There were four columns with 20 spaces.

LOCATION CAR NUMBER L or E (Load or Empty) DESTINATION.

Tk Track UTLX 63113 L N/B N. SPUR
Tk Track UTLX 60358 L              LIFT.
Tk Track CGTX 12322 L          LIFT
Tk Track UTLX 60709 L                LIFT.
Tk Track CGTX 15014 L    N/B N. SPUR
Tk Track CGTX 13224 L  LIFT
Tk Track UTCX 63112 L             LIFT.

So we coupled onto the loads that have been run down south of the loading rack, there was about a dozen cars to the north that held about 25 cars, we removed and brakes, and cut in the air hoses, and the air and stopped short of the North Spur, but was located just north of the run around track, and set the two No Bill cars over, we then lined our self for the straightaway on the run around and pulled our loads down cutting them off on the south end of the run around, and making sure the diverting switch into the run around was restored to normal before bringing the locomotive southward, we then tied on to the empties in the run around and went situated on the point of the movement, where northward out of the run around track up to the loading track where we tried on to the remaining empties, and shoved are six empties back to a spot, with this finished we run back down through the run around track closing the gates unlocking them, restoring the switches to normal, and picked up our five loads of the straightaway of the run around track and preceded southwards to Wimborne.

We had only one locomotive working this trip, and it was starting to act up on us electrically, as we went along, trying to pull the five loads the electrical contactors in the control panels would drop out and the locomotive would quit loading, Grant took a look at the electrical contactors, and figured that if we held them in manually using a wooden broomstick from a corn broom we had in the cab of the locomotive to keep it clean, we should be able to make it back to Wimborne, these contactors are in a high-voltage cabinet that generate up to 600 Volts, so one has to be a very careful doing this, Conductor Fred grabbed the broom and held the contactor shut as we moved along, but finally they overloaded in the locomotive came to a stop with flash over’s of brilliant sparks, and electrical smoke filling up the cab, this locomotive was toasted, and we grabbed our bags and walked a mile and a half back to the caboose and bunkhouse in Wimborne. There we tied up for the night, advising the Chief Train Dispatcher that our locomotive disabled, and we needed new power to continue our tour of duty. So we had a good night sleep and woke up to a beautiful summer morning, and ate a leisurely breakfast, Conductor Fred phoned the dispatchers office to find out what the plan was, evidently they were short of crews and power and we would not see any relief until at least 20:00 that evening, so we spent the day leisurely, there was a great fishing hole in the bush just southwest of the wye the head end brakeman Len and Grant went fishing to catch some for lunch, I just hung around the caboose, doing some cleaning up, that included taking apart and thoroughly cleaning our caboose markers finally around 20:31 the relief train showed up, I remember the crew was locomotive engineer Ted Washbrook and conductor Al Muiren they had brought us a new DRS-2000 numbered in the 3000 series, along with a SW-1200 numbered in the 8100 series, that had used in the yard many years now. This was to take them back home, and they figured they would return caboose hop, the chief dispatcher had other ideas about that and instructed them to run ahead of us taking the loads of sulfur from Wimborne along with our dead locomotive, they weren’t too happy about this, and with a lot of grumbling did what they were told to do. We had followed them out of town at about: 21:30, and had a fairly long night ahead of us running down to East Coulee, and spotting the elevators along the way. One funny thing I do remember was that old SW-1200 8100 then had not seen any hard road service service in many years, and it’s exhaust stacks were plugged up with an accumulation of soot, and carbon when forced to work so hard pulling these loads sulfur across the Acme Subdivision lots of sparks had flew and started spot fires all along the right-of-way, we branched off on the Langdon subdivision eastward at Cosway

Illustration:

Electrical control panel from an EMD CPR 1200SW 8100 series locomotive, the electrical contactors are the three slots on the left-hand bottom of the picture, this is where Fred held them closed with a broomstick when our locomotive had its meltdown on the Meers spur near Wimborne in the summer of 1974.

