This week, as I had a day off following Easter, I decided to head out and get some train photos in Ottawa, which I haven't done in a little while. True to my evolving approach to railway photos, I thought of some new perspectives to showcase trains as part of the landscape. My first thought was to get a shot of a Venture trainset going over the Rideau River on the Beachburg Sub rail bridge.
I have taken photos at this bridge before, but not from the south side. I have taken multiple shots from the north side. In this case, since the sun created shadows on the north side, I decided to try and find a piece of shoreline on the south side to get a decent perspective.
I'll even mix in some observations. This train was heading west toward Fallowfield station with the control cab leading the way, meaning Via Rail has resumed its push-pull operations in the corridor with its Ventures after wyeing many sets in the winter so that the engine was always pulling. A few readers mentioned this change in operations to me, as they had heard from Via personnel that the trains were having trouble in the push configuration over the winter months.
Anyway, back to my image. In this case, I pulled back from the bridge a fair way so I could get an overall view of the west shoreline. I couldn't pull back far enough to get both the eastern and western shores of the Rideau, but perhaps that is a thought for future visits. The waters on the Rideau were not at their peak, as much of the snowpack has already melted. This allowed me to venture out onto some rocks that are sometimes submerged in the spring. It all helped to frame this image.
Since I had time to catch an eastbound train from Toronto, my thoughts turned to another spot along the Smiths Falls Subdivision, which would allow me to get another unique perspective. Alas, the train had made up significant time between Brockville and Ottawa on home tracks, which meant I had to quickly make my way to Fallowfield Station and try to get something unique there. I am generally avoiding the station these days, as there isn't much I haven't tried there. So I tried to get a shot that was near the station but didn't necessarily scream "station stop" in the photo.
This was the best I could do. I got to the edge of the parking lot and backed away from the tracks as much as I could. I tried to get a shot that showcased the sky and the fallow farm field behind the train. It's not a groundbreaking shot by any means, but it was at least an attempt to avoid the extremely sharp wedge shots that are all too common at this station. I have been guilty of this in the past.
Then, I figured I would try to get a shot of people disembarking from the train, but at a distance, so as to respect their privacy.
You can see a gentleman in the centre of the platform, waiting for a loved one to get off the train. It would have been nice to get a little closer to the people, but I also wanted to see if I could get a shot of the end of the train as well. It was an imperfect trade-off. I had to decide to either get closer and lose the end of the train, or, by get closer and getting the people, risking having to blank out their faces. I also ensured that I got low, as it tends to add a bit of an element of size. You get a better appreciation as to the size of trains when you shoot them from ground level.
Some new territory
In my quest to find new topics and pursuits to fill this blog, I've begun the process of looking to the past. I recently applied to get a membership card to the Library and Archives Canada, as it is only a bus ride away for me. I have been digging through the online search tools in an effort to find some rail history that interests me and might be of interest to you as well.
One of the topics I've always had in mind is old train stations, especially the ones that have been demolished. It seems as though every city, town and village once had a train station but many are no longer standing. But we still see roads in many communities that are called Railway Street, Terminal Avenue or Station Street. Yet, the actual stations are long gone.
With that in mind, I have decided to dig up some historic documents to see if I can find out more about some of these old stations. The first one I intend to research is the station in my hometown of Corunna. I did find one document dated 1936 that apparently outlines the details of the station's establishment, decommissioning and removal.
My hometown station has been a complete mystery to me ever since I found the slightest mention of it in a document a while ago. I have no idea where is was located, what it looked like or how long it was standing. I do know it was shut down when the Pere Marquette Railway discontinued passenger operations in the 1930s on what became known as the Sarnia Subdivision. It's amazing to me that there was regular passenger service at all on that line. I hope I can shed some light on that station. My hometown's history is not terribly well known, and its old train station is almost a ghost in any records that I have found.
I also want to find out more about Kanata's old train station, in Ottawa's west end. That station, which sat on Station Street, is also a complete mystery. I know it stood near modern day March Road along the Renfrew Subdivision. The road remains, but there is not a trace of any old station there.
Those research efforts are to come. For now, here is an interesting photo I found on the Library and Archives Canada online archives of the old CN station in Windsor, Ont. (Update - See the comments section below. The Library and Archives seems to have mislabelled this image. A reader says it does not match any Windsor railway landmark. In fact, looking at it, I believe this image to be of the Sarnia railway station, which still stands).
There was no information associated with the photo other than that it was the CN station in Windsor. Judging by the heavyweight passenger cars and power lines in the background, the photo could have been taken at any time in the war years.
