The Canadian Pacific's Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway: CPR Steam Years, 1905-1949 - Softcover

Robert D. Turner; Donald F. MacLachlan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1550392042 ISBN 13: 9781550392043

Publisher: Sono Nis, 2012

Synopsis

The Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway had a special character and charm like few others. Skirting the eastern coastline of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, it was separated from the rest of the national and continental rail network by the Georgia and Juan de Fuca Straits. During the days of steam power on the railway, it was a distant and often rustic outpost of the Canadian Pacific Railway's vast system, but it was a profitable one. It hauled logs and coal, fish and paper, strawberries and raspberries, beer and wine, automobiles and oil, and tons and tons of wood. The E&N carried soldiers off to two world wars, toured royalty on Vancouver Island and carried hundreds of passengers in stately parlour cars or rickety day coaches. The mail was sorted on the trains and could be delivered Up Island in a matter of hours. The E&N's well-maintained steam locomotives were the pride of the railway. Engineers, conductors and other crewmen were known up and down Vancouver Island. The railway was like a family to many who worked on it; many stayed with it for their entire careers. It did much to shape the character of Vancouver Island and provided the key links between people, places and the goods and services they needed and produced. It was essential and irreplaceable. Carefully researched, sensitively written and beautifully illustrated, this book captures the E&N in its many moods. Hundreds of never-before-published rare photos, including some exceptional colour images from the 1940s, and an extensive and insightful text document the railway, the people who worked on it and all those whose lives it shaped.

About this title

About the Author

Robert D. Turner is a highly respected transportation historian and photographer. This book is the 16th he has authored or co-authored on transportation history, chronicling western railways and steamships, and he has written hundreds of articles. His photographs are widely published in books and magazines. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Railroad Historical Association, and is a Curator Emeritus at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria.

Review

While the roundhouses are now mostly silent and only the occasional freight train makes its way up and down the island, the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway (E&N) occupies a prominent place in Vancouver Island's history. Using land and cash provided by Canada, coal baron Robert Dunsmuir completed the complex task of building the line in 1886 from Esquimalt to Nanaimo. Over the years it was extended across the harbour to Victoria and north to Courtenay. After 1905, under the Canadian Pacific Railway, a link was started from Wellington to Port Alberni and completed in December 1911. With its one million acre land grant, including minerals below the surface, the railway was important to the economic development of Vancouver Island. This story is covered in the first part of the series, The Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway, The Dunsmuir Years: 1884-1905 by Donald F. MacLachlan, a second generation E&N employee who spent his entire working life on the railway before retiring in 1983 as the senior locomotive engineer. For this second installment of the trilogy about the railway, much expanded in format and presentation from the first book, veteran transportation historian Robert D. Turner, with the support of MacLachlan's estate, became the co-author and principal contributor. As someone who shared MacLachlan's passion for the railway, Turner is the ideal candidate to complete the series. A brief prelude provides a background leading up to the purchase. The authors show that the CPR wasted no time in reconstructing the railway to meet the larger company's standards. For the E&N, the 1905 purchase was timely because much of its original track and many of its structures needed costly repairs or replacement. With the purchase, the CPR also acquired the Dunsmuir land grant, which included significant timber rights. James Dunsmuir retained the mining rights to the E&N lands. The E&N hauled an astonishing assortment of commodities and comestibles including logs, coal, fish, paper, strawberries, raspberries, beer, wine, automobiles, oil, and tons of up-island cordwood to heat Victoria's homes. One gets the feeling that the railway was considered "family," with engineers and conductors known by name up and down the line. People recognized locomotives by the sound of their whistles. Their coming and going became entwined with daily life. We read stories of settlers and newlyweds being delivered to new lives on the island and of young men being carried off to distant wars. This is a book written for readers with a passion for railways as well as for the history of Vancouver Island. The authors provide a high level of detail about the day-to-day operations of the E&N and an exceptional opportunity to learn about technical details through documents, maps, and photographs. The photos are of excellent quality and carry informative captions. While it does not have footnotes or a formal bibliography -- which will appear in the final volume of the E&N trilogy -- the four appendices and five pages of sources and notes provide extensive research information. The railway enthusiast and technology historian can learn about the benefits of different locomotives and get a behind-the-scenes look at the E&N's operating procedures, working routines, and glimpses into the lives of the train crews. For example, crews working on log trains at Lake Cowichan usually had an early morning start, but the exact time varied according to the tidal conditions at Crofton, where the logs were unloaded. The book reflects the authors' deep interest in the island's railway. Their ability to combine an intimate knowledge of workers and trains with daily life on Vancouver Island gives the book the feel of family history, and The CPR Steam Years will appeal to a wide audience of island and railway historians alike. --David Hill-Turner, BC Studies