Make Sure This Cars on Spot at Shepard
1CP 249813B 3522 Shepard 7450 9513 #TAIWOOPRLLBR #0411
6CP 249813 Make Sure This Cars on Spot Just West of A03

Lift The Following Cars at Shepard

1CP 360710H 8025 Beiseker 7525 7325 #DIVENGI BALAST
1CP 360785H 8025 Beiseker 7525 7325 #DIVENGI BALAST
6CP 360785, 360710 To Be Unloaded Mileage 30.9 Langdon Sub.
1CP 110986B 0522 Sharples 7519 5002 #ALBWEPOPPRDRS
6CP 110986 Spot at AWP A 01
1CP 301864F 5228 Drumhell 7511 8580N #DrumhelCOLBR
2CGTX 12330T 27 WIMBORNE 7540 4035C #MOBILOILETY
2UTLX 60744T 27 WIMBORNE 7540 6070Z #MOBILOILETY
2CGTX 13248T 27 WIMBORNE 7540 4035C #MOBILOILETY
2CGTX 13245T 27 WIMBORNE 7540 4035C #MOBILOILETY
2CGTX 13235T 27 WIMBORNE 7540 4035C #MOBILOILETY
2UP      17157H 27 WIMBORNE 7540 9088S #MOBILOILETY
2UP     16824H 26 WIMBORNE 7540 9088S #MOBILOILETY
2UP     16054H 26 WIMBORNE 7540 9088S #MOBILOILETY
2UP     17594 H 26 WIMBORNE 7540 9088S #MOBILOILETY
2UP     18160 H 26 WIMBORNE 7540 9088S #MOBILOILETY
2UP     16878 H 26 WIMBORNE 7540 9088S #MOBILOILETY
2UP     18803 H 26 WIMBORNE 7540 9088S #MOBILOILETY
2UP     18016 H 26 WIMBORNE 7540 9088S #MOBILOILETY
2 UP    18893 H 27 WIMBORNE 7540 9088S #MOBILOILETY
2 UP    18564 H 27 WIMBORNE 7540 9088S #MOBILOILETY
2 UP    17326 H 27 WIMBORNE 7540 9088S #MOBILOILETY

Here is our work assignment list from FJ Dickinson, Chief Dispatcher, and CPR Car Control Alyth on Monday April 15, 1974, it has all the usual instructions, and one interesting note about making sure we do not leave Alyth without the bulldozer for Wimborne, what that was all about I didn’t know, but would find out soon enough. There was a note about a car to spot at Shepard:

1CP 249813B 3522 Shepard 7450 9513 #TAIWOOPRLLBR #0411
The computer language shows us that 1CP 249813B is a load, if it was an empty 2 would proceed CP then we have the car number and the B which stands for boxcar 3522 is a consignment number to Shepard whose station number is 7450, the 9513 is the station where the car was shipped from probably in British Columbia and is consigned to #TAIWOOPRLBR#0411 which is abbreviated Tai Wood Preservers Lumber a plant that processed Cedar lumber, and shingles.
6CP 249813 Make Sure This Cars on Spot Just West of A03
This Line is called a 6 card and has additional information about the car, in this case instructions on where the car is to be spotted A03 is In Alberta Wheat Pool elevator on the West End of the backtrack at Shepard so the car would be placed just to the west of the elevator.
1CP 360710H 8025 Beiseker 7525 7325 #DIVENGI BALAST
1CP 360785H 8025 Beiseker 7525 7325 #DIVENGI BALAST
6CP 360785, 360710 To Be Unloaded Mileage 30.9 Langdon Sub.
Next we have two loads to lift for Beiseker the H shows us that it is a hopper car consigned to the #DIVENGI BALAST the stands for the Divisional Engineer Ballast, and the 6 card indicates that the two loads of ballast are to be unloaded at mileage 30.9 of the Langdon Subdivision that is located 1/2 mile south of Beiseker
1CP 110986B 0522 Sharples 7519 5002 #ALBWEPOPPRDRS
6CP 110986 Spot at AWP A 01
There was one loaded CPR boxcar consigned to Sharples the consignee #ALBWEPOPPRDRS which stands for Alberta Wheat Pool Grain Doors, the CPR provided all the elevator companies with boxcars of lumber, and cardboard steel band reinforced sheeting to cooper the doorways of boxcars so they could be loaded with grain. The 6 card says that the car is to be placed on spot at AWP (Alberta Wheat Pool Elevator) A 01
The remainder of our lift at Shepard was for 1 flatcar of lumber for Drumheller, 5 empty tank cars for sulfur loading loading at Wimborne, and 11 empty Union Pacific hoppers for bulk sulfur loading at Wimborne, those empty hoppers brought back memories, Alberta with its vast petrochemical industry ships lots of bulk sulfur by rail through British Columbia to the Western seaports around Vancouver, British Columbia has stringent shipping regulations were all sulfur must be prilled a process that granulates it into a pelletized, or crumbled form that cuts down on the amount of dust you end up with when sulfur is just crushed and shipped that way. There was a substantial stockpile of bulk sulfur at the Wimborne plant, and to cut down on expenses a proposal was drafted to ship bulk sulfur from Wimborne down through southern Alberta to the US border in Union Pacific hopper cars, they were then routed through the United States to Portland and this would circumvent the rules BC had about prilling bulk sulfur. So that spring they started the program as a test project with an order for about three train loads, to see the feasibility of the operation. I remember handling some of this traffic on the wayfreight, and riding back in the caboose was not a very desirable place to be, lots of sulfur dust blew off the tops of these open top hoppers, and are old caboose was very drafty the sulfur dust would get in through the window frames, and door jams, everything smelled like sulfur, and when riding in the cupola I had to wear goggles otherwise the dust would get in your eyes and burn like sulfuric acid, the track itself that spring was in very poor condition, and running this heavy traffic didn’t help, there were other freight crews bringing up train loads of empty hoppers, but the weight one loaded caused a couple of derailments, with the company not wanting to commit any money into maintaining the track, as you can see we had 2 carloads of ballast to fill in some bad spots South of Beiseker, which was kind of the Band-Aid approach that didn’t amount to much. After running about two trains the program was quietly terminated, and we went back to just handling tank carloads of liquid sulfur from the plant.

