THE RAILWAYS OF BROCKVILLE DURING THE 1950s.
© by Don McQueen, 2013 (all photographs by the author or from his collection)
Introduction
Brockville in the 1950s was as much a railway as it was an industrial river town. During this decade, the community of about 11,000, was the terminus for three predecessors roads of the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railway systems. The earliest was the CPR Brockville subdivision which had been built north into the Ottawa Valley in 1853 as the Brockville and Ottawa Railway (B&ORR).
The town also became the first division point west of Montreal with the arrival of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada (GTR) in 1854, and by 1907 the line between St.Henri in Montreal and Brockville’s ‘Union’ station at Perth Street was in the 125.65-mile 5th District of GTR’s Eastern Division. Between the station and Belleville to the west stretched the 95-mile 6th District (Mile 125.65 to 220.70).
The last railway company to arrive was the Brockville, Westport and Northwestern (BW&NW), known locally as the ‘B&W’. A Canadian Northern (CaNoR) subsidiary, which became the CNR Westport subdivision in 1919, had been incorporated in 1884 as the Brockville, Westport & Sault Ste Marie Railway.
In 1923 the CNR retained the GTR divisional structure but chose names over numerals to identify the areas. Brockville Yard (known as Manitoba Yard from GTR days), the register station for freight trains, was the west end of the 126-mile Cornwall subdivision (from Turcot West) in the St.Lawrence Division of the Montreal District. West of the yard was the Gananoque subdivision in the Belleville Division of the Southern Ontario District. In the 1950s, both Districts were in the CNR Central Region. Today the Station at Perth Street (Mile 125.6) separates the Eastern Division’s Champlain Region from the Great Lakes Region.
Don McQueen made his initial photographic sorties into these railway yards in 1953 and 1954, first to William Street and then Manitoba yard. But as a result of hiking and camping experiences as a Cub and Scout, he became familiar with the lay of the railway lands and watched trains several years before any photographic images were taken, initially with a Kodak Hawkeye and later with a Zeiss Contina 135mm camera. SLRs were commercially unknown at the time.
This essay, using some of those images between the years 1954 and 1960, will move photographically east to west, from approximately what is now Sharpe’s Lane (Kingston subdivision, Mile 123.11) to Lyn Road (CN Lyn, Mile 127.4) and the CPR operation over the Brockville Subdivision into the centre of town.
PART 1 PART 2 PART 3
Acknowlegements
It’s been over half a century since Don lived in Brockville, and if there are errors in his recollections or notes, he would be pleased to receive corrections or additions. Don can be reached at ddmcqueen@rogers.com.
Don would like to thank Phil Jago, James Clark and Bob Moore for their contributions. A wealth of information about the BW&NW can be found on Bob Moore’s website ‘Index to Railways of Eastern Ontario’, clicking on the ‘B&W’ tab at http://www.railwaybob.com/IndexEastOnt.htm.
