CPR 1942 CNR & D&H Steam at Westmount - photos by LC Gagnon

Once again, here are some more steam photos
taken by a teenager with a box camera.

My father lived a streetcar ride away from Westmount station.

'CP 2810 (MLW 1930) westbound passenger near Western Ave and Decarie Blvd, PM, bound for Ottawa.'

'CP 2405 (CLC 1942-1943), CP 2825 (MLW 1937) pull eastbound passenger train, 

likely from Quebec City, just east of Montreal West, PM, 1942.'

... a westbound travelled east for the last few miles into Windsor Station.

'CN 6231 (MLW 1942-1943).'

The engineer is looking back, so the highball may be imminent.

'CN 6215 (MLW 1942-1943) CP/CN Toronto pool train at Westmount Station, PM, 1942.'

'CP 2402 (CLC 1942-1943) eastbound at Westmount, AM, 1946?'

It looks as if track forces may working on a switch in Glen Yard.

'D&H 605 (Schenectady 1914) with New York City train at Westmount, AM, 1946?'

Pool Trains, Part 4 - Their Separate Ways

This is the fourth and final segment of my Pool Train trilogy.

In the early 1960s, both railways seem to have concluded that the Pool arrangement had become a four-legged milking stool.

*  *  *

When I was aged eight, I couldn't figure out why my father was so keen to commemorate the end of the Pool train era - as if it was actually something interesting and important like a steam engine. On a Saturday afternoon, we walked about a block from our Lachine home to see a kind of ugly train of mismatched passenger equipment roll by. 'That is the last Pool train.'

Several decades later, through the process of cobbling together this tetralogy, I now understand the Pool train era better. In some ways, it began as a 1930s effort to a provide an efficient passenger service which transcended the limits of particular railway companies - something VIA Rail would later work to achieve. Unlike Pool trains, VIA took 'unloved' passenger services, old equipment and employees (actually, responsibility for their collective agreements) off the railways' hands for good.

*  *  *

I think it was reading the following booklet's reference to Pool trains which caused me to start this series. In the expansive universe of things which passenger train conductors had to know and had to be responsible for, Pool train zone ticket interchangeability must have been in the 'most annoying' category. 

*  *  *

CPR Public Timetable - Very Late in the Pool Train Era

Compare this artifact to the bright and illustrated Depression-era timetables ... promoting the company's wide variety of facilities and services for the travelling public.

Well, suffice it to say that you can judge this book by its cover.

Once again, I have tried to include every reference to Pool train service ...
even though it may result in the reproduction of unrelated (but interesting) information.

*  *  *

'The News' Appears in the CPR Spanner Magazine

*  *  *

Photos of the Last Pool Trains

The technology for casual photography has changed so much (for the better) during the last couple of decades that it might be beneficial to explain what busy people, who weren't rich, who had kids, did for family pictures in the early 1960s. 

With a much greater investment of time and money, Jack Delano and Nick Morant (and photography buffs) could always produce beautiful railway photos. But simple family documentation ... of a birthday, or a vacation, or a CRHA fantrip ... did not lend itself to handling large glass negatives, using time exposures or carrying cameras more massive than paperback books.

The following slides were taken with a Kodak Brownie Starflash, which consumed single-use glass (or very brittle plastic) flash bulbs containing a metallic wool. The glass of these bulbs deformed when they were fired because they reached the temperature of the sun. This could be verified if you hurriedly ejected one into your hand to set up the next low-light photo. How far away could your flash photography subject be? ... about as far away as the molten bulb was thrown when you ejected it into your hand. Neither the shutter speed, nor the aperture, could be changed.

Perhaps to favour the uniform propagation of the flash light, this camera produced square images. This was not good for photographing linear objects like passing trains. The camera had a miniscule viewfinder which resulted in widespread, documented amputations of heads, arms, feet etc all across North America - particularly when the photographer was wearing eyeglasses.

To add to the modern mystery of photography, my father mailed his slide films away to Toronto to be developed. The attraction of this arrangement was that they sent you free rolls of film - matching each film which they had just developed for you. Part of the mystery was remembering the dates and circumstances of your entire roll of photos - days or months after you had first loaded the new film. The other part of the mystery was guessing the source of the opaque solids adhering to the finished slide ... the photofinishers were betting that no one would be taking a Pool train to Toronto to complain.

