THE RAILWAYS OF BROCKVILLE DURING THE 1950s.
© by Don McQueen, 2013 (all photographs by the author or from his collection)
PART TWO
13: The CPR William Street yard
At the top of the grade north of the tunnel was a small CPR freight yard. CPR Mogul Type steamers had been active in this yard as well as the waterfront until they had been withdrawn from these assignments by the early 1950s. The last Mogul, CPR 3011 (see photo 11) was scrapped in October 1954. CPR diesel switcher 7089 - MLW model S-2, built in February 1949 - was in its as- delivered livery of maroon and yellow when switching the north tunnel yard on February 19, 1955. The MLW S-2 and S-3 diesel switcher models were ideal replacements as their dimensions allowed passage through the confines of the Brockville Tunnel. Set on a curve between William Street and the north-south Tunnel lead, this marshalling and interchange yard consisted of three or four tracks and a pull-back connection on its east side to facilitate the CNR switcher interchanging Pool train cars on westbound trains.
Looking south- west in this view, the lead to the tunnel was behind the photographer, and the curved yard trackage to the left 7089′s cab ran in front of both the watchman’s tower protecting William Street and the CPR insulated water tower. The house behind the switchman on the rear pilot was on Louis Street. [Don McQueen photo]
14: The Arrival of CP Pool Train No.563
About 11:45 on a brisk February 19, 2025 morning, CPR 4-6-2 Pacific Type 1261 - built by CLC in November 1946 - arrived with No.563 to meet CNR’s No.5, The La Salle. The CPR Pool train was about to occupy the William Street level crossing located behind the photographer. In the background on CNR’s Cornwall subdivision, with freight Extra 6133 West running ahead of the La Salle. The stack behind the freight train belonged to the John B.Stetson Company, a millinery establishment which had no rail connection. At this time No.563 was one of four daily Pool Train connections made at Brockville which more or less remained constant during the Pooling agreement between 1933 and 1965. During this decade the CPR pool power into Brockville was usually G5 class 4-6-2s in the 1200-series, although on occasion a class G1 2200-series would appear, and by the end of the decade steam generator equipped 8400/8500- series Montreal-built RS10s would supplant the steamers. Pacific 1261 had left Ottawa that morning at 09:15, making the 76-mile trip in 85 minutes. Once the through equipment was interchanged, the 1261 and head end equipment would use the Loop Line wye to change direction, as shown in photo 27. The return trip as No.562 would leave at 14:55 after the departure of CNR No.14 and arrive in Ottawa at 17:35. [Don McQueen photo]
15: Pool Train Operation - Separating the Montreal - Ottawa Sections
The procedure described for photo 14 was repeated again later in the day with different equipment. It would arrive at Brockville as No.559 at 17:30 to meet CNR No.15, and return to Ottawa as No.560 at 20:10 after the departure of CNR No.6. During peak weekend periods or midweek holidays, especially during winter months, pools 559 and 560 were known to occasionally be double-headed by G5 class 4-6-2s. After the passing of a thunder shower about 19.55 on July 5, 1960, Pool no.6, The Inter-City Limited, powered by CNR London-built (in May 1958) model FP9A 6534 and two other passenger units came to a stop on the south main at the fueling station east of the new William Street overpass. This allowed the yard switcher west of Perth Street to cut off the Ottawa- bound section and couple it to the consist of CPR no.560, led this evening by 8480, a MLW model RS10 built in March 1955. The CP RS10 had pulled up beside no.6 to allow passengers in cars from no.6 to detrain and board in front of the station after their transfer. No.560 would then back to the interchange lead just east of William Street and then proceed onto the CP Brockville subdivision which curved to the northeast on the right hand side of the photograph. [Don McQueen photo]
16: A CNR westbound at the William Street crossing
With clean white flags, CNR model CFA16-4 9320 - CLC-built in December 1952 - and two other units drifted into town with an extra west at William Street during late August 1958. In the 1950s only William and Perth Streets were protected by manual gates. The completion of Highway 401 in 1959 had a profound effect on CN’s Brockville facilities. To provide access to the new highway both North Augusta Road and William Street were rebuilt with road overpasses. In order to reach the desired height, the ramps of the William Street structure became the death knell of both the engine turntable yard and the 1854 Running Shed. In the background ahead of the lead unit was the east end of Louis Street, and the loading ramp was immediately to the north of the CNR main and the CPR Brockville subdivision. Only a corner of the CNR Freight shed on the east side of William Street is visible on the extreme right. [Roger Letourneau photo]
17: An aerial of CNR William Street terminal
This was ‘the engine terminal’ which lay between the CPR Tunnel cut and Perth Street during 1949. In this post-war view, made during an flight piloted by Allan Fairburn (with the RFC during WW I) for the George Eland Studios, CNR 0-6-0s, 2-8-0s and 4-8-4s populated the east end of the yard. Brock Street terminated at Tunnel Avenue in a residential-industrial cluster at the bottom centre of the photograph.
