CN Portage station makes top 10 endangered structures list for 2021.

This archive photo of the Portage CNR station was taken from the files of the Manitoba Historical Society.

 The CN Portage station has made the  Manitoba Historical Society’s top 10 endangered structures list for 2021. The station was originally built by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway in 1908. It was later used by CN Rail when the Canadian government took over the bankrupt Grand Trunk Pacific and the Canadian Northern Railway in 1919. Via Rail still uses it as a stop. For many years it was a bus depot used by Greyhound Bus Lines. It was closed  in October 2018, and it is presently vacant.

The Manitoba Historical Society tracks historically significant buildings around the province that they feel deserve to be preserved and better known. For Canada Historic Places Day on Saturday, July 3 2021, they released their annual list of the ten most endangered buildings and other structures, in order from oldest to newest.  To access this list, click here. 

This image of the CN station, taken from the files of the Manitoba Historical Society, was taken by our own Hilt Friesen sometime in the 1970's.

 

One of only three roundhouses left in Manitoba

An overlooked resource for Manitoba rail fans is the Manitoba Historical Society archives, which has a treasure trove of railway data. The building in the image is a former CP Rail fan shaped, four bay roundhouse built in 1908 in Reston, Manitoba. 

This rail facility used to have a station, section houses, a water tower, a coal dock, wood sheds, and several grain elevators. The CPR Reston Subdivision was abandoned in September 1960. The former engine house, is one of only three surviving in Manitoba. The others are at The Pas (which is an actual working roundhouse operated by the Hudson Bay Railway) and in Dauphin). 

The Reston turntable is a municipally designated historic site. It was closed in 1930 and was sold and converted for use as a seed house by Colin C. Campbell and son, which operated until 1969. The building is still in use for private storage.This roundhouse was featured on Gordon Goldsborough's "Abandoned Manitoba" segment on CBC Radio, which was broadcast on January 17, 2016. 

For further information about this roundhouse go to the Manitoba Historical Society website at: http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/sites/cprenginehousereston.shtml

To hear the broadcast go to: 
http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/sites/abandoned/20160117.mp3