So that is a bit of a teaser as to what's to come, hopefully. I really need to shake up the direction of my efforts, I feel, as modern railways in Ottawa just aren't enough to keep this interesting. If you have any topics you'd like to me to research, feel free to let me know. I can't guarantee I will find anything, but I'm willing to try.
8 comments:
Hi Michael - I’m going to question the Archives on this one. This station doesn’t match any photos of Windsor’s former CN (ex Great Western) station that I’ve ever seen. The roof scape and locations of the chimneys are all wrong. Plus the power lines, which almost look like they might be catenary, don’t exist in any historical photos that I’ve seen of Windsor’s waterfront. So this is a bit of a mystery. I’ll capture and post some photos of Windsor’s old CN station later.
The 3rd and 4th photos on this page (scroll down) are images of Windsor's CN station. It was built in 1884 and closed in 1961 when CN moved its passenger operations to the current Walkerville site. While there may have been another station on the site pre-1884, the Archives photo is definitely not that old. Hence it is not Windsor's CN station. The 3rd photo is a postcard and you can see the powerlines were up at street level (where they are to this day) and not trackside, nor along the river. The 4th photo has a good trackside profile of the station from which you can definitely tell it's not the station in the Archives photo. ..... Correction to my previous post:
This was built as a shared Grand Trunk and Wabash station. Grand Trunk had already absorbed Great Western by the time this station was built. ..... The site of the station is immediately east of the foot of Ouellette Avenue. The tracks are long gone. CN moved out after the new Sarnia tunnel made their car float operation (shared with Wabash successor Norfolk Southern) obsolete and after CN took over the Van De Water yard on the west side from Conrail. The City of Windsor cut a deal with CN, swapping the waterfront lands for some City owned land in east Windsor (part of the former Sandwich East Township) which CN in-turn sold to developers. A CN steam locomotive, The Spirit of Windsor, remains on the site. And along the waterfront, part of the car float ferry dock remain intact. For what purpose, I don't know. Probably too costly to remove.
https://internationalmetropolis.com/2010/02/01/rail-stations-through-the-years/
Fun Fact: I have a copy of Windsor's official plan from 1945. It was a very ambitious plan that tried to forecast how the city would grow for the next 30 years. Included in the plan was a smart proposal to build a twin low-rise office tower on the CN station site, with a new station incorporated into the ground floor of the complex. One of the towers would be the new Windsor City Hall, while the other would presumably be used by CN or leased out to other tenants. That would have been one for the ages. A hotel/movie theatre complex occupied a prime waterfront site just west of the station site for decades. It failed in many ways, mainly that the developers never built to the scope that was promised, and then they closed the riverfront walkway, claiming that it was disturbing to the hotel guests. Yes, one level of hotel rooms literally had balconies opening to a public sidewalk. After that fiasco, the City has forbade any form of commercial development on the waterfront. We now have 10km of uninterrupted greenspace from the Ambassador Bridge to the Hiram Walker distillery. Better not to get hungry on your walk or bike ride. There's only one snack bar!
One more. You mentioned railway station photography in your post. I've always enjoyed station photography more than taking photos of trains themselves. For you and your readers who enjoy station photography, I highly recommend the trilogy by photographer and historian Elizabeth A. Willmot. Each book is an anthology of Ontario railway stations with photos and stories. Some of the stations are long gone, but many stand to this day (active, abandoned or repurposed). The books are: Meet Me at the Station, Faces and Places Along the Railway and When Any Time Was Train Time. The first two were published by Gage and the 3rd by Stoddart. I believe they are all out of print now, but you can probably find a used copy online, or maybe at the library. I've actually seen all of them from time-to-time at used bookshops, and even new copies still in stock at railway themed museums. I have all 3 in my library.
That bridge view is really good!
Thanks for your comment, Steve. Kevin -- Thanks for the information. I agree with you that the station in that image is not from Windsor, as labelled by the Library and Archives Canada. IN fact, the more I look at it, the more it seems to me that this image was taken of the Sarnia railway station. The architecture fits and the power lines in the background would be for the formerly electrified tunnel trains, which replaced the Baldwin locomotives, which were causing havoc for crews due to their smoke. I think we can safely say this is a Sarnia image.
The station in what is now Kanata was called March Station. There was also a station on Merivale Road called Merivale.
Thanks for that added info. I didn't know there was a station at Merivale. I've seen where the old station is in Bells Corners. The Kanata station being named March makes a lot of sense. That will help in my search for any documents about it.
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