Two great presentations at WMRC's October 15 in person (and virtual) meeting

We have two great Zoom presentations at our second in-person meeting of the season. First, Tom Price of Calgary will present How the Railways Developed Communication Across Canada. Tom is a 37 year CPR veteran who worked in Engineering and Maintenance of Way.

Then former WMRC member Marc Simpson of Coquitlam will make a presentation called The Hudson Bay Railway and HBM&S - The Means to an End. Marc got interested in the Hudson Bay Railway and HBM&S railway operations in the 1990's while working in Flin Flon. He has researched the history and operations of CN and subsequent operators of the lines north of The Pas. He will cover the history, operations and modelling of the CN, HBR and Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting (now known as HudBay minerals).

On top of that, the monthly model display and the photo display is also being held, and the canteen will be open!

The meeting will be held at the Canadian Legion, 6003 Roblin Boulevard. Please note that the date of the meeting has been moved from October 8 to October 15, and the time of the meeting has been changed from 7:30 to 7:00. The doors will be open at 6:30.

Capacity at the Tank Room at the Legion is limited to 50 persons. The Legion requires all visitors to the building to show proof of full vaccination before entry.  The province has mandated that masks will be required in all public places. If you wish to attend the meeting on Zoom please contact us at wmrc.trainclub@gmail.com for a link.

 

Exclusive images of Rail Travel Tour's summer excursion to Churchill

Our intrepid staff photographer and long time WMRC member Felix Lesiuk also has a gig as a tour guide for Rail Travel Tours. He sent us several images of his most recent rail excursion to Churchill, Manitoba in July of 2019. You're not going to see any whales or polar bears on this post, but we have plenty of trains!

Outside of some spectacular sunsets, he captured a rare glimpse in The Pas of Via Rail's service to Putakawagan, featuring an unusual paint job of their former CN Rail coaches. This is the only route where Via still uses CN passenger rolling stock.

Felix also used his cell phone to track the actual speed of the Churchill train as it crossed the barrens. It's barreling along at a breakneck speed of 14.4 MPH!

He also took images of several small bridges along the route. Note the condition of the track. There's a reason why the train is going so slow!

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

Churchill by rail: Part 10 - Back to Winnipeg!

 Our train makes a stop in beautiful downtown Kamsack, Saskatchewan.

By Paul Ullrich

After breakfast, we went back to the dome car, where I assumed my role as the unofficial conductor. I like to know where I am at all times, and that's not easy to do in the endless boreal forest of northern Manitoba. But I was armed with my Via Rail timetable, the Canadian Rail Travel Guide by Daryl Adair (that name sounds familiar) and my 1985 edition of Bill Coo's Scenic Rail Guide to Western Canada.

Bill Coo's Scenic Rail Guide to Western Canada is still a valuable resource for the rail traveler, but it has been out of print for 30 years, and it's a bit dated. For instance, it states that between mile 1214 and Gillam, you should watch for Indians carrying their children in moss bags.

Yeah, right. These days they're using baby carriers that the bought from The Northern Store like everyone else.

Using the mileposts with the two books and the timetable, I was able to calculate exactly where we were, and if we were on time or not. My fellow passengers, who also wanted to know where we were, helped me along, spotting mileposts along the way. We arrived late in Thompson, with barely enough time to leave the train and stretch our legs before we departed.

Via Rail had supplied the train with a lovely park car, but not with a park car attendant, so we were on our own in the back of the train with nothing but a carafe of coffee that the staff had left us.  But we discovered that the park car had untapped resources that made the trip a bit more tolerable. One of the staff opened up one of the cabinets in the park car and found some more coffee cup lids! A case of cookies was also discovered in another cabinet.

I went to be in my unshaded lower berth again, but this time I had a sleep mask, which was graciously given to me by one of the other passengers in our car. I woke up shortly after midnight to find that we were in The Pas, right on time. I woke up a few hours later to discover that we were still in The Pas. I woke up a bit after six, and we were still in The Pas!

I washed up and shaved in the bathroom, still in The Pas. The light wasn't working, and the air conditioner was on full blast. As the train wasn't in motion, I was able to fill up the sink almost to the brim. When the train was moving, the best you could do was a couple of inches of water. Any more than that and the movement of the train caused the water to spill. 

We went for breakfast, still in The Pas. As we ate, the train from Winnipeg rolled in, six hour late. This is why our train was held up in The Pas for so long. We finally got moving around 8:00.

There was much excitement in the Park car when we reached Saskatchewan, and the first field of canola was spotted. After several days of boreal forest, muskeg and The Barrens, it was a welcome sight. But if you're the type that gets excited over seeing a field of canola, then you've been in the prairies way too long!

We started out 5 1/2 hours late leaving The Pas. As we trundled through the prairies, we lost more and more time. I became the constant bearer of bad news as the rest of our group asked me how we were doing. When we had lunch, we found that the menu selection had become even smaller. We were back paralleling the highway again, and automobiles continued to zip past us.

We weren't supposed to have dinner on the train, as it was supposed to have arrived in Winnipeg at 4:45 PM. But the crew managed to rustle us up a meal. There were only two selections on the menu, but we were just grateful to be fed. We arrived in Dauphin seven hours late, but the train stayed there long enough for us to go outside for the first time since we left Thompson.

