5.1    Bytown and Prescott  - New Edinburgh

5.1A    St. Lawrence and Ottawa - Chaudiere

Set out below are some pictures taken at the excavation
   



 

       -- Railway and Shipping World, July 1899, p209

The Canada Atlantic will this fall commence the erection of large car shops at Ottawa in addition to those already put up.  The new shops will be located near the Rideau roundhouse, where the machine shops & repair works are situated.  The buildings put up this spring at the foot of Elgin st. & which are now being used, will be discarded after the proposed structure at Ottawa East is up.  They will then be used by the Co. for storage or may be available for manufacturing purposes.  When the new car shops, which will be erected & equipped at a heavy cost, are completed, all the works of the Co. will be adjacent to each other, instead of being 1/2 mile apart as at present.  They will consist of erecting, woodworking, drying & painting shops, & will run by electricity.  In order to make a foundation a great deal of filling in will have to be done, & work on this will commence in the near future in time for the erection of the shops to start in Nov. & be completed early in the spring.

5.3    Canadian Pacific - Ottawa East or Riverside

This diagram is taken from a Grand Trunk Railway blueprint dated March 1915. It shows the two bridges across the Rideau River, CPR to the north, top, as well as the CPR four track roundhouse.
It appears from this diagram that the roundhouse did not have a turntable .

The Canadian Pacific roundhouse at Ottawa East was constructed in September and October 1899.  The Ottawa Free Press of 26 September 1899 shows:

The Canadian Pacific railway has commenced the erection of a round house at Hurdman's bridge.  It will be located between the C.P.R. and the C.A.R. bridges and will have four tracks leading into it.

The Railway and Shipping World for November 1899, page 324  mentions the Canadian Pacific roundhouse at Hurdman's Bridge, Ottawa.  

Until the opening of this roundhouse CPR locomotives were handled at the Canada Atlantic round house at Ottawa East as explained in the Ottawa Citizen account of the first day of operation 5 September 1898 which was published on 6 September 1898.

By special arrangement with the C.P.R. these engines and all others connected with the manipulating of the traffic will be installed in the roundhouse at Ottawa East.

The Ottawa Journal of 10 September 1906 contains the following:

At the Rideau round house of the Candian Pacific railway at Hurdman's Bridge, this morning an engine broke through the back of her stall and almost into the water.  The round house is slightly elevated to bring it on a level with the main line tracks and the big engine fell a few feet.  She is sitting upright on the rocks and the wrecking crew is jacking her up to put rails under her.  The accident happened about 7 a.m.  The men had lighted her fires and not noticed that the throttle was slightly open and the lever set off the centre.  When steam accumulated it found its way into the cylinders and the engine backed up, plunging through the rear wall.  The steam failed before she reached the water.
On Tuesday September 11 there was a follow up.

There was a gang of men working all day yesterday and all last night at the C.P.R. Rideau Round House, where engine 209, used on the short line, had broken through the back of the round house and almost stood on end on the bank of the river.  The engine was again on the tracks.  Engineer Ingram, who was in charge of the engine, could not stop it on the incline into the round house.

In April 1910 CPR was asked at a hearing of the Board of Railway Commissioners  about locomotives for the M&O service to Montreal.  The reply was "the engine goes into a house near the Ottawa & New York.  We have a small engine house there in which we can get one engine in.  We have three stalls but we can get only one engine in on account of the larger power we are using now."

By 1912 people living in the area were complaining about smoke drifting over their homes.

A Grand Trunk Railway plan dated March 1915, which was produced to show a proposed interchange with the Canadian Northern Ontario, shows a four track roundhouse at this location but, curiously, it shows access via switches and not a turntable.

The 1917 CPR condensed plan and profile shows a small roundhouse situated between the CPR M&O and the GTR Alexandria lines immediately to the west of the Rideau River at Hurdman close to the CNR Riverside location where the single track across the Rideau River became double track into Ottawa Union station.