March 28, 1965 - Valois.
With the winter sun rapidly setting, the afternoon Pool train is travelling on CNR rails.
From time to time, it is nice to be reminded how bold and modern this paint scheme was.
You can make out one or two CPR cars right after the power.

Oct 23, 1965, 48th Avenue, Lachine.
The train is still operating on CPR rails,
having not yet reached the Dorval connecting track.
This photo was probably both rehearsal and insurance for the following week.

*  *  *

The Last Train 15 ex Montreal to Toronto.
Saturday, October 30, 1965, 48th Avenue Lachine.

... Pool trains were not necessarily beautiful to behold.

As this series has shown, there were a number of Pool trains operating on other routes and schedules.

However, with his knowledge of the history of this cooperative project,
my father was correct in stating that this was the final operation
on the original Pool train schedule.

from: Montreal Gazette, March 30, 1933.

Pool Trains, Part 3 - The Pre-War Schedule Is Back

With wartime demands and restrictions on travel removed, The Standard ran a photo essay - with railway support - about the Montreal-Toronto Pool Train.

As the passenger train tables below will show, this was advertised by the CNR as the International Limited - running between Montreal and Chicago. The Pool train related contributions of the CPR were not involved west of Toronto.

Both this undated article and the public timetable were preserved by my father. This system timetable from September 26, 1948 was used during his Nova Scotia trip between Halifax and Yarmouth in 1949 - which you can find in the Short Subjects Index.

The Standard was a weekly supplement to the Montreal Star which eventually changed into the Weekend magazine supplement. The latter was included with newspapers across Canada. According to its Wikipedia page, The Standard was published from 1905 until 1951. Its contents included feature stories and fiction, photographs, recipes and cartoons.

With virtually all stores closed on Sundays ... before televisions were common in homes ... after attending Sunday morning church ... many Canadians would enjoy the comics and other extra sections of their weekend newspaper. It was common for people to subscribe to the local daily newspaper. Doorstep delivery to, and weekly cash payment from the subscriber were handled by a school-age agent of the newspaper. The Montreal Star was delivered in the late afternoon, six days a week.

Below is a partial scan of the broadsheet article. The actual size of this clipped and preserved sheet is 22 inches by 15 inches. The maximum scanner pass is roughly legal size. Larger and larger sheets are finding their way into my scanner as my skills improve.

About 65 years after it would normally have been thrown in the garbage, the degrading colour of the ink and of the paper seem to be converging on some shade of maroon or burgundy. I have removed the colour to provide black and white images.

Some of images of this photo essay were probably railway stock images. The article layout ran many smaller images down peripheral columns and the images are presented here in a plausible chronological order.

Some interior shots are beautifully lit. Some are dark and coarse and resist any efforts to resolve more detail. All are captioned and the uniform type size is your clue as to the size of the original photo before scanning.

Above is all the descriptive text for the story.

Below is the darkest photo.
Next: You'll notice that the road number of the power changes in this essay.

Above is a particularly nice telefoto shot at Windsor Station.which includes the interlocking tower.
The carman, with his long-handled hammer and lantern, has inspected the consist for defects with his ears and eyes and will report to the crew.

The cotton waste is plentiful and the gauges are polished.

The long run of the interlocking rods and the semaphore-equipped dwarf signals are interesting.
This close to headquarters there are enough workers to maintain this equipment
and to free it from winter snow and ice.

This locomotive will never have a two-way radio.
The fireman will be a Company witness if the photographer makes an error around the speeding equipment.
At this point in history, the CNR lines ran along the route of today's Victoria Street in Lachine.
... Using Windsor Station and the CPR line was a faster way to get to Dorval.

from: The Railways of Toronto; John Riddell; 1991; BRMNA. Photo: James Walder.

In July 1954, Train No 8 is climbing the grade to Danforth station.

I have found that official photographs of Pool trains are hard to find - perhaps because neither railway could point to the consist as being 'our train'. This is the best photo I could find of a Pool consist to illustrate my point that Pool trains were not particularly aesthetically pleasing public relations objects as the paint schemes did not match. A few examples of colour photos will follow in Part 4. 

*  *  *

*  *  *

Again, in this post I have included every page with any kind of Pool train reference.
Hopefully future students of this obscure form of railway cooperation will find a complete record here.

The last photo in the article from The Standard is a nice time exposure
which shows the running gear being inspected using light from an engineer's torch.

Speculating: The engineer's window has the appearance of being equipped
with a 'clear view screen' - or 'spin window' - as commonly seen in ship applications.