From This to a Parking Lot

The Grand Trunk station was a historic railroad station in Hamilton, Ontario, which was located on Stuart Street, at the beginning of Caroline Street North. In 1885, an effort was made to beautify the area to the east of the station itself with ornamental gardens.

You can see the results of that effort in the picture on the front of the post card. The embankment along Stuart Street provided an opportunity to let passengers passing by to know exactly what city they were in, with the word "Hamilton" written with white stones. If you would like to see what it looks like today (see title of this post,)the GPS coordinates of where the station was located are: 43°16′05″N 79°52′20″W Michael Willson Browne, one of the pioneers of the shipping industry in Hamilton, moved to Hamilton in 1836, and entered into a partnership with Daniel Charles Gunn, who retired in 1847. Mr. Browne became manager of the Grand Trunk Railway's office in Hamilton in 1864. The company was incorporated on November 10, 1852, as the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada to build a railway line between Montreal and Toronto. The charter was soon extended east to Portland, Maine and west to Sarnia, Canada West. In 1853 the GTR purchased the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railway from Montreal to the Canada East – Vermont border, and the parent company Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad through to the harbour facilities at Portland. A line was also built to Lévis, via Richmond from Montreal in 1855, part of the much-talked about "Maritime connection" in British North America. In the same year it purchased the Toronto and Guelph Railroad, whose railway was already under construction. But the Grand Trunk Railway Company changed the original route of the T&G and extended the line to Sarnia, a hub for Chicago-bound traffic. By July, 1856, the section from Sarnia to Toronto opened, and the section from Montreal to Toronto opened in October of that year. By 1859 a ferry service was established across the St. Clair River to Fort Gratiot (now Port Huron, Michigan). GTR underwent serious financial difficulties as a result of the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, and its shareholders, primarily in the United Kingdom, were determined to prevent the company from being nationalized as well. Eventually on July 12, 1920, GTR was placed under control of another federal government Board of Management while legal battles continued for several more years. Finally, on January 20, 1923, GTR was fully absorbed into the CNR on a date when all constituent companies were merged into the Crown Corporation. At the time that the GTR was fully merged into CNR, approximately 125 smaller railway companies comprised the Grand Trunk system, totalling 12,800 kilometres (8,000 mi) in Canada and 1,873 kilometres (1,164 mi) in the United States. I googled the location of this train station to see what it looks like today - IT IS NOW A PARKING LOT!! The back of this post card tells me that Canadians have been polite for a very long time. I have three post cards with this picture on the front.

The back of one of them tells me that it was mailed on December 8th of 1906. That is 114 years ago.

If you look in the upper right hand corner of another one of the post cards, where the postage stamp is to be placed, you will see the traditional rectangle to visually show you where the stamp goes. The words in the rectangle say, "Postage stamp should be affixed here." How polite is that?!!! .....on the other hand, if you look at the rectangle on a post card from the United States that is contemporary to our Hamilton Station (both approximately 1908) you will see that the message is much more directive, "Place Stamp Here".

I love being Canadian!

Not Prince Albert in a Can...

Albert Canyon is a railway point at Mile 105.8, Mountain Subdivision of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). Adjacent to the west is Lauretta (Mile 109.5), and east is Downie (Mile 101.6). A hot box detector operates at Mile 105.0. Albert Canyon, one of the original CPR stations opened in 1886, was the Rogers Pass, then Connaught Tunnel, western slope base for pusher locomotives, which predominantly assisted eastbound freight trains up the steep 2.5% grade. The station name derives from the gorge, where the track crosses the south wall of the short box canyon on a narrow ledge. All passenger trains from the late 1880s until at least 1910 made a five-minute stop for passengers to alight and view the Illecillewaet River rushing through the 6-metre (20 ft.) wide gorge 91 metres (300 ft.) below. A stone parapet later replaced the wooden lookout - as seen on the front of this post card