Finally at the end of the day I found out what the bulldozer was for, evidently over the weekend the plant loaders had ran some loaded cars down from the tank loading spur using the handbrakes to control their speed, evidently it didn’t work too good as they smashed two or three loads into some stationary ones, that resulted in a derailment with one tank flipped over on its side loaded with 100 tons of liquid sulfur, the solution to the problem was quite simple they unloaded the bulldozer from the flatcar up at the plant, and used it to dig a big ditch in the ground alongside the derailed car, open up the valves and let the 100 tons of liquid sulfur flow into the ditch, re-rail the car, and cover-up the ditch with dirt, a variation of the old shoot, shovel, and shut up theory.

About a week later we were leaving Wimborne southbound for our trip back to Calgary, we had a hold of about 12 loads of grain, and six tank cars loaded with liquid sulfur. I was busy doing the breakfast dishes, when the head end phoned us to let us know that there was a car about six cars from the caboose that was smoking, this would either be a handbrake not taken off, or possibly a hotbox were the axle journal overheats, and has to be attended to by putting in a new journal lubricating pad, and adding Galena grease a special blend made for the CPR for overheated bearings. Anyways, Fred walked up the six car lengths to check out the situation, and corrected it by releasing a hand brake that was applied and we had missed putting the train together. Fred came back to the caboose and started in on me, giving me a lengthy tirade about how lazy and incompetent a brakeman I was, and if I did smarten up he’d have me kicked off his crew. He said that I should’ve dropped everything I was doing and walk up with him to help attend to the disabled car, I listened to his lecture all the way to Acme, where we took a break for lunch, after lunch he had settled down a bit, and was giving me the silent treatment. We did our lift at Beiseker, and proceeded to the next town of Irricana, or we had 30 empty covered Hopper cars in storage, and we were instructed to lift them all so they could go to the fertilizer plant at West Carseland for loading, we were also told to put one car next to the caboose as it had brand-new wheelsets, and had to right next to the caboose where we could observe it. So we pulled our train of 40 cars right down and I cut off the caboose on the mainline, pulling by the South siding switch, and walking back to line the backtrack switch, and remove the derail. I cut the air in, and released the handbrakes on the south end, and radioed the engineer to pull ahead when the air had pumped off, as the cars were going by me. I was checking my list for the car number that was supposed to go next to the caboose, I soon realized the car we are looking for was five from the tail end of the cut, and we had run foul of the main track by about three car lengths, realizing this I told the engineer to stop and backup towards the backtrack, so I could cut off the car for the caboose, which I did. I then returned the movement and tied onto the backtrack, and told the engineer to pull ahead again, than all hell broke loose, Len the head end man was looking back from the east side and started to see cars derailing, and told the engineer to stop. What had evidently happened was that Fred out stumbling around, and writing down car numbers, had inadvertently placed the derail back into the derailing position, I was unaware of this, and learned that you can back over a derail safely, but soon as you go ahead the derail will do its job and start derailing cars going over it. There wasn’t much ballast in this old elevator track, it was mostly coal cinders from the steam era, so the cars although empty they sank quite deeply into the ballast. There was nothing that we can do about it today, so we left the cars as they were, and would get the Alyth Car Department to assist us in re-railing lease cars the next day on our trip outward from Alyth.

