Art Imitates Life

As summer turned into fall, and fall into winter I wondered how I was going to keep myself busy and entertained.  I've never been without a job for more than a couple of weeks since I was a teen and I find that the "new" economy is making it difficult to find an activity that allows me to use my time and my skills. 

My first real job was with the Canadian National Railroad ... like my father and his father before him.

 Above, is the long service pass issued by Canadian National Railways to my paternal grandfather and his wife Melinda in 1940.  Below this, is a photo of my father, Bert at the throttle of FP9A 6531 on the Ruel Sub, west of Capreol, Ontario.

Next, is a photo of my  maternal grandfather, Giacomo Dasti, at home in his garden near the railway track he maintained at Foleyet, Ontario...again, on the Ruel Subdivision.

 Above...well, it's in the blood.


I knew long before I got my first railroad job at 16 years of age that railroading was what I wanted to do.  I was willing to put up with the terms and conditions of the job, and there are many as so many railroaders and their families will attest.  At first, it was laying track, changing cross ties and rails, working for twelve hours every day, six days each week.

The wages were less than 90 cents per hour and showers and clean bedding came every second Sunday.  But the food was good and there was lots of it.  Before the summer had gone, I was promoted from my laborers job to that of third cookee, a sort of bottom of the ladder cook.  Sticking close to my mother and my grandmother while they prepared meals had given me an advantage over many of the other men working on the track gang.  There were probably 50 or 60 men working on that gang and I had the responsibility of serving half of them in my dining car ... a boxcar which had probably been built for the Grand Trunk Railroad in about 1900 and converted to dining service sometime in the early '40's, give or take.

My home for the summer was an upper berth in a converted Colonist car...one that had been used to transport European Immigrants from their ports of entry into Canada to various locations across Canada.  These were the people, the ancestors of many Canadians,  who settled the seemingly impossible parts of this huge country.

This is the recruitment poster that inspired me to leave my comfortable cot in the little log cabin at West Bay on Wanapitei Lake...

After two summers of this kind of work, I finally reached 18 years of age, qualifying me to apply for a job as a brakeman or trainman with Canadian National Railways.  I was so excited as I filled out my application. I was following in the footsteps of my father, my grandfathers and many of my uncles and aunts, cousins and friends.

On June 28, 1964 I left Rule Instructor Joe Madigan's Rule Car with a small card in my hand which stated, over his signature that I had successfully completed the course and passed the examinations qualifying me to work as a trainman.  What a day!!!  I was so proud to step down from the Rule Car, which had been parked near the railway station at Capreol, Ontario and walk down the platform to the yardmaster's office.  I stepped into the office and showed the yardmaster my rule card and said, "Book me on, please".  Within a couple of hours, I was back at the railroad station, ready to climb aboard a passenger train to Ottawa and claim my place on the Trainman's seniority list.  I would never look back.

That's not to say there wouldn't be bumps and turns along the way.  I was laid off many times, each time immediately searching out alternate employment. During those periods when I was waiting for the railroad to call me back to work, I prepared food in an Italian restaurant, delivered pizza to giggling teenaged girls on weekends, worked for International Nickel in a nickel mine in Sudbury, and drove a truck for a man who was building roads in cabin country.

During a period of railroad inactivity, and feeling like I had worn out my welcome at school, I moved to Alberta to work the winter grain rush in my role as a brakeman.  It was supposed to have been a temporary situation and I was to go home when things got busy again back east.  Life had other plans for me and I never went back for more than a short stay.  Three years later...my parents followed me to Western Canada and the lines of familiarity with my childhood were broken for me...forever.

My railroad career continued to follow its course, taking me from Jasper, to Vancouver, then Kamloops, back to Jasper, back to Vancouver then to Vernon, where I retired at age 54.

Even though I had worked at other jobs and in several locations in my working life...I had never been far from the  railroad.  I knew it well, had studied every job that I could learn anything about, and now I was retired...out...out of the loop.  There were a few skirmishes with other railroads, but nothing serious.  Then I fell into a second career.  I entered the world of sales, selling new construction and renovation products.  I worked hard, put in way too many hours and took home far too little money.  But I stuck it out and learned a lot about building, contracting and business in general.  But particularly, I learned about Marketing and Advertising.  It was very exciting and I quickly moved through the ranks in a handful of small companies, finally ending up as General Manager of a window and door manufacturer on Vancouver Island.

Then I was offered the brass ring, and when I reached for it....I fell short, landing in the safety net of Employment Insurance benefits.  For the first time in about 45 years of employment, I was now on EI!  But it's not as easy to find a job in this economy as it has been in the past.  Sure, the economy is slow and nearly everybody has felt the sting, but I'm now a member of a group, a special group that finds it even more difficult to find work than so many others.

I began to look at my lifestyle...I live on more than two acres of land in a house that's over thirty years old.  Both are in need of upgrading.  Well, so am I and there is a price to pay for living life hard, and advancing age brings that price home.  The bill must be paid.  But I want to continue to be active.  I haven't stopped looking for work, traveling, interviewing and waiting for the call that will bring in a pay check.  So far...no positive results, but I"m still optimistic.

In the meantime, I've kept busy with my oldest hobby.  You might have guessed it....model railroading.

While living in the Okanagan Valley of BC, I met some non-railroad men who have a life-long interest in railroads and who had built model railroad layouts in their homes.  I was asked to come by for an operating session and soon I was hooked.  It seems that there are many fellows who have layouts and an abiding interest, but have no real idea how to run their layouts in a prototypical manner, and my years of experience is now a valuable commodity.