on a rock outcrop. The final train to stop was in 1939. A dispatcher staffed the station telegraph office. A wye and water tank existed. To satisfy the anticipated mining boom, CPR added a long siding westward in 1898, and lengthened the wye southward. In 1910, a spark from a locomotive ignited leaves and timber near the tunnel 2 kilometres (1.25 mi.) west. The fire was initially controlled, but it later spread, almost reaching the section house. A 1916 CPR building program included a rooming and boarding house, cottages, and a five-stall engine house that replaced an earlier building. CPR erected a 91,000-litre; (24,000-US-gallon) oil fuelling tank in 1917, for oil-fired locomotives, and a mechanical coaling plant in 1921, for coal-fired locomotives. The engine house closed in 1940 when the pusher fleet relocated to Revelstoke. Prior to double tracking, a siding existed, which measured 73 cars long west and 77 east in the late 1890s, and 97 cars long in 1935. Still operational in 1948, it is unclear when the telegraph office closed. The final year passenger trains used the station was likely 1967. The section crew probably relocated about this time. In 1984, CPR constructed a 280-metre (930 ft.) test section of PaCT track (a reinforced, cast-in-place concrete foundation 23 cm thick with special clips, instead of spikes, holding the rails in place) at Albert Canyon to determine its suitability for laying in the Mount Macdonald Tunnel. The post card is the product of Byron Harmon's hard efforts.

Looks Like Disneyland but It's Not

At first glance, the locomotive pictured on the front of this post card looks like it is pulling into Main Street at Disneyland.

But, when I turn the post card over to read the description, I see that it is actually based closer to my home than I thought. It operates at the Silverwood Theme Park just north of Coeur d'Alene in Idaho. My research turned up a quaint bit of information: this theme park outbid Disneyland to purchase this particular steam locomotive. Unfortunately, the post card's description of the locomotive is that is it a "steam-chugging train" - period.

I had to go on line to see when it was built and by whom. Here is what I found:
The locomotive #7 is a 3-foot, narrow gauge built in 1915 by H. K Porter & Company. Henry Kirke Porter, along with this first partner, released the first steam locomotive on March 4, 1867. Their shop was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and they only concentrated on building narrow gauge locomotives. Eventually, the company built almost 8,000 of them by the time the last one rolled off the line in 1950. Mr. Porter went through two partnerships until in 1878 he started H. K. Porter & Company. He was very successful because he used interchangeable parts to build his locomotives. A customer just had to come in and pick out the various sizes and shapes, etc., then wait while the company assembled the custom order. Mr. Porter died on April 10, 1921 while he was the 81 year old president of the company.

The post card was published by Quicksilver Photography. They are still in business in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

It Took a While, but We Got There!

The company that owned the locomotives pictured on the front of this post card was chartered as a private company in 1912. It was known as the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE); it was acquired by the provincial government of British Columbia in 1918. The Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE) was incorporated on February 27, 1912, to build a line from Vancouver north to a connection with the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTP) at Prince George. Although independent from the GTP, the PGE had agreed that the GTP, whose western terminus was at the remote northern port of Prince Rupert, could use their line to gain access to Vancouver. Upon incorporation, the PGE took over the Howe Sound and Northern Railway, which at that point had built 14 kilometers of track north of Squamish.

By 1915, the line was opened from Squamish 283 km north to Chasm. The railway was starting to run out of money, however. In 1915 it failed to make an interest payment on its bonds, obliging the provincial government to make good on its bond guarantee. In the 1916 provincial election campaign, the Liberal Party alleged that some of the money advanced to the railway for bond guarantee payments had instead gone into Conservative Party campaign funds. In the election, the Conservatives, who had won every seat in the legislature in 1912 election, lost to the Liberals. The Liberals then took the railway to court to recover $5 million of allegedly unaccounted funds. In early 1918, the railway's backers agreed to pay the government $1.1 million and turn the railway over to the government. When the government took over the railway, two separate sections of trackage had been completed: A small 32 kilometer section between North Vancouver and Horseshoe Bay, and one between Squamish and Clinton. By 1921, the provincial government had extended the railway to a point 130 km south of a connection to Prince George, but it was not extended further. Construction of the line between Horseshoe Bay and Squamish was given a low priority; however, the railway had an agreement with the municipality of West Vancouver to provide passenger service. In 1928 they paid the city $140,000 in support of its road-building programme and the last trains on the line ran on November 29, 1928. The line fell into disuse, but was never formally abandoned. For the next 20 years the railway would run from "nowhere to nowhere". It did not connect with any other railway, and there were no large urban centres on its route. It existed mainly to connect logging and mining operations in the British Columbia Interior with the coastal town of Squamish, where resources could then be transported by sea. The government still intended for the railway to reach Prince George, but the resources to do so were not available, especially during the Great Depression and World War II. The unfortunate state of the railway caused it to be given nicknames such as "Province's Great Expense", "Prince George Eventually", "Past God's Endurance", "Please Go Easy", and "Puff, Grunt and Expire". Starting in 1949, the Pacific Great Eastern began to expand. Track was laid north of Quesnel to a junction with the Canadian National Railways at Prince George. That line opened on November 1, 1952. Between 1953 and 1956 the PGE constructed a line between Squamish and North Vancouver. The PGE used their former right-of-way between North Vancouver and Horseshoe Bay. This was to the dismay of some residents of West Vancouver who, mistakenly believing the line was abandoned, had encroached on it. This part of the line opened on August 27, 1956. By 1958 the PGE had reached north from Prince George to Fort St. John and to Dawson Creek where it met the Northern Alberta Railways. And this is the event that is being commemorated on the front of the post card. The post card was printed by Smith Lithograph Company out of Vancouver, British Columbia. I found this in my search on the internet: Companies that provide flyer printing services in Vancouver may want to keep the memory of one of their own alive. A longtime member of Vancouver’s printing industry, Dell Fraser recently passed away at the age of 82.