The next day, Thursday we were ordered out of Alyth for 08:00, and our work message said that the Alyth Car Department would meet us at Irricana to help re-rail the derailed hopper cars. We arrived at 11:00, the carmen had arrived earlier with their rush repair pickup truck, loaded up with tools and blocks and wedges of hardwood, and were busy digging around the first derailed car to prepare it for getting it back onto the rails, we stopped our train South of the main track switch and cut off running our locomotive up to the switch, after lining the switch towards the derailed cars, we pulled up closer to talk to the carmen, they said they were just about ready to re-rail the first car, every locomotive on the CPR is equipped with a 7/8 inch wrecking cable that’s about 16 feet long, with a loop braided on each end, and with slid able cast-iron hooks on the cable itself, they are for handling cars with broken draft gears, when needed to set a disabled car over, they are located inside the hatchway covering the diesel engine, all locomotives are a little equipped with cast-iron re-railer’s, they are painted bright yellow, and they are quite heavy, weighing about 140 pounds, they are suspended underneath the running boards on each side of the locomotive. They are moved to the rail near the car and are spiked to the railway ties and the car could be pulled onto them for rerailing it. In this case the carmen was well-equipped, and seeing that the cars were empty we did not have to use them.

Illustrations:

1.) Porcelain Coffee Cup similar to the one belonging to Fred Foulston that I broke at Nacmine, Alberta

2.) Irricana grain elevators CNR to the left, and the CPR to the right, the CNR ran parallel to us on the East side on their Three Hills Subdivision until we were about 3 miles from Beiseker where the CNR went over topof us, and continued on northward on the West side of Beiseker. Irricana and Beiseker where the only two stations served by both the CPR, and CNR on these Alberta branch lines that I can recall.

3.) View from South switch Irricana looking North on our arrival our locomotives on the mainline storage box cars in the siding and the two derailed cars on the right line towards the elevator track.
4.) Derailed covered fertilizer hoppers, carmen with yellow helmet working around cars, their rush repair truck visible to the right, it is well-equipped with all the tools and materials necessary for this job. storage boxcars in the siding, and grain elevator visible above the roof of the CPR Carmen’s repair truck.

5.) Derailed covered hoppers, with Conductor Fred Foulston evaluating the situation, our train cut off on the mainline South of the main track switch. at least the weather was nice that summer day, and helped to get the work done faster than if it had been raining.
6.) Derailed CPR 380043 covered hopper, and other derailed hopper looking eastward. Under the cars member CP 380043 which were all covered hoppers on the CPR fleet, and were used primarily for moving bulk commodities like fertilizer, cement, steel filings, and other weather sensitive products. you can see the cars reporting marks that show it’s Capacity 158,000 Pounds or 79 Tons Load Limit shows the same, Light Weight shows 52,000 Pounds or 26 Tons these hoppers had circular portals on the roof for loading, and geared gates on the bottom that could be opened to facilitate unloading.

7.) View of derailed covered hopper cars taken from mainline looking Southeast, tail end brakeman Larry Buchan standing beside first hopper.
8.) View looking Southeast at derailed covered hoppers, our locomotives are on the mainline and our train is visible further South.

9.) Head end brakeman Len Edwards with blue cap helps the two carmen wearing yellow hard hats hook up the wrecking cable between the front coupler of the locomotive, and the coupler on the first derailed covered hopper.

10.) CPR Work Extra 8693 with locomotive engineer Stan McPhredan starting to slowly back up our locomotive to get the first set of derailed wheels back onto the track, the usual procedure would be to uncouple the two cars, re-rail the first car and set it over out of the way, then re-rail the second car. This procedure took about 45 min., and we were on our way to Wimborne

11.) CPR Work Extra at Wimborne, Alberta. Locomotive Engineer Stan McPhredan, and Head end brakeman Len Edwards.