Signs of the pits etc. can be seen on early air photos although the building had gone by the mid-1920s.  This 1945 air photo was supplied by Malcolm Vant

Image provided by Malcolm Vant from http://history.ottawaeast.ca/railways.htm

5.4    Canadian Northern Ontario - Federal

References:
- Canadian Railway and Marine World in January 1914.
- Peter Lange wrote an article in the August 1980 Branchline which used the above as a basis but included some good diagrams. http://www.bytownrailwaysociety.ca/phocadownload/branchline/1980/1980-07-08.pdf
- Bruce Ballantyne prepared a follow up article in the October 1980 Branchline. http://www.bytownrailwaysociety.ca/phocadownload/branchline/1980/1980-10.pdf

The Canadian Northern had very grandiose plans for this area which included a new town to be built in the neighbourhood.  This facility was opened with the opening of the CNOR line to Smiths Falls in 1913 but was abandoned about 1922 when the CNOR was integrated into CNR with locomotive servicing being done at Mann Avenue and with freight being handled in the Bank Street yards.

The following information was abstracted from a November 1918 Canadian Northern plan filed with the Board of Railway Commissioners as 'Completed Railway Plan 563'.  Dimensional data is generally scaled from the plans, but in a few cases it has been calculated from the plan chainage.

The facilities at this point, named 'Rideau Yard', were situated entirely on land owned by 'CN (Canadian Northern) Town
Properties'.  Rideau Jct., the point of connection between the Toronto-Ottawa Line and the Ottawa-French River Line, was at mileage 244.67 from Toronto.  The Toronto-Ottawa and Ottawa-French River lines were also joined by a 4,100' connecting track that began about 5,300' and about 4,600' west of Rideau Jct. on the Toronto-Ottawa and Ottawa-French River lines, respectively.

Rideau Yard was located entirely within the triangle bounded by these three tracks.  On the Ottawa-Toronto side, there was a four-track, double-ended yard whose extreme headblocks were 4,000' apart, the sidings themselves ranging from about 3,600' down to 3,100'.

On the Ottawa-French River side, there was a single double-ended siding about 3,400' long.  The 2,200' long engine terminal lead ran off the east end of this siding towards the centre of the triangle, ending at the 90' turntable.

The 13-stall enginehouse was located in the northeast quadrant of the turntable.  The second most easterly track was a through track with a double-length stall.  Two outside tracks also radiated from the turntable, opposite the through track and the westernmost stall.

Another 5,000' of sidings ran off the main lead and serviced a stores building and the coal plant.  The water tank, probably 50,000 gallon steel) was completely south of the engine terminal and likely fed strategically placed standpipes.  A bunk house, boarding house and ice house were located about halfway between Rideau Jct. and the roundhouse, adjacent to the Ottawa-French River through siding.

In December 1919 the CNOR was authorized to construct a spur beginning on the Toronto line close to the junction thence in an easterly direction to the west limit of the Ottawa-Prescott Provincial Highway into the premises of the Ontario Good Roads Commission.  This siding didn't last too long as the rails had already been removed by 1931. A spur existed into the Drummond's yard until recently.  It seems tht the bed of the Highways spur was reused, although not all the way to the road.

The topo sheets and air photos in the National Air Photo Library at 615 Booth show the situation in 1931.  Air photo series A4413 frames 16 and 17 clearly show the outline of a roundhouse and pit at that location with a spur from the east bifurcating Federal.  There was also a North/South track to the west which put the roundhouse in the middle of this big wye.  No other structures (coal tower, watertower, sheds) seem to be there.  There is a string of cars on the spur in to the pit...probably dead storage.  There were about 30 boxcars on the spur that day.  There are two other interesting structures.  One is just to the south of the Smiths Falls sub, maybe a hundred feet from the Federal switch.  Maybe a control tower or station. There is a larger building on the south side of the roundhouse spur, perhaps 300 feet from the switch...perhaps offices for the facility. The faint outline of the siding for the Ontario Good Roads Commission can just be made out running south of the main line as far as the highway.

The pictures in 1956 (A15332, frame 142) are quite similar but everything is overgrown.

Amazingly, this survived in the forest until the winter of 2007-08 when the area was cleared for redevelopment.

5.5    Canadian Northern Ontario - Hurdman

 "The temporary roundhouse which is being erected at the foot of Henderson Ave. is expected to be completed early in Feb.  It will accommodate 12 locomotives and will have a repair shop attached."

It is evident that this was not ready for the commencement of the service to Montreal and Quebec.

The 1922 fire insurance plan  (PA NMC 10837 163/263)shows the 2-stall CNoR roundhouse and turntable near the Hurdman terminus. The turntable is about 530 feet measured from the street centre line, directly behind number 25 Robinson which runs off Hurdman.  It is about 900 feet northeast of the Hurdman/Robinson intersection, which is in the same position today as then.  There is no indication of any watering or coaling facility nearby.  The turnout for the turntable faces east about 350 feet from the centre of the turntable.  The south wall of the roundhouse lines up due west from the centre of the turntable.  The turntable is approxmately 120 feet diameter and the shed is about 150 feet deep.