The buildings on the north side of Brock were all that remained of the G.M.Cossitt Brothers Agricultural Works. William Street bisected the complex midway through the photo. Perth Street, with the ‘Union’ station and former Railway Hotel are in the upper left corner. Travelling from top to bottom, left to right were the following railway landmarks - none of which now exist. The water tank and ash pit comprised the west departure yard. A fueling station and water standpipes for the diesels were installed in 1954. The red-bricked shop building at the northern end of Buell Street housed staff and divisional operational facilities. The limestone running shed with the south facing boiler house and shop extended to the west side of William Street. A pair of thin chimneys towering over the boiler house (which also appear in photograph 24) were from two former 2-6-0 Mogul Type steam boilers which acted as the stationary plant. About 1956 they were replaced by a Cleaver-Brooks oil (Bunker C) package boiler. A second ash pit used for unassigned or outbound motive power stood between the street and the turn- table. North of the U-2-h Northern was the freight shed and cattle pen.
The Brockville subdivision line of the CPR arced from right to left on the north side of the CNR Cornwall sub, with stub tracks leading to the station. The inclosed CPR water tower was immediately west of William Street. The trackage completing the arc was the ‘Loop Line’ which re-crossed Louis Street and followed Butler’s Creek under the CNR main to a wye and industries along the town’s western waterfront. The area north of the water tower and Louis Street became the site for the CPR freight shed after the waterfront complex and tunnel were removed from service in the 1960s. [The George Eland Studios Ltd. photo]
18: Steam activity at the turntable pit
There were occasions when the one or two hostlers on duty had their hands full. One of these days occurred at the western rim of the William Street turntable pit during an afternoon shift in late June 1956. On the left, on one of the turntable stub tracks, the blower of 2-8-2 Mikado Type 3237 (CLC, March 1917) was activated to keep the fire hot. Alongside, 4-8-4 Northern Type 6137 (MLW, September 1927), being purged of condensation in the cylinders, was reversing to the south side of the running shed to pick up its crew for an eastbound freight. Northern Type 6237 (MLW, August 1943) had just had its fire cleaned and moved ahead of the pit. Waiting for another assignment, 2-8-2 Mikado Type 3730, -American Locomotive Company (ALCO) in Schenectady, NY in February 1918 as GTR 470 - had received the same attention as its mate, 3237. An unidentified 4-8-4, undergoing some sort of running repair, nosed out of the running shed. [Norman E. Newson photo]
19: The Brockville Turntables
The turntable used for 2-8-2 Mikado Type 3739 (Schenectady, December 1918, as GTW 479) to turn it for a future westbound freight on October 20, 2024 was not the first balanced-beam turntable to be installed at the east end of the William Street complex. A Canadian Bridge Company 70-foot table was installed in 1907 which served the facility until about 1923. With the arrival of USRA 2-8-2 Mikado Types (3700-series) with a 71.5-foot wheelbase and the 80-foot base of the 4-8-2 Mountain Types (6000-6033), a longer table was needed. Sometime after 1923 a new pit and table measuring 84.5 feet were installed. Northen Types with their 83-foot wheelbase were a challenge to hostlers to balance the 4-8-4 Northern Types on the table as they had but inches to spare at either end.
