Melville is still a home terminal for crews. At the time of the film crews worked east to Rivers, MB and west to Watrous, SK. Winnipeg crews worked west to Rivers and Biggar, SK crews worked east to Watrous. Melville crews also work north to Canora, SK and previously worked south to Regina, though I believe that work has been shifted to Regina crews more recently.
During the 1990s CN negotiated the ability to operate trains over two ~100 mile crew districts with a single crew, this type of operation being referred to as "extended run" or "double sub" on the property. This resulted in Rivers and Watrous being skipped as crew change points for most trains (some trains continued to change crews there). The home terminals at the ends of each extended run share the work in the manner you described.
Congestion in recent years has resulted in most trains being unable to complete a double sub run within the crew's hours of service, so most trains have reverted to single sub operation in this area.
Biggar and Saskatoon (also a home terminal) are only about 40 miles apart, and CN had wanted to merge them for many years, but only did so 6 years ago, when Biggar was closed and the employees transferred to Saskatoon. Biggar employees had previously worked the mainline while Saskatoon crews worked the yard and branchlines, this division of work being the last major operational remnant of the Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific. As part of this plan Watrous ceased to be an AFHT, Melville and Saskatoon crews run through and share the work between their respective home terminals in some sort of 2/3 split (Melville gets more), and Saskatoon crews work west to Wainwright, AB, where they trade off with Edmonton crews (Wainwright is the divisional point between Biggar and Edmonton).
Biggar has been reopened and closed again since, the employees based there only worked the local roadswitcher and extended runs to Edmonton and Melville, which of course were once again shared with crews from those terminals.
One could write a very long, very boring book about the history of railroad crew districts across North America.
If Biggar sounds familiar, their slogan is "New York is big, but this is Biggar!".
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
For SD70 DUDE:
How far east and west did the Melville crews work? Is Melville still a crew change point? If so, are the crews going east to Winnipeg and west to what point.
The Minneapolis NP freight crews changed at Staples, MN and the Staples crews went to Dilworth, MN. Now this is a double ended pool with roughly half Minneapolis crews and half Dilworth crews in the pool.
Ed Burns
NP EddieI found a Perscope Film from 1955 about a Canadian National locomotive engineer making his last trip into Melville, SK. A great film. I thought SD70Dude could tell me more about the direction of the Super Continental. This is a great all around film that tells the story of Melville. By the time this film was released steam was vanishing from railroads and the supporting jobs were vanishing. Ed Burns
While Periscope may have the film now - I believe the film was made by the Canadian Film Board and cand (could) be viewed from their web site.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
https://www.nfb.ca/film/railroad_town/
I'm watching it again.
The 'Super' is definitely westbound, Melville's station and elevator row are on the north side of the main track, with the yards on the south side.
Note that 6503 lacks front MU connections, CN's first FP9's were purchased without them, only to receive them shortly after delivery.
Also note that it is most definitely NOT 6503, nor the real 6500 that Boomer runs up to the station. It is one of CN's few F7's that were equipped with dynamic braking.
I found a Perscope Film from 1955 about a Canadian National locomotive engineer making his last trip into Melville, SK. A great film. I thought SD70Dude could tell me more about the direction of the Super Continental. This is a great all around film that tells the story of Melville. By the time this film was released steam was vanishing from railroads and the supporting jobs were vanishing.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.