Heave A Soft Sigh For Old Locomotives, Published 29 October 1954 Soft
sighs for those old dead locomotives on the Canadian National tracks
alongside Canadair at Cartierville, Quebec. I let my eye stray from
jets as I visited the plane plant the other day with Ottawa's Board of
Trade on a fact-finding Odyssey. I do not mind admitting I played
hookey from the super glamor Sabre jobs and went over to the Canadian
National track.If you are not interested in engines I warn you, and people like Jean Adamson, to read no further. Breath-Taking . There was old 2407, newest of the heavy freight consolidation engines on the Canadian Northern, breathtaking as I first saw its type in Fort Rouge roundhouse at Winnipeg back in 1916. Then came 4002 a big Sante Fe type with wheel arrangement thus; o-00000-o. What a fuss was made in 1918 when the old Canadian government railways bought these giants from the Sante Fe for heavy duty on the Intercolonial. Then there was 8225, considered a high class yard engine a scant decade ago. (In gasoline, a truck is worn out. in ten years but in steam a ten-year-old is considered a new engine). The diesels are driving the 8200s to the bone yard. Sigh again for 2389, an earlier compound, but save your real nostalgia for 2195. This ancient compound was seen pounding up too long slopes with too long trains here in the east,and in the earlier days of Mackenzie and Mann, you could scarcely see the caboose over toward infinity as the then new 2100's hauled the pay loads across the prairie. Maid-Of-All-Work As for 1403, this was arch typical of the 1200-1300-1400 maid-of-all-work class which the Canadian Northern used around here for high class passenger service and way freight alike. They also hauled the fancy varnish of the crack No. 1 and 2 from Hornepayne to Jellicoe on the old, old main line. Scarcely recognizable was the "new" northern, 6169, so disguised by a recent "cornfield meet" that they had to put her number on with chalk. And so on to 8214, and ancient 1386, to the Santa Fe's 4021 and 4208 to the end of this sad string, the 40-year-old yard goat 7359. Going, going, gone, and for what. A machine with a cry like a love sick moose. |