Vancouver Island s segment of our national dream was a 250-km ribbon of steel along the southeast coast. That Vancouver Island rail line over the Malahat and through the rainforest was originally constructed by coal baron Robert Dunsmuir's syndicate. Donald F. MacLachlan s The Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway: The Dunsmuir Years, 1884-1905 (Sono Nis 1986) recalled that pioneering era. Property granted as an incentive totalled 4000 sq. km., one-tenth of Vancouver Island, including rights to minerals and vast stands of prime timber. More was granted later. The Canadian Pacific Railway acquired the E&N and its lands, constructing branch lines to Port Alberni and Lake Cowichan, and extending the main line north to Courtenay. The railway serviced many logging operations and lumber mills, while distributing general freight and carrying passengers. CPR rail ferries connected the E&N to the company s mainland lines. This period of growth and consolidation was the subject of MacLachlan s and Robert D. Turner s The Canadian Pacific s Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway: The CPR Steam Years, 1905-1949 (Sono Nis 2012). As the railway most remote from CPR headquarters in Montreal, the E&N was rarely issued new equipment, and there was a lot of making-do with refurbished gear. Challenging terrain not only required extra bridge rebuilding and track maintenance, it kept average speeds low and led to a number of accidents. Turner and MacLachlan s final volume Vancouver Island s Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway: The Canadian Pacific, VIA Rail and Shortline Years, 1949-2013 begins with conversion to diesel-electric locomotives, then charts the long decline of the once-proud E&N. It s a feast for rail enthusiasts, and also documents part of the industrial history of Vancouver Island. After many profitable decades, the E&N s steam fleet was suddenly scrapped. According to the co-authors, new Baldwin diesel-electric locomotives were much more efficient on this line. The rapid conversion was a cost/benefit decision made by CPR management. Other technical improvements included control of several locomotives by a single engineer. The postwar loss of the railway s mail and express package contracts was a major blow. In spite of improved technology, the E&N s operations remained slow and geographically limited. The CPR s own truck and bus lines were, in effect, part of the competition. In 1955, the passenger cars on the line were replaced by Budd Dayliners. They were self-propelled diesel units operated separately from the freight trains. Again, this change was implemented for the sake of efficiency. The CPR also hoped to attract more passengers with the faster, air-conditioned Dayliners. Vancouver Island had become much more populous and developed since the Great Depression. New pulp mills generated welcome business for the E&N. However, by the 1950s, the Nanaimo coal mines were exhausted, and accessible old-growth forests cut down. Long-time freight customers gradually closed, moved away, or changed to trucking. Many passengers abandoned train travel to use the improved highways. The authors describe and illustrate many hazards E&N crews had to cope with: floods, washouts, slides, blizzards, forest fires and fallen trees. In 1964, a series of tsunami waves, generated by a huge earthquake off Alaska, caused extensive damage to rolling stock and infrastructure at Port Alberni. Used General Motors locomotives were an improvement over the Baldwins, but then the CPR applied to Ottawa to cease E&N passenger service in 1975. The Canadian Transport Commission ordered it to continue. Soon after, federal Crown corporation VIA Rail took over all CPR passenger service. Commuter trains might have been viable around Victoria, but VIA had no mandate for transit operations. VIA attempted to end E&N passenger service in 1990. Rail passenger numbers we --David Conn, BC BookWorld

Edition details

• Publisher: Sono Nis
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1550392042
• ISBN 13: 9781550392043
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304