Illustrations:

1.) PNC 172 locomotive in 1974.

2.) PNC 1011 logo with “P” made from machinist’s micrometer, and draftsman’s square.

3.) CPR Langdon Sub running along Kneehill Creek, our source for water.

One trip North to Wimborne we had a flatcar loaded with combines for the town of Beiseker that was next to our engine, the unloading platform was located on the south end of the elevator track, there were about a dozen other grain empties on spot, and rather than go in from the north and having to couple up all the grain empties including some that were being loaded, which would be a hassle as we would have to get the elevator operator to stop loading so we could pull all the cars out and couple onto the combines to spot it at the platform. So we decided to make a quick move, the elevator track at Beiseker was shaped like a dish, and cars would roll towards the middle from each end, we stopped our train south of the south switch, and cut off the combines from the train, uncoupled the car from the engine that put the airbrake into emergency to hold the car there, and ran the engine up the mainline past the south switch clear of the fouling point of the elevator track, with the derail removed, we lined the switch towards the platform, I got on the north end of the flatcar were the horizontal handbrake wheel was located, the headend brakeman bled off the air from the brake cylinder from the bleed lever located on the side of the car, and it started to roll by gravity into the elevator track, there was a good incline and it picked up speed quickly, I in the meantime was tightening the brake wheel to slow the car down and bring it to a stop at the platform, but with all my strength I could not control the speed and the car kept on rolling past the platform and we plowed into a couple of stationary boxcars spotted at the Parrish and Heimbecker elevator, I held on for dear life and fortunately was not thrown off the car and the combines remained secured, it moved the stationary cars two car lengths northward before everything came to a stop, fortunately the cars were not being loaded at the time, and we came in with the light engine re-spotted the grain empties, and the machinery car at the platform, bracing the wheels with wooden wedges to keep the car in place, the conductor advised car control in Medicine Hat to have the Car Department come out and repair the defective handbrake, and notify the farm implement dealer that the car was not safe to unload until the repairs could be made.

Photos:

1.) OTTX 91955 flatcar loaded with combine TTX or the Trailer Train Company was formed in 1955 by three owners: Pennsylvania Railroad, Norfork and Western Railroad, and the Rail Trailer Corporation, the Companies goal was to standardize rail equipment of railway piggybacking, and other rolling stock in the 1960s the first flat cars equipped with auto racks for loading and unloading automobiles were developed, and 89 foot flat cars with heavy duty tiedown chains entered service for loading heavy machinery.

2.) Farm machinery unloading platform in the yard at East Coulee, Alberta

We usually owned the railway once we left the mainline of the Brooks Subdivision at Shepard, and we ran as a Work Extra that allowed us to move in both directions, as long as we followed the set schedule of the assignment Monday and Wednesday from Shepard to Wimborne, Tuesday and Thursday from Wimborne to East Coulee, and Wednesday and Saturday East Coulee to Shepard, with side trips down the Irricana subdivision as necessary. Now with the M-101 in the picture on this Monday, we had more than two trains operating, so we had to have a different set of orders clearing us as an Extra North 8836 on the Langdon subdivision, with orders to take the siding at Acme to meet Extra South M-101, they were coming from East Coulee that afternoon. We did all our regular work up to Acme and pulled our train into the siding, we went over and had lunch and returned waiting for the arrival of the Extra South M-101, of course they all had to be on our toes, as these were company officials and could stop and question us to see that we had our proper documentation such as rules qualification cards up to date, along with our railway watch inspection cards, and look for any other infraction of, the rules.

