Part 1

Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is enclosed in _underscores_.

For additional copies of this book, or duplicate prints of the illustrations for office, den or mailing communicate with

J. M. COPELAND 5 Dalton Road, Toronto

Telephone, College 185

TORONTO, CANADA ADDISON & MAINPRICE 1918

FOREWORD

In compiling the miscellaneous array of facts embodied in the pen sketches arranged within the covers of this book, the principal object striven for has been to seek out, set down and thereby rescue from forgetfulness and the danger of extinction, a grist of information pertaining to local railway life in Canada and to men identified with international railway affairs.

The data is necessarily incomplete, owing to the embarrassment of available material clamoring for place and because the railways’ numerous departments harbor scores of brilliant officials and a host of yet undecorated aides, but the biographies, particularly, have revived some interesting early history which was the parent and foundation of present-day conditions.

The concentrated effort and predominant characteristics which eventually won prominence for the gentlemen herein featured may be an incentive and safeguard to young men and the journal is deferentially submitted for perusal to all readers who appreciate how paramount among vital essentials to progress and comfort are the railroads, but it is especially dedicated to those cosmopolitans whose duties are so closely interwoven with the daily transport of people and their natural and manufactured products.

In no other fields of endeavor does the spirit of genuine _cameraderie_ and the bonds of unconventional fraternity exist more generally than among railway men in all branches--among allies and competitors alike--and it is hoped the work will prove to this irregular army of “thoroughbreds” a book of reference, a reminder later on of former devotees of the magnetic game and also perpetuate those splendid standards, enjoyable gatherings and ever changing activities of their day.

For the courtesy of reprinting privileges, where my earlier articles are concerned, I am indebted to “Busy Man’s Magazine,” “Canadian Century,” “McLean’s Magazine,” “Canada Monthly,” etc., etc., and gratefully acknowledge the voluntary kindness of friends who unlocked the storehouses of memory or cheerfully furnished desired photographs and engravings.

The indulgence of the reader is requested should he observe a discrepancy affecting the title, employer or location of any individual, resulting from change or promotion between the time of preparation and publication of these papers.

J. M. C.

TO MY BROTHER, WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT AND CONFIDENCE MADE LIGHTER THE TASK OF WRITING THESE MANUSCRIPTS AND PREPARING THE ILLUSTRATIONS HEREIN.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Navigators of the Blue 6

A Deceased Canadian Railroad 7

Ontario’s Twin Sister--Grand Trunk Railway 12

William H. Biggar 16

Sir Thomas Dakin’s Locomotive 19

Toronto and Nipissing Railway 20

An Old Campaigner’s Career 21

Knights of the Swinging Lanterns 25

Credit Valley Railway--Milton Celebration 26

Crusade of “U.S.A.” Railway Interests in Canada 28

Thomas A. Edison 47

A Gigantic Human Hive--C.P.R. 52

William B. Lanigan 54

James Charlton 56

Uncle Sam’s Adopted Sons 61

Samuel R. Callaway 74

Thomas N. Jarvis 77

Geo. J. Charlton 79

A Reveler’s Dream 83

Andrew J. Taylor 87

Business Getter’s Competition 90

Lines to Queen Quinte 94

The Canadian Northern Railway System 95

A Tenderfoot in Temiskaming 99

William P. Duperow 106

Those Undignified Box Cars 112

Frederic P. Nelson 123

A Pilfered Pot Pourri 126

The Trail of the Serpent 129

A Haphazard Chronology 136

Ballad to the Brotherhood 145

NAVIGATORS OF THE BLUE

Carrier pigeons--pioneers in aerial transportation

Decoration by ALBERTA L. TORY

Aloft in the frigid lanes they soar, High over dormant farm and city’s roar: Their tireless pinions wrestle with the breeze That wails athwart the solemn, leafless trees.

Above the brooks asleep ’neath crystal shrouds, And o’er white winter’s mantle from the clouds, Swift pigeons wheel and spiral t’wards the sun, Exultant in new triumphs daily won.

Atoms these--of pulsating life on wing, Each flouts the sordid earth and ether’s sting: Unconsciously, they realize a Plan Which mortals match with faulty ships of Man.

