It sounded Just Like a Train Coming In the Front Door

This is just a short post to fulfill a promise that I made to a lady I've never met.

Elphie works at the Edson Museum and has offered to help me answer a question I have regarding a (you guessed it...) railroad trestle.

The story, as told to me by more than one old time railroader in Jasper is this:

Once upon a time, a short train, called a mixed train because it sometimes carried passengers and local freight in a combination coach/baggage car, had a large block of ice sitting on the floor of the baggage car and was to be delivered to a track worker's family at Hargwen, a small station just west of Edson, Alberta.  As the train was less than a mile from Hargwen the brakeman pushed the big block of ice over to the doorway opened the sliding door.  He quickly realized that the train wasn't slowing down so he pulled on the emergency brake valve to stop the train.  It was too late to stop in front of the station and the combination car was still going nearly thirty miles an hour as it approached the station.  The train was surging a little and this caused the block of ice to begin sliding, slowly at first, but surely toward the open door.  Just as the open door was passing the station, the block of ice slid out the door and hit the platform, breaking into several large, but heavy pieces.  The sound must have been frightful, for when the section man got home from work that day, his wife told him that she and the children would not live next to the tracks any longer. 

And that's why the station wasn't inhabited...at least that's what I was told...and it sounded reasonable to me.

Well, as luck would have it, a few months later...an eastbound train pulling about a hundred empty boxcars derailed right about where the block of ice had landed on the platform. 

Here are the photos Elphie.

And this is why, gentlemen, you must listen to your wife when she tells you that she's had just about enough of whatever it was that you were doing just before she put her foot down.  Capish?