Currently I am chasing trains on the prairies of Southern Saskatchewan and have had some good luck. Catch an unexpected headlight in the distance here and there, find some sideroad off the highway and wait. Paced a CP train for a while and then got ahead of it and waited at the former station ( now a museum and cultural centre, quite nice, quaint but very informative) in Lanigan, Sask. While waiting I readied the camera in my iPad and panned around outside and thought .with all this Pokemon Go craze, how spiffy would it be if when we held up a tablet or phone to the outside world around us the past could be digitally recreated for our location. The cars in the yard, the look of the station, the train I'm waiting for arrives and it's a CPR G class Pacific with the local way freight. Maybe someday in the future it's possible to do that.
In the meantime I do envision these things everywhere I go. Once in a while I can get an old timer willing to tell me how it used to be around these parts. Cannot overemphasize the importance of the railroad to these towns, not so much today, but in the not too distant past they were almost everything on the prairies. Lots of potash in this part of the country, lots of carloads.
MiningmanWhile waiting I readied the camera in my iPad and panned around outside and thought .with all this Pokemon Go craze, how spiffy would it be if when we held up a tablet or phone to the outside world around us the past could be digitally recreated for our location. The cars in the yard, the look of the station, the train I'm waiting for arrives and it's a CPR G class Pacific with the local way freight. Maybe someday in the future it's possible to do that. In the meantime I do envision these things everywhere I go. Once in a while I can get an old timer willing to tell me how it used to be around these parts. Cannot overemphasize the importance of the railroad to these towns, not so much today, but in the not too distant past they were almost everything on the prairies.
"Today, all that remains of what were once colourful station gardens are a few evergreens, a dishevelled hedge of caraganas and lilacs-and a mystery as to why they exist in these peculiar spots.", from the book Forgotten Garderns, Abandoned Landscapes and Remarkable Restorations by Shirley Harris, 2007.
Last weekend I happened to be looking at Google Maps at Irricana, AB where our last station was. You can still see the trees around where the CPR Section Foreman lived, and the trees that were behind the CNR station. All of the land that was east of the abandoned CPR line, including our station, has been resold and redevloped into commercial properties. There is now no longer any trace of what once was. Even though at one time there were five families that earned their living from the railways. There were also four grain elevators with their Agents and families.
Irricana was close enough to Calgary that it became a bedroom community of Calgary, but that was an exception among so many other villages in Canada's Prairie Provinces.
Bruce
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere" CP Rail Public Timetable
"O. S. Irricana"
. . . __ . ______
I've heard talk here and there (can't pin down any specific examples) of museums talking about having VR goggles to do exactly that. They'd use old photos, CG and actors to recreate the scenes. (Although, with as good as CG is getting you probably don't even need the actors anymore.) But so far I've never heard of one that's actually accomplished it.
Becky
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Thanks for that Penny. The digital age is still in its infancy. It sort of fits with the recent postings of the '64 Worlds Fair with the glimpses of the future In technology. Perhaps we can bring the past to us.
I did see one system years ago on Scientific American Frontiers where Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute had a remote control camera that ran on a trolley on a wire in Monterrey Bay while it was controlled from Massachusetts. It was a first step in creating undersea museums, potentially at reefs, shipwrecks and undersea volcanoes. But it could be easily adapted for something like this. Just look at how Pokemon Go! crosses the VR/reality threshhold.
Canada's National Flim Board has a number of titles that illustrate 'the way it was'.
https://www.nfb.ca/film/railroad_town/
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACD- Did not know of these. Terrific stuff. Omar Lavallee, CLC FM units, beautiful steam in natural settings and all done very well, ...superb.
Two things about Railroad Town: I lived in Irricana form 1956 to 1965 so all of the adults in this film look right, and my dad lived in Duff, SK during the WWII years.
In "Railroad town" I get a real kick out of the road foreman of engines stating he didn't think diesels would be around that long, being likely replaced by turbines and atomic powered locomotives. The interior shots of the steam locomotive, pulling the whistle cord and shots of the roundhouse and turntable are beautiful. Really comes through In that filming. Fred Davis always looked the same...don't think the guy ever got old.
In "End of the Line" again we get that same beautiful black and white high quality that comes through just like you are in the cab. The roundhouse scenes and dead lines of steam locomotives are a treasure.
They are well worth the 30 minutes or so of time for each of these.
Great films. In End of the Line the scene of lighting and building the fire are amazing. I had never seen that before.
That film Trans-Canada Express has clips from many films, including things I had never seen before, only verbally described many years ago.
I just checked over on Wikipedia and at the time of making "Railroad Town" Fred Davis was still a CBC Newsman. He didn't begin his 38 year run as host of "Front Page Challenge" until 1957.
The CBC only started broadcasting in Regina and Saskatoon in 1954. I'm not sure Melville would have had TV in 1955. Yorkton didn't get TV until 1959.
I still have a couple of more films to look at.
Boomer’s hometown was middle-named for
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Melville_Hays
" Boomer's hometown was middle named for"
....Melville .....Thanks yet again Wanswheel..I did not know that, or if I did it's long since forgotten. Now I've altered my route to Winnipeg, on my way to Rochelle and the Illinois Railway Museum, to include Melville.and thanks again to BaltACD for the original link.
Wonder how Boomer made out in retirement...bet he went down to the station darn near everyday. He had no choice back then as you were put out to pasture at 65. I smoke a pipe and have quite an assortment of good ones and admired the one he had at the end out on the platform. Have a couple just like it ( but it's difficult to find good pipe tobacco any longer). Boomer probably had some pretty good stories in all those years. I can imagine how overwhelming the pace was during WWII in those towns.
Boomer’s retirement was short, only about 5 years. His nephew remembers him colorfully.
http://www.genealogy.com/ftm/k/r/a/Darlene-I-Krauss/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0045.html
He was mentioned in Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen's Magazine in 1921.
https://books.google.com/books?id=ZFpWAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA20-PA15&lpg=RA20-PA15&dq=%22boomer+cardwell%22&source=bl&ots=wrmyB1cPGv&sig=jwORRrC2_Jg8IwOuVl7Ow-hfnuk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiE0e_qnJ7OAhXDlx4KHUUmCmgQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=%22boomer%20cardwell%22&f=true
Wanswheel, thank you for that. There is no way my Dad or his brothers and sister wouldn't have known the Cardwell kids given the total population of the area. My grandparents moved from that area to southern Saskatchewan at the end of the war. It was there, at Meyronne, that my Dad learned how to be a Station Agent.
Thank you very much.
So sad that Boomer only made it 5 years after retiring. He looks like he was in good shape and so was his wife. A lot of people, especially back then, died shortly after retiring. The fellow had a great life. Im pretty sure no one is going to play "for he's a jolly good fellow" when I'm booted out the door.
A little earlier
https://www.nfb.ca/film/trans_canada_express/
Yes, filmed in 1939. This was a wartime film "fighting Hitlerism" as the commentator states. Being part of the British Commonwealth we were at war with Germany 2 years before the US jumped in after Pearl Harbour. It is a "patriotic" film but not overly so, and the emphasis is on the war effort. The railroading and roundhouse scenes are superb.
I will never tire of explaining the incredible effort the railroads in the US and Canada achieved and produced during the war and their crucial role in defeating the axis powers. It has to be one of the most understated and under appreciated feats, especially during the post war period when the railroads were quickly and shamelessly considered a product of a by gone era.
It is amazing that I can now sit in the comfort of my desk at home, watch this film that has long since been forgotten about, now revived, and stop the action to see road numbers and appreciate and study scenes in detail. We are indeed fortunate.
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