This facility was used for passenger locomotives until the amalgamation into CNR allowed use of the Mann Avenue Roundhouse. A daytime switcher was also allocated here for local switching and interchange work.

This is developed by Paul Delamere and Malcolm Vant from the 1912 Insurance Plans

5.6    Mann Avenue Roundhouse

The OA&PS roundhouse and shops of 1896 could well have been exactly the same buildings that survived there until demolition in 1964. The 10-acre area could have been the entire triangle formed by the roundhouse, the 40 ft by 170 ft shops building south of it, and the coal tower 1100 feet or so to the east.  The old fire insurance map, which had clearly not been revised to the 1950's publication date, showed the roundhouse with a 55-foot turntable, a near full circle of 72-foot stalls, and an extension of three of the stalls on the south side to 95 feet.  (The extension could have had tracks into all three stalls from the southern approach, without needing to use the turntable).  The turntable was enlarged in later years to about 95 feet, and more stalls were extended.  A panoramic photo of about 1915 apears to show the roundhouse as a full circle, with no gap  to the northwest. This gap is evident in a 1933 aerial photo.

Coaling was originally carried out from a 13 chute coaling stage  and the coal tower appears to have been a later addition.  It is a Grand Trunk standard design and appears in the 1925 picture but not the 1902 picture.  There was also a large building on the southwest side of the roundhouse, which was there until 1958 or later, though by then the erecting shops were gone.

The following is from the book "Enginehouses & Turntables on Canadian Railways" by Edward Forbes Bush, Boston Mills Press, Copyright 1990, page 63:

"Its walls were of wood lined with brick. It numbered 22 stalls for the accomodation of locomotives and 6 for use as a tender shop, where repairs were made to cisterns, frames and tender trucks. There were three drop pits , with the machine shop annex opening on two stalls, one of which was used as the blacksmith's shop. The plan drawing, revised in 1933, shows the boiler house and stores building as separate but nearby structures. Heating was by hot air, at least by 1919, according to the GTR report of that year. With its plank flooring the Ottawa GTR roundhouse does not seem to have been the fore of roundhouse design."

The book goes on to show the 1933 revised plan of the CNR roundhouse. The stalls were numbered counter clockwise from the opening to the north-west. Interestingly, stalls 1-8 were extant as 74' stalls, with #8 being lengthened to 100'. Stalls 9-12 were already 88' long at that time, possibly indicating that these stalls were either previously extended, or were new stalls added to the original roundhouse at one time. Stalls 13 thru 19 were lengthened from 74' to 100', and a gap existed between 15 and 16 with two tracks leading to the cinder pits to the southeast. Stalls 20 thru 27 were still 74' at that time. Stalls 1-7 and 20-27 appear to have NOT been lengthened due to the proximity of the main lines of the wye to the rear walls of the house. Also worthy of mention are other stalls (not numbered) which were used for other purposes. Between stall 1 and the gap to the northwest was a storage stall. Between the gap and stall 27 there was a carpenters shop. Between stall 16 and the gap to the southeast there was a stall for the blacksmith. The machine shop extended off stall 16 and the blacksmith's stall.

David Jeanes wrote on 17 March 2016  "Bush shows the roundhouse in its maximum CN configuration in 1933, with the erecting shop gone. The fire insurance plans show earlier configurations, including 1912 where the access to the northwest was covered, making it a full circle."

5.7    Canada Central - Ottawa West

5.8    Canadian Pacific - Ottawa West

"The CPR's Ottawa West roundhouse, 21 stall capacity, was built in 1911 by J.B. Sanderson, an Ottawa Contractor. In 1925 the machine shop was modernized and in the following year a 6-stall extension was added. the walls were of reinforced concrete construction, as were the columns and beams. The joists on the other hand were of white pine and B.C. fir."

From David Jeanes, May 2016:

5.9    New York Central shops.

The Railway and Shipping World, Aug 1901, page 231 reports "Five locomotive stalls will be built at Ottawa this year, to form the first half of a 10 stall round-house."

