Sunday, October 4, 1992 - North Shore News - 87

Excursions across Canada show rail travel history

ABOUT 100 years ago Crow In-
‘dian Chief Piapot tried to stop
Canada’s railway from moving
west by holding a sit-in in the
path of construction. He was not
successful.

By Jonathon Massey-Smith
Contributing Writer

Perhaps more humiliating to
Piapot’s memory than the recent
resurgence in rail travel is the
sweeping tide of fascination for
Canada’s historic rolling stock.
From Grand Trunk’s turn-of-
the-century railway station near
Upper Canada Village to the im-
~ pressive collection of Oztawa’s
“Museum of Science and Techno-

logy, there are hundreds of pieces

of historic railway equipment on
display or in operation throughout

Canada.

Historians agree the railway
deserves some credit for its role in
‘shaping Canada, but for Ken
Heard, resident train expert in the
policy, planning and evaluation
group of National Museums of
Canada, “noise, sense of power
and strength’’ are prominent

“ among reasons for growing inter-
est in yesterday’s trains.

For ,the steam engine, yesterday
was “April 24, 1960, when
Canada’s last great iron horse,
locomotive number 6043, chugged
and puffed to a hult in downtown
Winnipeg. Though an era has

_.. come and gone, rail travel is still

‘alive and well in Canada.

On a warm August day in 1896,
.. George Carmack stood near the
edge of Bonanza Creek near what
now is Dawson, Yukon, and yell-
ed, **Gold!” They sav the echo
was heard some 6,706 km (4.200
miles) away in San Francisco.
|. . Two years later, at the height of

.the Klondike gold rush, thousands

of ‘people. poured into west coast

ports thinking only of the gold

, they would glean from Klondike
creexs.

. ‘Seeking the shortest route from
the Yukon’s rugged interior to the
sea, the White Pass and Yukon
Railway Co. blasted through solid
granite, bridged the rivers, climb-
ed the mountains, and in less than
two years had laid cold steel 175

~km-. (110 miles) to connect

‘Skagway, Alaska, and

Whitehorse, Yukon.

:*  . Thousands of passengers today
* still **follow the trail of '98” in

the original White Pass view

coaches, searching for gold on

Bonanza Creek, where the Klon-

dike Visitors’ Association owns a

. claim that’s: free to all. Others
. guarantee gold for a fee.

To the south in British Colum-
‘bia, ‘the Forest Museum at Dun-
can, an hour's drive north of Vic-
toria, operates historic logging
engines and equipment once used
_ to transport the giant Douglas Fir.

In 1939, the royal tour train,
with -Canadian Pacific’s number
2850 at its head, carried King

. George VI and Queen Elizabeth
from Quebec City to Vancouver, a

.5,200-km_ (3,200-mile) trip across
Canada. -

For its stalwart performance,
number 2850 earned for itself and
all other Hudson locomotives the
right to be called Royal Hudson.

Today, one of its sisters,
number 2860, hauls passenger cars
64 km (40 miles) up the coast in a
round trip from Vancouver to
Squamish.

Number 2850 now sits thou-
sands of kilometres to the east in
the Canadian Railway Muscum,
the world’s largest collection of
historic railway equipment, in St.

dwellers soak up the rugged ter-
rain,

Ontario’s oldest settlement, and
site of the second Hudson’s Bay
Co. trading post built in 1673, is
Moose Factory, on James Bay. A
shoit canoe ride from Moosonec,
where the Polar Bear Express
takes passengers more than 160
kin (100 miles) beyond highway’s
end, Moose Factory has a
museum telling the story of the
fur trade.

The excursion train rides down

Photo submitted

OLDER LOCOMOTIVES are still used on trips like the North Van-

couver to Squamish run where tourists and other travellers are

pulled by the Royal! Hudson.

Constant, Quebec, near Montreal.

The museum has more than 100
locomotives on display, including
one of Canada’s oldest, number
144, built in CPR’s De Lorimier
shops, Montreal, in 1886.

As an added attraction on holi-
day weekends and special occa-
sions, the museum operates a rep-
lica of the John Molson, the first
steam locomotive to run on the
island of Montreal, which’ carried
passengers and mail from St.
Lambert, Que., to Rouses Point,
New York.

North of Sault St. Marie, On-
tario, stretches a vast expanse of
forest and mountains interlaced
with countless lakes and brawling
rivers. Through this immense
land, around lakes and moun-
tains, over gorges and into river
valieys, the Algoma Central
Railway winds its way.

One-day wilderness tours from
Sault St. Marie take passengers
184 km (i!4 miles) north to
Agawa Canyon, where
photographers shoot the scenery,
fishermen try for trout and city

the Arctic watershed on a one-day
Treturn_ trip (longer packages are
available) from Cochrane, On-
tario, 740 km (460 miles) north of
Toronto.

While in Moosonee, passengers
can also visit nearby Fossil! Island,
in the Moose River, which yields
fossils of the Devonian period,
more than 350 million years ago.

The Cape Breton Steam
Railway in Nova Scotia operates
one of the oldest. standard-gauge
coaches in the world.

Built in 1881 for the Midland
Railway Co. of Ontario, the
“Miners Museum’’ coach was
purchased by CNR for rules in-
struction, and is complete with a
coal-burning range and brass bed
originally used by the travelling
instructor.

Qne-day excursions take pas-
sengers from Glace Bay to the
small fishing village of Port
Morien, site of North America’s
first coal mine excavated by the
French in the 1720s to supply fuel
to the fortress of Louisbourg.

On the way to Cape Breton

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from Halifax are Canada‘« oldest
steam relics, the Sampsoi. (1839)
and Albion (1850s), once used to
pull coal for the General Mining
Association. Today, the Sampson
sits on display in New Glasgow
and the Albion is in Steliarton’s
Mining Museum.

Fifty km (30 miles) east of
Halifax, the history of rail travel
is told through numercus maps,
models, photographs, coach cars
and other equipment in the Mus-
quodoboit Railway Museum.

Two short blasts of the whistle
signal the departure of Oitawa’s
Wakefield Express.

One of the last steam engines
built in Canada, the 38-year-old
locomotive takes a six-hour ex-

cursicz through the nation's capi-
tal into western Quebec, following
the historic Gatineau River, nam-
ed after Nicholas Gatineau, an
early fur trader.

The river, used mainly for log-
ging, has also claimed many lives,
inclvding Samuel Bingham’s.
Known as ‘'King of the Cascades”’
for his ability to free tangled logs,
Bingham headed home one even-
ing in 1905, exhausted and sieep-
ing at the reins. His horse got
thirsty, lost its footing at the edge
of the river, and Samuel Bingham
drowned.

In Wakefield, there’s a water-
powered grist mill, Duilt in 1835,
which has been restored and is
open to visitors.

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