Fraser began his long career in Vancouver’s printing industry back when he started working for Hazeldine Press; subsequently, he then began working for a company by the name of Smith Lithograph. Smith Lithograph eventually changed its name to Smith Grant Mann, which is today located in the nearby city of Richmond.

The Rockies by Daylight

I was combing through my oversized post card album today and was inspired to post these cards into my blog; along with some

information:
Visiting the Canadian Rockies by train has been popular almost since the Canadian Transcontinental Road was completed. Sir William Van Horne, the first president of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) said,"If we can't bring the mountains to the tourists, we will bring the tourists to the mountains". The tourists traveled by train from across Canada and the United States to see the beauty of the Canadian Rockies.

However, with the price of air flight becoming less expensive, many chose to fly to Canada and take the scenic part of the train route to and from Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. This caused the CPR "Canadian" and the Canadian National Railway's "Super Continental" to sell out west of Calgary and Edmonton in the summer months. Travel agencies and tour operators started to book

blocks of sleeping car accommodation a year in advance. Even so, much potential business was turned away due to sold out long distance trains. Via Rail - the new Canadian passenger service was receiving complaints both from its regular customers who couldn't get on the trains in the summer months due to tourist travel, and from the tour operators who couldn't get space

for their organized tours. Another complaint about the long distance trains was that on either the CPR or CNR route, much spectacular scenery went by during the night. For the railways, this was a dilemma because in order to serve the prairie cities and the end points in eastern Canada during daylight hours, trains had

to cross British Columbia and Alberta in the evening. In 1988, Via decided to experiment with a seasonal daylight train from Vancouver to Calgary and from Vancouver to Jasper. This train was marketed through the travel industry, who also arranged overnight accommodations in Kamloops. Cars from the former "Blue Fleet" of ex-CNR coaches and "day-niter" coaches were used, with galleys to serve chilled breakfasts and lunches airline style.

For four summers in a row I attended the University of Notre Dame in Indiana from my home in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. In 1988 and 1989 I flew from Chicago to Vancouver instead of to Edmonton. In 1988 I caught a train from Vancouver to Calgary and in '89 from Vancouver to Jasper, Alberta. Each train was part of a tourist train called "The Rockies by Daylight". I was under the impression that the trains were operated by VIA Rail Canada. My post cards are telling me that they were actually operated by a private company.

The Via train 101/102 Vancouver/Banff/Calgary and 103/104 Vancouver/Jasper were a success in the 1988 season, and the operation was extended into the 1989 season with more cars available and with a new name "Rocky Mountaineer". In the summer of 1989, the Canadian Government announced massive cuts to the Via Rail passenger train network. The "Rocky Mountaineer" was one of the services slated for discontinuance. Peter Armstrong, a travel agent and tour operator offered to operate the "Rocky Mountaineer" as a private enterprise and was granted the opportunity to do so. He set up a private corporation to operate the "Rocky Mountaineer" and persuaded several friends to invest their life savings. They very nearly lost everything, as the train did not turn a profit for three years. Then this happened:

The following is taken from their official website: https://www.rockymountaineer.com/about-us/history
Since its inception in 1990, Rocky Mountaineer, the British Columbia based, family owned business, has grown to become the largest privately owned luxury tourist train company in the world and has welcomed nearly 2 million guests onboard. While Armstrong Group, owners and operators of the award-winning Rocky Mountaineer, has a rich history rooted in success, the goal from day one remains the same: provide the most spectacular and unforgettable travel experiences in the world.