The Canadian Northern Ontario Railway was considering using this facility when it opened its Hawkesbury to Ottawa line in December 1912.  The NYC was agreeable and prepared to extend its roundhouse to accommodate the Canadian northern Ontario locomotives.  In the end the CNOR could not get permission, at that time, to cross Hurdman's Road with a transfer track to the Ottawa and New York yard and the CNOR was forced to build its own facility at Hurdman.

5.10    Hawkesbury

5.11    Pembroke

5.12    Gatineau Valley (Maniwaki) line

The first train arrived in Kazabazua on 14 February 1893 and a temporary enginehouse and workshop were in place for this.

The line was extended from Wright to Gracefield on 19 October 1895 and a temporary engine house was in place for the opening.  On 25 October that year a turntable was being moved from Wright to Gracefield.  This raises the likelihood that there was a temporary engine house at Wright which would have been used until the line was extended to Gracefield.  The Gracefield engine house was in place until to opening of the line to Maniwaki but it is not known how long it lasted after this.

5.13    Waltham line

The Pontiac Pacific Junction Railway established a workshop at Aylmer which was later used for heavy repairs for locomotives from the Gatineau Valley line. It was located near the corner of Front and Notre Dame streets.  It seems it remained until the take over by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1902.  The above picture, taken in December 1899, appeared in the Shawville Equity, from the collection of Carroll Boucher.  

An engine house was built at Waltham for the opening of the line on 2 February 1888 and this lasted until the end of steam.

The Ottawa Citizen of 16 October 1896 records:

A shunting engine on the P.P.J. Railway fell into the space adjoining the company's round table at Waltham yesterday.  The engine was about to be run on to the table but the tracks, not having been brought even to each other, the engine went down.  The engine was raised again in about five hours.  It was not damaged much and fortunately no one was injured by the accident.

It is also likely that temporary buildings were erected as the line was gradually extended between 1884 and 1888 but all details are not known.

The Ottawa Journal of 4 February 1887 records:

A Coulonge correspondent of the Equity says: The P.P.J. trains make their regular weekly trips, that is, when it is not too stormy, but now that they have a turn table here, it is to be hoped they will be able to do better work.

5.14  Brent

5.15 Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa and Occidental Railway - Hull and Aylmer

A turntable was being installed at Aylmer on 16 August 1879, shortly after the line had been opened from Hull on 6 August 1879 although it is not known if a locomotive shed was installed at that time.

5.16 E.B. Eddy - Hull

The E.B. Eddy company commenced using two narrow gauge locomotives in their mill yard in Hull on 1 May 1888.  The former animal powered rail network had to be rebuilt in order to allow steam locomotives to be used.  On 13 July the Ottawa Journal noted.

The E.B. Eddy lumber company have completed the new round house for their yard locomotives and have added an addition in the shape of a commodious coal stage where locomotive coal is stored.

Although the paper mentions a round house, which inplies access through a turntable, it is likely that this was just a one or two road shed.  The locomotives were tank engines and would not have required turning.  There is no evidence of a circular house on the only two known photographs of the Eddy narrow gauge operation:

National Archives PA-012442

The second was likely taken at a later date after the locomotives had been in use for some time.

5.17 Canadian Pacific - Kingston

1924 Fire Insurance Map (http://maps.cityofkingston.ca/Media/InsurancePlans/1924/InsPlan1924_Map09.png)


This photo was taken by author Don Wilson in '53-'54, and shows 5 stalls with tracks, and a half stall and workspace at the right-hand end.

The enginehouse in its later form as a freight shed in 1970.  LAC PA 203818

The Brockville and Ottawa Railway had a two stall engine house at Perth. The high arched doors and large windows, to give light for working inside, were similar to those on the Grand Trunk. Engineer Samuel Keefer, who from 1853 worked for Alexander Mackenzie Ross, Chief Engineer of the Grand Trunk, became Chief Engineer of the B&O as well in 1853 and Inspector of Railways for Canada in 1857.

The building was later converted for use as a freight shed and lasted until the mid 1970s.  It appears that an original gable-end roof to the engine house was replaced with a sloping roof with some alteration to the stonework.

5.19  Canadian Pacific Pointe Fortune

Chris Hall writes (7/2021)
While out exploring, I found the foundations of a one stall engine house and a caved in pit in the woods at Pointe Fortune. I can find absolutely nothing online about it, and was rather surprised to find it. Here is a photo of the enginehouse pit.