Our Superintendent from Medicine Hat was William R. Flett, a stern disciplinarian and not known for civility, he would be accompanied by the Master Mechanic, who would share the driving of the Hi-rail vehicle, along with the Divisional Engineer who would inspect the track conditions, and the Roadmaster who was responsible for all the section forces on the subdivisions. Our conductor Fred Foulston was a little nervous, in light of the fact that he had just got his rights back to work as a conductor after being demoted for rules violations many years ago by Bill Flett. We were waiting in the caboose, and the head end crew were on the locomotive awaiting there were arrival so we could proceed northward to Wimborne, we waited for over an hour but there was no sign of them. Finally the hotel manager came over from town and told Fred that he was supposed to phone the CPR dispatcher’s office in Calgary, Fred returned and got all our train orders, and returned to the hotel to take new ones from the dispatcher over the telephone. Evidently what had happened was that the hi-rail vehicle was coming around the sharp curve on the Wye at Cosway 2 miles north of us, when they left the rails and crashed into a ditch along the right-of-way, fortunately nobody was badly injured, and they had called for taxis to take them back to their head quarters. So with all our old orders annulled, and new ones for us to operate as a work extra we were able to proceed, going past Cosway we could see the hi-rail vehicle laying on its side in the muddy ditch, a tow truck was on hand to pull it out. So I never got a chance to meet Mr. Flett, which was fine with me.

When I worked at Ogden  locomotive repair shop in 1966, I remember seeing out on the scrap dock  an old 12 cylinder Cadillac hi railtrack inspection vehicle from 1930’s, it was painted in Tuscan red, with the Canadian Pacific shield on the doors, and have a heavy frame made of 8 inch I-beams, with large 30 inch drivers. I wondered how fast they could get this hi rail inspection vehicle going.

Photos;

1.) Hi rail Chevy suburban track inspection vehicle

2.) CPR hi rail track inspection vehicle later model numbered SK 101 (SK for Saskatchewan)

3.) CPR 1929 Packard M 600 hi rail inspection vehicle, notice turntable mechanism underneath.

4.) Another CPR 1930s M 820 hi rail inspection car, this is the one I might have seen at Ogden in 1966.

Behind the station at East Coulee was a lead that ran over the turntable, that we used to turn our locomotive when we only had one unit, this lead took us to the ladder tracks on the south side of the yard and there was a lead that connected to the wooden truss bridge, this wooden structure built in the 1940s was unique in that both railway and motor vehicles could travel over it. There was a wooden shanty on the north end of the bridge with controls to direct railway and vehicular traffic on the bridge. Normally Highway traffic had the right-of-way they were electrically controlled highway crossing gates to stop traffic, and electric railway semaphore signals to govern train movements over the bridge. My position was to ride on top of the empty cars across the bridge and up and under the tipple of the Atlas mine where the empty coal boxcars could be loaded. We would take the loads that were listed to pull, and with this done we would spot up any grain empties and lift loads at the Alberta Wheat Pool elevator, when we were finished the locomotive engineer would give Whistle signal Rule 14 (j) four short blasts on the air horn to get Willy the bridge tender’s attention to stop traffic and give us a semaphore signal to return across the bridge back into the yard and switch out the loads placing any for the CNR in the designated track for them to pick up.

Photo illustrations:

1.) A winter view taken in 1974 of Atlas mine loading tipple in the center, and Alberta Wheat Pool elevator on the left taken from the East Coulee yard on the south side of the Red Deer River.
2.) A summer view of the wooden railway and vehicle bridge across the Red Deer River taken from the East Coulee yard the turntable deck is visible in the front right hand side, the highway approach to the bridge, and the bridge tenders shanty in front of the bridge on the south side.
3.) A photo taken by me riding on top of the boxcars on the point of our movement crossing the bridge after passing the bridge tenders shanty, you can see the wooden planking for the vehicles to travel on and the rail tracks running down the middle. Above the bridge on top of the bluff is a structure that was part of the mine’s operation to transfer coal from the mine site on top to the loading tipple.
4.) A view taken looking backward from my perch sitting on top of the wooden running boards on the south end car going across the bridge, these were vintage railway boxcars with their wooden platforms and running boards to cross from car to car with the vertical brake wheel visible on the north end of the car I’m riding, some of these old cars still had horizontal stem wind brakes that could be really dangerous to operate. At this time the CPR were eliminating most of this equipment and taking off the running boards.
5.) View of coal loading tipple at East Coulee’s Atlas mine taken in the 1950s, there were tracks located underneath the structure where I would line switches and ride the cars underneath, watch carefully for restricted clearances which was easy in daylight, but at nighttime one would have to be very wary especially one not familiar with the characteristics.
6.) One final view looking back northward from the Atlas mine towards the wooden bridge and East Coulee.

