC Gagnon circa 1961.

Looking east, with Westmount station and the interlocking tower at the left, 

and Glen Yard to the right, you can see some switching taking place.

The car at the right margin seems to be a New York Central car.

Again at Westmount, the westbound Canadian is seen. 

You can see braced pipework extending above the lead unit. 

This was designed to knock down tunnel icicles before they damaged the domes farther back. 

Two novelty spotlights - to light up features ahead at night for passengers in the domes - can be seen between the horns and the pipework. 

Perhaps their final act before permanent removal was lighting up icicles in the centre of a tunnel.

Eastbound CPR Dayliners are seen at Lachine station. 

This station was reached by walking across Highway 20 at the 40th Avenue intersection, 

then crossing the CNR tracks (foreground) on a pedestrian overpass.

On the sheet immediately below, if you check 18 Winchester Subdivision, footnote C, 

you'll see an instruction to cut freights which are stopped here 'to allow passengers to get across to reach their homes'. 

You can see the platform lights, 

but the north platform was still a cold and dark place to be stranded on a winter night.

Montreal West station looking east toward Windsor.

The grade crossing gatekeeper in the tower in the right distance was often kept quite busy during peak commuting hours.

This was a favourite spot for childhood visits, as seeing a train up close was virtually guaranteed.

Summer evening intercity trains attracted many passengers and agent-drawn baggage wagons.

My father speculated that this power is reversing from the St Luc diesel shop.

Given its characteristics and the time of day, it will probably lead the Canadian.