A DECEASED CANADIAN RAILWAY

The Sheriff Runs Away From His Spoils

When Sir John Franklin, arctic navigator, with canoe crews of Indians and voyageurs, eastbound after exploring the Great Lakes, pitched wigwams in the summer of 1839 at the confluence of stream and lake where the nucleus of present Cobourg, Canada, was taking root, little did these adventurous and actual forerunners of easy steam locomotion think that from a point where they camped a railroad would thirteen years later bisect the unbroken forest. Yet, it is so, and the whirligig of time has, likewise, seen recorded the obituary of that railway--has witnessed the effacement of the name of those early laid metal ribbons from the time tables of a young country which still hungers and lobbies for more and more tracks and trams.

Cobourg and thereabouts, is ancient territory as settlements go nowadays. In 1796 the district was surveyed. Eluid Nickerson, who espoused the United Empire Loyalist cause, took out the first patent in 1802 during the reign of King George III., but in spite of its monarchial predilections, the locality has long been of interest to our cousins of high and low degree living south of Lake Ontario, and a few years after the construction of Cobourg and Peterborough Railway, of which I speak, several iron masters and capitalists from Pittsburg acquired the property, altering somewhat its original mission.

The prospectus of this pioneer Canadian line was mooted in 1851 by local promoters: it took definite form in 1852 and on February 7th, 1853, Lady Mayoress, Mrs. S. E. MacKechnie, officiated in the ceremony of turning the first sod amidst tremendous public enthusiasm. As early as 1844 a daily stage ran in winter from Peterborough to Cobourg and Port Hope, and in summer the steamboat “Forrester” plied to Harwood and connected with the stage coaches. Close in the wake of this propitious beginning construction advanced, while feathered and furry prowlers of the virgin woods had their curiosity piqued by strange sights and sounds. Under the supervision of chief engineer Ira Spaulding, contractors Zimmerman and Balch pushed the line through valley and glade to Rice Lake’s fertile, sloping shores at Harwood where, later, sawmills sawed the stately pines that arrived in drives from Otonabee. During the following year Mr. Zimmerman collaborated in the extension as far as Peterborough, his tragic death in the des Jardins Canal disaster at Hamilton, March, 1857, terminating a useful life. Steel rails were an experimental luxury, iron scarce and expensive and timber often replaced them. Antique locomotives with impossible superstructures coughed and squeaked along, meanwhile eating a mighty hole in the wood pile, for coal and oil burners were not contrived, and what a risk it was to venture between the oscillating cars. Though crudely equipped, the road was nevertheless, a startling and welcome innovation for abbreviating space. The Grand Trunk Railway had not yet been built and the saddle horse and coach were the only substitutes for pedestrianism. Picture, if you can, a journey inside a two teamed springless stage, tediously winding westward past bear haunt, swamp and river; for instance, over the historic, old military road from Kingston. It must have been a hunter’s paradise.

The bridging of Rice Lake was a large undertaking at the period and proved a burden from which the management never recovered. This structure became notorious later for several reasons. From Harwood to Tick Island, some distance off shore, a filling was made and the bridge trestles were projected two miles across the westerly loop of the lake to where Hiawatha Indian settlement still harbors the fishing and rice gathering sons and daughters of sires long since passed to the happy hunting grounds. You may see them any summer day vieing with “Alderville” redskins from near Roseneath, in deftly wielding the paddle, as of yore when their forebears fought fiercely all around that favored camping place.

In winter of 1857, when the frost and ice heaved the bridge, four-horse sleighs transported passengers inland between Harwood, the Indian village and station at Ashburnham, seven miles north. To take charge of this old depot, which afterwards became a canoe factory, Donald Sutherland was the first appointed and Mr. Roe Buck became the Cobourg representative. William Von Ingen, now collector of His Majesty’s Customs levy at Woodstock, Ont., collected tickets covering the run of about twenty-five miles which cost $1.00 per capital and entitled one to all privileges save the compartment sleeper and electric fans, which had not yet been adopted.

It is said that John Fowler, charter corporation member and first manager, whose regime did not fill the company’s coffers, made towards the close of his term, a financial _coup d’etat_ with the Midland, Port Perry, Lindsay & Beaverton Railway. He was succeeded by Lieut.-Colonel D’Arcy E. Boulton, a Cobourg aristocrat who rented the “C. & P.” property in 1857 and battled valiantly against odds in an endeavor to place the road on a paying basis. This railway’s legitimate traffic--forest products and lumber--were hauled for several years from the interior to the docks at Cobourg, thence by schooner to various lake ports, but time wrought changes and debt became the most formidable obstacle to progress.