1990 All aboooard! The Rocky Mountaineer departs on the inaugural trip.
1991 Named one of the “World’s 20 Best Rail Experiences” by The International Railway Traveler magazine (same honour in 1998).
1995 Rocky Mountaineer GoldLeaf Service is launched.
1996 Sets the record for longest passenger train in Canadian history (37 cars).
1999 Sets new record for longest passenger train in Canadian history (41 cars).
2002 Welcomes our 500,000th guest and is recognized again by The International Railway Traveler magazine’s “10 Best Rail Experiences in the World”.
2003 Featured on BBC Television, “50 Things To Do Before You Die”.
2005 Wins the prestigious “World’s Leading Travel Experience by Train” at 2005 World Travel Awards (earns the same honour in 2006 and 2007).
Named as “One of the Great Train Rides in the World”, by Outside magazine.
Named one of “The World’s Top 25 Trains” by The Society of International Railway Traveler (earns the same honour in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009).
2006 Launches two new routes: Whistler Sea to Sky Climb (Vancouver to Whistler) and Rainforest to Gold Rush (Whistler to Jasper).
2007 Wins Tourism British Columbia’s “Foresight Sustainability Award” for leadership and advocacy of sustainable tourism.
Named one of the “World’s Greatest Trips” by National Geographic.
2008 Welcomes aboard our one millionth guest!
2009 ABC’s hit reality TV series, The Bachelorette, showcased the Rocky Mountaineer on a four-day journey.
Voted #1 on the Society of American Travel Writers Top Ten List of the most scenic and exciting train experiences in the world.
Rocky Mountaineer has been honoured with a World Travel Award in the category of “World’s Leading Travel Experience by Train” for the fourth year.
2010 Launches its iconic brand with a completely new look. From the logo, website and route names to a sleek new paint job for the rail cars, this fresh new look continues across the entire company.
Proudly accepts the World Travel Award’s “World’s Leading Travel Experience by Train” for the fifth time ,and new honour, “World’s Leading Luxury Travel Product of the Year.”
Receives two prestigious marketing awards: Marketer of the Year Award from the BC Chapter of the American Marketing Association and British Columbia’s Tourism Award for Best Tourism Marketing Campaign.
Ranks #5 on Reader’s Digest’s list of “World’s 10 Best Train Journeys.”
Listed as one of the “Top 10 North American Train Trips” by National Geographic.
2011 Rocky Mountaineer proudly accepts its sixth World Travel Award as "World's Leading Travel Experience by Train" and is listed as one of the "Top 5 trains in the world," by Conde Nast Traveler and by Travel + Leisure magazine Western Living as one of the "Best Life-Changing Trips" and among the "Top 5 Trains in the World."
Recieves Travel Weekly Readers' Choice Awards for "Best Rail Vacation" and UK Travel Agents Choice Awards for "Long-haul Rail Operator of the Year."
2012 Launches its newest and third level of service, SilverLeaf Service on the First Passage to the West route. Also begins running its bi-level dome cars on the Whistler Sea to Sky Climb for a limited time in the 2012 season.
2013 Launches its new Coastal Passage route, connecting Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, BC to the Canadian Rockies. After successfully launching SilverLeaf Service on the First Passage to the West route in 2012, Rocky Mountaineer adds this new level of service to its Journey through the Clouds route.
New destination, Lake Louise, AB is offered on Rocky Mountaineer's First Passage to the West route.
New annual corporate giving program, Life-Changing Train for Heroes is launched. The program celebrates wounded soldiers/veterans.
2014 Coastal Passage, Rocky Mountaineer's newest route offer 24 departures.
SilverLeaf Service is offerd on three routes, First Passage to the West, Journey through the Clouds and Coastal Passage.
2015 Rocky Mountaineer celebrates its 25th Anniversary. The company has grown to be the largest privately owned luxury tourism train company in the world.
2016 The Rainforest to Gold Rush route becomes a three day journey, with overnight stops in Whistler, Quesnel and Jasper.