A drawing, dated 1853, exists of Brockville’s first turntable as a wood truss 45-foot table built inside the cruciform engine shed. Another, inside a brick and wood roundhouse built about 1872 west of the end of Buell Street, was 60 feet in length built by Detroit Bridge Company. The 1854 table had been removed before 1907 but the latter was still listed in service as late as 1919. This 1956 view looks east with the CPR ‘Tunnel Bridge’ behind the Mikado’s pilot, and the Whyte Packing Company buildings beyond the Tunnel cut on the right. [Don McQueen photo]
20: Over the Edge
Adrenaline flowed one night at the turntable in December 1952 when a relief hostler from Ottawa backed 4-8-4 Northern Type 6219 east over the edge of the CPR Tunnel cut, mistakenly thinking he was moving the locomotive to the west end of the engine yard. Unable to employ hoists or cranes because of the slope of the tunnel cut, it took days of jacking and cribbing the rear wheels of the tender to track level before 6219 was fired up again to ease its tender back on terra firma. The view looks south early in the cribbing exercise. [Edgar C.Ackland photo]
21: The William Street ash pit
Steam power completing trips left their trains in the Manitoba Yard, were coaled by the incoming crews at its eastern limits a mile to the west of William Street, and finished the trip by travelling east to the engine terminal. They were watered east of the running shed and usually had their fires cleaned in the same location by hostlers. They were then moved to the east side of William Street to await the next assignment. At that time fires were again cleaned at the ash pit east of William Street. This process is about to begin for CNR Mikado Type 2-8-2 3451 - Baldwin Locomotive Works, Philadelphia in August 1913 as GTR 546 - on the warm hazy afternoon of October 20, 1956. The view, taken from the Vanderbilt tender of another steamer also included the line of gondolas for cinders on the track south of the air- activated ash hoist, the east side of the running shed’s boiler house and to the north, the stub-end passenger car yard on the west side of William Street. [Don McQueen photo]
22: The east side of the GTR-CNR Running Shed at William Street
The front ends of both CNR 2-8-2 Mikado Type 3272 (CLC January 1918, as Canadian Government Railways 2872) and 4-8-4 Northern Type 6145 (MLW, April 1929) poked outside the east end of the GTR-CNR running shed adjacent to William Street on February 7, 1959. This usual practice was to keep the interior clear of smoke while necessary repairs were made inside the vintage building. The west end of the shed can be seen in photo 24. Built as a Grand Trunk cruciform engine shed, the north arm had been demolished when the building was converted to a 205-foot three-track running shed. The south arm became the machine shop and boiler house.
As built in 1854 or 1855, the central section of the building housed a turntable with three stub tracks radiating into each of the arms. The alteration and realignment of trackage into a three-track shed were necessitated by the ever increasing size of the railway’s motive power. An outdoor turntable was then installed near the edge of the CPR Tunnel cut, as seen in the aerial photo in photo 17. The east end of the running shed was demolished during 1961, a victim of changes brought about by dieselization and the building of the William Street overpass. The south wing, the boiler house and machine shop were converted into a centre for maintenance-of-way crews and lasted until destroyed by fire in the spring of 1971. If it had survived another decade, it may very well have been designated a heritage structure, as even in the 1950s, it was believed to be last surviving example of a Grand Trunk cruciform engine shed. [Don McQueen photo]
23: ‘Foreign’ visitors to Brockville
Because the Brockville terminal straddled two CNR subdivisions in different Divisions of two Districts, motive power assigned from these different areas could be found laying over between assignments. Other than the appearance of Grand Trunk Western Railway (GTW) 4-8-4 Northern Types (6300-6311) or 2-8-2 Mikado Types in the 3700-series during World War II or again afterwards to relieve power shortages, the most common foreign visitors were locomotives from CNR’s New England lines with Grand Trunk livery. As they regularly ran into Montreal’s Turcot yard, they could be sent west as needed, but were usually turned at Brockville, the boundary of the Montreal District. On one of these trips into town on October 20, 1956, GT 2-8-2 Mikado Type 3704 needed running repair which was performed inside the running shed. Besides the ‘Grand Trunk’ wafer on the tender sides, it was the style of front number plate which alerted the photographer the Mikado was not in CNR livery.
The 2-8-2 had been ordered by the United States Railway Administration (USRA) for Grand Trunk’s New England lines and built by ALCO in Schenectady during October 1918 as USRA-GTR 444. For several weeks in 1958 GT 2-8-0 Consolidation Type 2611 substituted for an ailing CN diesel yard switcher. Other than a brief appearance of Central Vermont’s 2-10-4 Texas Types (CVR 700-709) powering 400-series manifests into Brockville in 1928 & 1929, CVR crews would arrive in town from St.Albans using either CN or GT power. [Don McQueen photo]
24: The GTR-CNR Running Shed
CNR 4-8-4 Northern Type 6259 (MLW, January 1944) was the morning passenger protection engine on February 19, 1955. The coach seen to the left, was in a set of steam-equipped stub-end tracks to store first class equipment for the same reason - 24-hour protection of equipment on the run-through passenger trains. In the case of the motive power, it meant several moves throughout the day in order to provide a fully fueled and watered locomotive if problems developed with the road engine. This location, in front of the staff and divisional operations building at the north end of Buell Street was used for westbounds. In 1955 this included a total of five dailies - No.17, Inter-City Limited (arr. Brockville 01:50); No.7 Lakeshore Express (10:45); Pool No.5 La Salle (12:05); Pool No.15 International Limited (17:45); and No.19 (23:40). However to maximize utilization of the specially prepared locomotive, it was moved to the eastbound lead in the turntable yard, just south of the cattle pens. Thus the movements oscillated between the westbounds and the five eastbound passenger trains - No.18 (03:40); No.16 Maple Leaf (04:25); No.8 Lakeshore Express (13:40); Pool No.14 International Limited (14:50) and No.6, Inter-City Limited (19:55). [Don McQueen photo]
PART THREE…