We met Louis at Irricana he said we would be running down the Irricana subdivision to Tudor, and tie up in Irricana for the night, it was a calm clear winter day and the plowing went good with not too many major snowdrifts with two locomotives in our consist we had lots of horsepower to get us through, at Nightingale we derailed the front of the snowplow going over a private crossing that had filled in with ice, this was similar to my experience on the Empress Subdivision that I posted earlier when I was riding a on top of a boxcar that derailed from the same conditions. We had lots of sectionmen on board the snowplow and with some hardwood wedges and a bit of coaxing we were successful in getting the plow back on track, and with their picks and shovels they cleaned out the remaining ice between the rails and the crossing planks. At Nightingale we had to set off one of our locomotives, as there was a weight restriction between there and Tudor Past the manual interlocking tower at the Dunshalt we started hitting some pretty big snowdrifts, one was fairly long and deep we got above halfway through when we stalled, with two locomotives this would not have been a problem, but being down to one unit really slowed us down quickly, once again the sectionmen dugout some of the snow, and we were able to back up far enough to take a better run at the drifts after three attempts we were successful in breaking through and continued on to Tudor uneventfully. On March 21 we continued plowing down Langdon subdivision to Entice, and up the Acme subdivision to Wimborne, we made an effort to do some plowing on the Meers spur but the track was too rough so we aborted that attempt and were finished at 12:15, being in snowplow service we were on continuous pay and made 344 miles, for that part of the trip. We went back on duty in wayfreight service at Wimborne 12:15 we had a momentarily delay when our caboose went off the track going over a private crossing filled with ice, but the section forces soon had us back on track and we arrived back at Alyth and were off duty at 19:15.

Photos:

1.) Picture I took at Nightingale when the snowplow derailed on the ice filled crossing, we are backing up to re-rail the plow, on the left wearing the florescent orange hat is Mars Wolfe our conductor, two of the sectionmen and Roadmaster Louis Visochhi on the right-hand side.
2.) snowplow stuck in drift Section Forman Roman, he and his crew lived in Beiseker in the old CPR roadmaster’s house. He had immigrated to Canada from Romania, and had run and the Berlin Olympics in 1936.
3.) Snowplow with head end brakeman Alan Greenstein to the left, and Roadmaster Louis Visochcci on the right-hand side.
4.) Snowplow CPR 400442 with your author and tail end brakeman.

5.) Section foreman John Lehman from Torrington assists rerailing our caboose at Wimborne

What made this trip memorable was years later I met a retired CPR employee John Sutherland who happened to be out that day on February 26 when we arrived at East Coulee, it was around twilight time and he shot these following photos. One of the abandoned station, and a shot of us approaching East Coulee where the track ran below a cliff that was a bad area for slides, I am sitting in the cupola of the caboose. The other shot was taken further to the west.

We did our usual chores stopping at Keoma, and Irricana spotting the elevator tracks, and switching out our train placing our caboose behind 10 empty boxcars for spotting on the Irricana Sub starting out at mileage 72.5., we then had our lunch at the local restaurant, and left for our trip to Tudor I rode on the lead locomotive as I had to help out further down the line, at one time this subdivision ran all the way down to Bassano on the Brooks Subdivision on the mainline, I referred to it earlier on my post of working the Zone 2 Wayfreight from Bassano to Standard. Just south of Tudor at mileage 44.9 there was an engineering problem with a sinkhole, every year dozens of cars of rock gravel ballast would be unloaded to keep track stable, when the mixed passenger service was discontinued in 1967 track was closed and the Wayfreight’s did all the work from both ends of the subdivision.