It is recounted that one forenoon long ago the sheriff unexpectedly boarded a northbound “C. & P.” train on which the superintendent was also travelling. Although the latter was not a mind reader he had a presentment that the sheriff’s presence might not auger well for his particular department. Everything was as placid as the lake itself until the train approached the height of land at Summit, nine miles up from Cobourg, when the brakes controlling rear car in which the court official sat in tranquil state, were locked and the coupling pin withdrawn. A retrograde movement quickly followed and the sheriff was powerless to stem the progress of his unwilling hurry. As though the evil one was after him, down grade rolled the flustered occupant of the flying carriage to where it started. Nothing daunting, the sheriff procured a team and drove thirteen miles back to Harwood, but found on arrival that everything not nailed down, including attachable railway equipment, etc., had forsaken Northumberland and was transferred across the bridge to the next county.

Early in the day of September 7th, 1860, a “special” moved over the “C. & P.” conveying Edward, Prince of Wales and suite from Cobourg to Harwood en route Peterborough. As the old bridge was considered unsafe for this precious young patron and entourage, they were much interested in being ferried across Rice Lake to the Mississauga Indian settlement near the mouth of the winding Otonabee River, from which point the late Robert White, highly respected for leagues around, enjoyed the honor and privilege of driving Royalty and his retinue to Peterborough.

After the Civil War the road came into possession of a genial Virgianian, Colonel William Chambliss and his confreres, Messrs. Schoenburg and Fitzhugh from the South, with interests in Pennsylvania. Colonel Chambliss was elected managing director, the title was changed to Cobourg, Peterborough & Marmora Railway & Mining Company, and its new purpose was hauling iron ore destined Cleveland from Marmora mines to vessels at Cobourg. This ore was moved on scows from Blairton to Harwood.

The old Parliament of Upper Canada had incorporated the earlier organization and in 1869 an Act was passed legalizing the amalgamation of railway and mining company.

During the summer of 1874 the Vice-Regal couple, Lord and Lady Dufferin, participated in an eleven hour outing from Cobourg via C.P. & M.R. & M. Co., Harwood, Rice Lake steamer and Hastings, and extracts from the Countess’ description of their ore mine inspection and experiences, as set down in Her Ladyship’s diary at the time, reads as follows:--

“I did not expect to care the least about it as we had seen so many untidy, stoney, barren places called mines, but this one was really an interesting sight. We found ourselves at the top of an enormous hole or cavern, 140 feet deep, large in proportion, perfectly open and light as day. The men looked like imps as they worked below and it was the sort of thing one sees represented, in miniature, in a fairy play. The sides were walls of iron: but, alas, coal is found only in the States....

“When we returned to the steamer we found a barge tied to its side covered in with green--a floating arbor--in which lunch was laid: and very glad we were of it, as we had breakfasted at 7.30 a.m. and it was now 2.00 p.m. The managers of the mines, the steamers, etc., are Americans, and we were their guests. Colonel Chambliss and General Fitzhugh, with their wives (two sisters), were our hosts. They lived in the hotel at which we stayed and are charming Southerners.”

It would appear that the bridging of Rice Lake was costly, but on account of engineering difficulties, not permanent. The alternate rigors of winter and spring reaction upset calculations as well as the bridge’s equilibrium. Those piles which had no foundation in fact--in the lake bottom, to be more exact--dangled from the upper work, an encumbrance instead of a support and many of the bolts disappeared, some claim by design of wrongly disposed persons. One autumn night, after a southbound train from Peterborough had passed over, the shivering spans succumbed to a gale and disappeared. To-day they remain the abode of lunge, bass and other amphibious denizens of the waters.

When the G.T.R. failed to popularize the line to Harwood for excursions, several rearrangements of the railway’s name and financial status subsequently occurred. Acts were passed by the Ontario Legislature and in 1887, after the sale of the Company’s bonds under an order of the Chancery Court the Federal Parliament incorporated the Cobourg, Blairton & Marmora Railway & Mining Co. to take over the property. The Municipality of Cobourg became at one time a guarantor in further reorganization. Presently, operation of the miniature system ceased altogether and protracted litigation was the precursor of dissolution. Thus did a budding nation in a constructive age behold a once famous railway rust into oblivion.