   When asked to give my considered opinion on operation of the model railroad, I made a few suggestions that I thought would vastly enhance the operations and greatly increase their interest in running trains just like the real railroads do.  The largest and most complex change I suggested involved a real leap of faith for the group.  There is a stretch of track that is completely finished with some of the most spectacular scenery I've  seen on a model layout.  I suggested that the movement of trains would be greatly enhanced if they would tear up some of that lovely scenery and lay in a new track parallel to the existing one in order to create a passing siding.  This would allow them to run several trains simultaneously, and in opposite directions.

When I had completed my dissertation, I turned to see the reaction of the layout owner and the members of the group.  You could have heard a mouse fart.  The looks on their faces suggested that the plan I had laid out for their railroad was beyond their comprehension.  I smiled, put on my hat and left quietly.

Two weeks later, I received a call asking me to come by and explain my idea with a bit more detail.  A week later, I began to remove track and scenery so that we...yes, WE could lay track and create the new siding.  I found my niche as a valued member of a small group that has built an impressive model railroad in a home near my own.

There was a bit of a rush on this project because of an upcoming meeting of the Canadian Association of Railway Modelers.  Their annual general meeting was being held in our area on February 5th, and we wanted to have the track installed, wired and scenicked in time for the event.  The layout had been added to the "layout tour" and would be viewed and critiqued by many members and visitors.

The following photos will show you what the layout looked like when I first viewed it, then the dismantling of the scenery in preparation for the laying of new track and lastly, the new track is down with only some ballasting of the roadbed and slight filling and painting of the mountain scenes that we had cut away to accommodate the second track.

An aerial view of  "Dixon", a spur at the south end of Summit Lake, the highest point on the Durham Sub, a fictional CPR line that connects major traffic corridors in central British Columbia, Canada.  More on that later.

A close-up of the detailed models at the end of track at Dixon.

The work begins...the original #4 turnout, or switch is removed in preparation for the installation of a #6 turnout.  This will allow the longer cars, ie, passenger cars to use the siding.  Longer cars require a longer turnout angle so that they don't bind in the curve, causing a derailment.

Next, some of the original plaster scenery had to be removed to make way for the second track that would become the new siding.  As you can see, there is an engineering challenge approaching with the requirement for a second bridge across the Dixon River.  A new bridge has been ordered from Dominion Bridge in Vancouver and should be delivered in time for installation on the new abutments that will be poured as soon as the Federal Fisheries inspectors have issued the proper permits for the work, as this is a Salmon bearing waterway.

Highly trained specialists in their field are working to expedite the project, keeping it on time and on budget.
Here, Father James Brown, of Canadian Forces Base, Esquimalt, BC checks clearances for the new bridge.

Bev Kraushar, of The Electric Outlet, Duncan, BC is the railway's signals specialist and is preparing the wiring for the new switch and siding.

In order to comply with Fisheries' requirements regarding the disturbing of salmon spawning channels, the railroad has had to remove the existing bridge, build new abutments and new approaches to the river crossing.  This has meant the removal and realignment of the existing main line for most of the full length of the new siding, which is to be the longest siding on the subdivision (layout).  The railroad is shut down for the duration of construction and all essential traffic has had to be re-routed over foreign lines.  This has resulted in the negotiation of joint running rights with at least one other large railroad.  We will expect to see trains bearing CN, BC Rail and Union Pacific insignia once the CPR line is fully functional again.  But for now....CP's rail traffic is being handled by the rail barge and tugs, as seen below.

With new cork sub-road bed in place, both bridges are placed and secured.  New ties and rails are laid in and spiked down and alignment is checked.

Now that the new high-speed turnouts are in place, the tracks are connected to the main DCC control system.  It won't be long before the inaugural run will be made over the new track sections.

The Division Superintendent, Mr. Peter Gilbertson (layout owner) has arranged  to have CP's corporate flag bearer, the fully restored Hudson class 2816 readied for the inaugural excursion run.  The media event will be covered by regional news carriers and will be featured in the Company's corporate newsletter.  As you can see, it didn't take long before CN sent a train onto the Durham sub with one of their new steel cabooses in tow.


The track work is completed and the CPR Special passenger train is stopped on the new bridge over the Dixon River.  The new siding/station has been named Notch Hill to reflect the great notch in the mountain range that the Dixon river pours through on its way to Summit Lake.

Back to the current day.....

With one week to go, there is but a little bit of work left to do, but the layout looks pretty good and will operate quite nicely.With a couple of small details left to take care of, we finished the project and ran a few trains to make sure that the track was well laid, and the electrical circuitry was all connected.  The rails were all cleaned so that there would be no 'dead spots' that would cause the locomotives to falter on.  The wheels of the locomotives pick up electrical current from the rails and this drives the motors, lights and sound decoders, and if there's a disruption in the current, the trains will stop abruptly and unrealistically.

Let's leap ahead a few days.  The railroad modelers had their general meeting and some lunch, and then started out on their layout tour.  

Included on the tour were layouts owned by Andy Barber of Cobble Hill,

 
Dave Ames of Duncan

and Peter Gilbertson of Shawnigan Lake.

So.....all those years of real-time railroading have come full circle.  Now I'm putting my skills and knowledge to work in 1:87 scale and having a great time with it.