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Oh, the places you’ll go

I first met George Hiotis in October of 1994 on the station platform at Val-Royal, a suburban neighborhood northwest of the center of Montreal. He and I had separately and independently decided to travel there to see for ourselves the electrification on the former Canadian National Deux-Montagnes commuter line. Four of the boxcab locomotives that we photographed dated back to 1917, built by General Electric; another handful had a foreign pedigree, constructed by English Electric in 1924; and the “modern” three steeplecabs, also GEs, came out of the Erie plant in 1950. On top of the ancient equipment, Val-Royal remained one of the last places in North America where a station agent hooped up orders to every inbound train. It felt like a trip in a time machine.

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A Lifetime Love of Trains

New Haven express nearing Stamford. Photo Fielding Lewis Bowman

How did you discover trains? I was four, and my grandpa “Pop” enjoyed taking me for walks. Pop’s house in New Rochelle, New York was a walk from a bridge over the New Haven Railroad’s four track electrified main line. Once there, I peered through the fence, intently watching for a headlight in the distance. I was soon able to identify a “local” on the outside track and an express. We went to the bridge as often as I could convince Pop of the need to go, and never left until we saw at least one New Haven train.

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Almost!

End Of Shift
Stockton Terminal & Eastern RR

In the mid-1960s, the Stockton Terminal & Eastern RR was a small terminal operation in the city of Stockton, California. It snaked in and around packing houses, warehouses and industries. Its new owners had big plans, but they lay in the future.

I spent a day with the crew doing photographs. The day was raw and overcast, threatening rain. It seemed like we had moved a bazillion cars. One more pull, one more shove, and we were done. Quitting time!

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Backroads & Branchlines

Ghosts of the CPR Stirling Subdivision

Being part of a railway museum (and in charge of the collections/archives) a person comes across some interesting donations, such as this series of photos from retired Canadian Pacific Railway engineer Nick Korchinski from Lethbridge, Alberta.

Crossing the High-Level Viaduct heading east

The donation is photos from his trip taking empty grain hoppers to the last grain elevator holdout on the CPR Stirling subdivision at Orion, Alberta, on a warm fall day in September 1998. Nick takes photos from the cab of a worn GP38-2 as they head south from Lethbridge onto the 85-pound territory of the Stirling subdivision, passing vintage wooden grain elevators, several of which fall from memory within years of his trip.

Background

A little bit of the history of the railway line. The Stirling subdivision originally ran between Lethbridge, Alberta and Manyberries, Alberta. The subdivision was named after the junction point “Stirling”, where the west running Cardston subdivision and south running Coutts subdivision met. Stirling is named after J. A. Stirling, an executive in a company in England that helped finance the Alberta Railway & Coal Company in their expansion southward from Lethbridge toward Great Falls, Montana, in the 1890s. Years later the Stirling subdivision was reorganized to start at Stirling and head east, and the Coutts (now Montana) subdivision was extended to start at Lethbridge and head south towards the US border.

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Editor’s Notebook

A Summer Miscellany

Earlier this week, I received a brief note from our traveling correspondent, Andrew Morang. He is in Austria, and sent a couple of pictures of a local commuter train.

He writes: ” This is the regional train between Kufstein, Austria, and Munich, Germany. The train is operated by Meridian, but I do not know if that is an independent company or part of the Deutsche Bahn system. The rail cars are immaculately clean, quiet, and electrically operated. “

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