* * * * *

ONTARIO’S TWIN SISTER IS THE GRAND TRUNK RAILWAY

If a vivisectionist, adroit with scalpel and scissors, should dissect and remove the bone framework from the torso of any man, that man would collapse, and likewise, did Atlas or Sampson but lift the Grand Trunk Railway System from out the ballasted roadbed in the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec and contiguous territory, the extensive and most densely populated area of Older Canada would immediately become paralyzed and inert. Mankind in thousands would be without occupations, communication and the written word from the world outside would cease in three-quarters of the affected zone: again the over night journey to grist mills would resume, cattle be herded to market, the fruits of the earth would wither on the vine and the travelling public--wont to thoughtlessly grumble at imagined discrepancies in the time table--would submissively fall back on the tri-weekly stage.

How few of us reflect upon and appreciate the amount of planning and experiment, figuring and re-adjustment involved in the preparation of a “Grand Trunk” folder, where a maze of branch line trains that gridiron the country like a spider’s web, must be dispatched to dovetail with innumerable main line connections rolling to every point of the compass.

Before the first of her sixty-six birthdays was registered in the family bible at Headquarters in Old London, the nucleii of the “G.T.R.” were conceived and the infant projects inaugurated in that expectant era of active railway promotion which followed George Stephenson’s practical application of steam for motive power in England in 1815–25–45. Although the earliest railroads constructed in Quebec did not bear its name, these pioneer highways were merged, ere long, into the Grand Trunk Railway which spread its lengthening branches in all directions like the gnarled arms of the famous green bay tree.

The Grand Trunk Railway early became a definite medium in realizing the New World ambitions, spurring on hundreds of young English, Irish and Scotch men. Their methods of substantial construction and numerous ideas of system are yet extant with this great Canadian institution. It has also been a school of diverse experience and thorough training for thousands of graduates who gravitated to newer properties and to-day play their part in determining the policy or lubricating the clerical machinery of railroads in all regions enjoying the benefits of modern transportation.

On the eve of these happenings and during the period when the “Right of way” lands were being purchased under the discriminating supervision of the late John Bell--first and life-long General Counsel of the “G.T.R.”--the voyageur who did not travel by stage coach over corduroy roadways hewn out of the wilderness, was confined to desultory sailings on lake and bay or river. The daily stage coach, which ran both ways between Kingston and Toronto at that time, charged per person, Belleville to Kingston, Ten shillings; and Belleville to Cobourg, Twelve Shillings, Six Pence.

Clear to the retentive memory of thousands of early settlers is that nine days’ wonder, and since enduring boon, synchronizing in the arrival of the first railway train of the “G.T.R.” at their peaceful hamlet, grain elevator or river mouth. That was an event of superlative importance not fully understood. Like them, the “Old Reliable” was a budding enterprise, she was Ontario’s Twin Sister growing confident and expanding step by step, surmounting difficulties, each depending on the other, until now the great and comprehensive public utility we know so well and vitally need, together with her subsidiary properties, is a far-reaching international system comprising 8,000 miles of well equipped railway, embodying an immense investment. That investment, based on a long, discerning and steady look into the future--surely made by optimistic, adventurous men--began when the Canadas truly deserved the petite designation of colonies and the manner in which the expansion of the Grand Trunk Railway kept pace with the unfolding of our young nation’s wonderful possibilities is lucidly outlined in a meritorious editorial of January 12th, 1918, which the Montreal “Daily Star” has readily permitted me to reproduce below:--

THE GRAND TRUNK RAILWAY.

“Last year the Dominion of Canada observed its fiftieth birthday. This year one of the great railway systems of the Dominion will celebrate its sixty-sixth anniversary. Both of these are historic events, proving that this young country is growing up, perhaps not getting on in years, but at least approaching adolesence.

“The Grand Trunk Railway is practically, if not actually, the pioneer railroad of Canada. Before its advent there were several small lines, now part of the Grand Trunk system, but it remained for the Grand Trunk to originate and carry through the first comprehensive transportation plan for serving the Canada of the fifties. It was a bold scheme, almost a reckless one, in that pioneer age, to link up Sarnia, Ont., with Portland, Me., via Toronto and Montreal, and to do so with a roadbed of such permanence that its standards have never been appreciably changed since. The railroad builders of those early days had faith in Canada, a faith that might shame some of those living in a more modern era.