The track between Irricana and Tudor was so seldomley used that ranchers and farmers had leased parts of this right away for grazing cattle, and barbed wire fences were put up across the track to keep the cattle in, whenever the wayfreight was scheduled to make a trip the landowners were notified by car control in Medicine Hat ahead of time so that they could take down their fences down for the train to pass. We proceeded southward there with some snowdrifts as no trains had been through for a few weeks, they were not too deep, or long enough to cause us any concern about plowing through them. There wasn’t much left for communities on this stretch of railway at one time there were towns at Craigdhu mileage 67.8, Gayford mileage 62.5 and Hamlet mileage 50.8, all that remained was a siding at Nightingale mileage 54.9 and Tudor with its two Alberta Wheat Pool Elevators at mileage 45 5, leaving Nightingale we then approached a manual interlocking with the CNR at Dunshalt, this was the first time I had seen anything like this on my railway career I had read the following Timetable Special Instructions that stated “Railway crossing at grade with Canadian National Railways mileage 52.4 — Interlocking Signals will be operated by CPR trainmen and the left normally clear for CNR trains, Rule 605A does not apply.” I knew the by reading my rulebook that Rule 605A referred to flag protection not being required in interlocking limits, but the rest was all new to me. We brought our train to a stop at a manual interlocking single with the bottom aspect indicating stop, from here I have to walk about 500 yards up to a wooden tower to operate the signals as I walked along the track I could see steel bars mounted on concrete supports that were connected to the semaphore signals and ran to the tower. I reached the tower and climb up the rickety stairs to the door, there was a curved steel bar through the padlock staple that had two railway switch locks attached, one CPR, and the other CNR, I unlock the CPR one with my switch key and open the door. With the door open I entered the derelict tower there was snow all over the floor where it had drifted in, the windows are long gone and are all boarded up so the only illumination is from the daylight through the doorway, I am confronted with four large steel levers mounted to the floor, and under glass in a wooden frame on the wall were instructions for operating the interlocking, they were posted in 1930. The four levers were painted bright red, had unlocking handles at the back, and number plates from left to right painted in white 1, 2, 3, and 4. The way the signals were set always gave the CNR the right-of-way. The instructions stated for train movements by the CPR first unlock and pull to lever No.1 toward you this was to display stop signals on the CNR, what happened next scared the hell out of me, the open door violently closed shut and I was left in the darkness momentarily, there was enough light through the cracks in the boards over the window to allow me to see again, the next instruction was to unlock and pull lever No.3 by doing this a mechanical clock mechanism behind the lever started clicking and timed out for 3 min. with this done I was able to unlock and pull lever No.2 towards me, this gave our train a clear signal to proceed southward. Our engineer whistled twice and pulled lower train through the interlocking stopping the caboose just in the clear on the south side. My next step was to restore all the signals to the way they were when I entered the tower, by doing this a steel lever coming up through the floor opened allowing me to open the door and exit. This simple but ingenious method of making sure the signals were all restored to normal was probably thought out by the signal maintainers who probably got tired of being called out to restore signals by negligent CPR brakeman who have not followed the instructions. Of course the veteran crew had a good laugh at my expense, knowing beforehand about the towers locking mechanism, it was kind of a rite of passage for railway men.

One of the older engineers I knew told me at one time this tower and the automatic interlocking on the Langdon subdivision were both operated by local farmers and in the steam engine days they would blow whistle signals for the farmer/tower operator to come out and give them signals to pass. I was to find out later in my life one of my neighbours Dorothy Robinson where I grew up in South Calgary was raised on a farm at Dunshalt and her father William Gorman operated the tower from the time it was built circa 1914 until the Great Depression and the economic downturn forced the Railways to eliminate these jobs, and have the brakeman do the work. She gave me a postcard picture showing her father standing on top of the stairs in the doorway to the tower, it looks brand-new all freshly painted with all the windows in place levers visible through the glass, there are glass windows on the ground floor, and an access door for the maintainers, visible in front are the steel rods that operated the semaphore signals, and a chimney that at one time must have been connected to a stove that provided heat. It must’ve been a quite cozy and comfortable workplace, not like what I encountered 60 years later.

We returned to Irricana, picked up our train and continued on to Wimborne arriving at 20:30 and at 21:45 were off duty. Leaving the switching of the sulfur plant for the morning we started at 07:00 departed at 10:25 and arrived at East Coulee 17:50 and off duty 18:50 we went on duty at 07:00 and were off duty at 16:50 Alyth.

Photos:
1.) Approaching semaphore signal indicating stop at Dunshalt manual interlocking.
2.) Walking towards manual interlocking tower control rods alongside rail on right side.
3.) View of our train waiting for signal taken from interlocking time, CNR right-of-way to the left.
4.) Manual interlocking control levers inside tower, instructions posted on wall, snow on floor.
5.) Manual interlocking control levers set to stop for the CNR on lever No 1, and lever No. 3 timing out.
6.) View of interlocking tower and diamond where the tracks intersect taken from our caboose.
7.) Close-up view of tower that day in February 1974.
8.) Postcard photo of manual interlocking tower newly constructed 60 years before in 1914.