It was announced that we wouldn't arrive in Winnipeg until 1:00 AM, eight hours and 15 minutes late. But the railfans didn't mind, because that meant more time on the train!

We made the best of it by holding a little reception in the park for our two gracious and hard working tour guides, Robert and Deborah. We watched a beautiful, lingering sunset as the sun dipped near Riding Mountain National Park. We watched the moon rise and the stars come out as we approached Gladstone. The lights of Portage La Prairie were a welcoming sight, as it meant that we were almost home!

We pulled into Winnipeg exactly at 1:00 AM. Robert called for cabs as soon as we arrived, and when we exited the station there were about a dozen taxis waiting for us to take us home.

We arrived home safe and sound, but then we came down with colds, and so did a few others from our group. A friend of mine who lived in Thompson explained that we all must've contacted a "northern bug", and now that we've had it, we'd be now be immune.

A friend of mine took the train to Churchill last week. Her train was exactly 28 minutes late arriving in Churchill. The trip back was without incident. She even had warm, sunny weather and she didn't catch a cold!

Some people have all the luck!

Passengers take a much needed 20 minute break in Dauphin.

There's nothing more beautiful than a prairie sunset. This one was taken at Glenella.

Churchill by rail - Part two: Stranded in Thompson

     Our train arrive late in Thompson, and stays there for a very long time.

By Paul Ullrich 

We awoke to a steady rain just outside of Cormorant Lake, north of The Pas. It had been raining all night, and it continued to rain until just before we reached Thompson Junction.

This was the land of no roads, no communities, no cell phone transmitters and certainly no wi-fi. We crossed highway 6 outside of Ponton, Manitoba, crossed highway 373 to Norway House north of Dunlop, and we ran parallel with highway 6 from Dunlop to Wabowden, but after that we were on our own in the wilderness of Manitoba's boreal forest. We passed Thicket Portage, which is where the Franklin expedition once stayed (not a good sign of things to come).

We were going a lot slower since we left The Pas. From the dome car you could see each car rise and fall as it rolled over the uneven roadbed. We reached Thompson Junction, confident that we'd cover the 30 miles from there to Thompson in no time.

No so! It took us 2 1/2 hours to get there, which means that we were hurtling down the track at a breakneck speed of 12 miles an hour! On the plus side, we were going slow enough to get some great shots of the Wintering River and the Grass River as we crossed over them.

The Via timetable lists Thompson as a five hour stop. I was wondering what we were going to do there for such a long time. But the train was several hours late arriving, so I thought that our stay would be brief.

So I thought.

The train from Churchill was waiting for us on the wye. When we pulled into the station, that train backed up behind us. Much to our surprise, we found three cars from the states waiting for our train. They had licence plates from Minnesota, Iowa, and California. The had obviously drove up from Winnipeg on highway 6 to meet the train at Thompson.

It's an eight hour drive from Winnipeg to Thompson. By train, it's 24 hours, assuming that it's on time. Highway 6 is a direct route through the Interlake. The Churchill train meanders through Saskatchewan, as Churchill is a grain port, and Saskatchewan is were the trains get the grain.

It would make perfect sense for anyone to drive to Thompson, then take the train the rest of the way to Churchill.  It would make perfect sense to anyone except for a railfan. After all, that's 24 hours less spent on a train!

We were told that we'd be facing a delay due to a mandatory rest period for the crew, and that we'd be leaving Thompson at 1 AM.  A few of us decided to walk to Thompson for a snack run. Just outside of Wal-Mart, a native man and his family leaving the store noticed our name tags and stopped us.

"I guess you're stuck here for a while because of the washout, right?" He asked.

Huh?

He was telling the truth. When we got back to the train, it was confirmed that there was indeed a washout north on the line. Due to the heavy rains, a beaver dam had been breeched, which washed out part of the track. We were then told that we'd be staying on the train in Thompson overnight, and that we'd be flown out to Churchill the next morning.

Damn those pesky Canadian rodents, and their shoddy construction techniques.

The crew also told us that they'd be going into town for some supplies for the next day. Despite the news about the delay, we were all in good spirits, and we even had a get-together in the observation car that evening. Being in Thompson also meant that folks carrying cell phones could once again get a signal. That's when we found that the story of our washout made the news!

We went to bed that night on the train, looking forward to a better night's sleep after rocking and rolling through the bush the previous night. We slept peacefully, fully confident that Via Rail would take care of all of our troubles and get us to Churchill swiftly.

Boy, were we ever in for a surprise!

 Hey, sign painter - you had one job! Couldn't you face that "N" the right way?

 Uh, there is track under that train, right? Exactly how long has that train been at that siding?

                        Thompson station - our home away from home for the next 24 hours.

Ride the Assiniboine Park steam train this summer

    A great place for rainfanning, although often overlooked, is Winnipeg's Assiniboine Park. It features a neat miniature live steam train that has just celebrated its 50th anniversary in the park. Although it's mainly for the kiddies, it's still a live steam engine, and still a wonderful sight to see when it's all fired up! Tickets are a very reasonable $2.75 each.

    While you're at the park, take a walk over to see CN's classic 6043 4-8-2 Mountain steamer. This historic engine, built in 1929, made the last scheduled run of steam power on Canadian rail on its run from The Pas to Winnipeg on April 25, 1960. The engine was placed in the park in 1983.