March 30/17 Classic Photo of the Day shows Niagara Falls station In 1953. We still have the station used for, believe it or not, Trains!
Photo of the Day also mentions the train coming from Hamilton, which had a beautiful CNR station. Often overlooked due to TH&B/CPR/NYC art deco station in the center of the city. This is the CNR station.
Has a bit of resemblance to Buckingham Palace, don't you think?
Fantastic building!
Yes, you are correct Firelock76, never occurred to me!
My grandmother worked like a horse doing everything in her Fish and Chip restaurant in Hamilton, mostly orders for home delivery, which a bunch of kids, including me of course, on their bicycles with the orders wrapped in newspapers in a front mounted carrier basket fanned out all over the city. Can you imagine that today? No way! Oh the horror!
Point is- She absolutely loved to go to Port Dover on Lake Erie for ten days every year at the height of summer for a vacation and for several years she took me along. We would take the train to Port Dover which originated from that station in Hamilton. Daily except Sunday..it terminated in Port Rowan, further down the lake. Armstrong turntable.
The memories of the station are forever in my memory. The restaurants, the coffee shop, the news vendors, the intercom. The lighting, the long corridor to the gates and the long stairs down to the tracks. This was big time stuff. The importance of it all. The warmth.
An incredible feeling for a kid.
That train and it's smallish and ancient moguls and ten wheelers ran until 1958. It was never dieselized. I saw a picture once of the train ready for departure, taken from the platforms, surrounded by Northerns and Mountains on the left and right. Our trains engines were just teapots next to them.
I would not trade those memories for a million bucks. Thankfully the main building is preserved but it is no longer a railway station.
Miningman, I guess your grandmother remembered the old station.
https://archive.org/stream/viewbookofhamilt00hami#page/n1/mode/2up
Thanks for this Wanswheel. My grandmother did not come to Hamilton until 1948 so I don't think she had any remeberances of the old GTRwy station.
Folks in Hamilton always talked about the incline railways going up the mountain. There were 2 of them. Every so once in a while there is talk of rebuilding but it never comes about. The newer one up from James Street was steam powered. Neither of them survive, with only concrete remnants remaining here and there.
http://www.hamiltonpostcards.com/pages/inclinejames.html
Probably could've kept it going with a few more passengers. Dizzying.
Dizzying is the right word Wanswheel.
Wonder if you could even run something like this today? Regulations, Safety concerns and all that.
Great Photos..have never seen these views before.
Miningman, I'll bet your grandmother's "Fish N' Chips" were just as unforgettable as my grandmother's ravioli!
Grandmas are good for that!
I've only had two really, really good fish and chips platters in my life and had to go out of the country for 'em. The first in Portsmouth England after visiting HMS Victory in 1976, and Placentia Newfoundland in 1997. Worth the trips, both times!
The Fish N Chips sure were good Firelock76. Had to be Halibut, always, only ran into something similiar with the batter once, and that was in WaWa, Ontario of all places, home of the Giant Goose! So I concur, only had 2 outstanding. My Friday nights were a gourmet feast! Gosh we peddled our butts off on those bicycles, especially Fridays. Thurs and Sat were also busy but not like Friday.
I remember well the sweat and pure exhaustion on my grandma when she finally got to sit around 10:00 or 10:30. It was stunning and admirable to behold. 4 Huge vat fryers going non stop. Worked peddling like a maniac right up until the end of my 2nd year in High School. We did pretty good on tips! Could buy cool shirts, albums and the latest in N Scale. Atlas cars were $1.49!
I sold a mint set of 7 JCTimmer cars with those crappy paint jobs for $700 at an auction. Bought them new at $1.29-$1.99. The rest of them I kept. They've been runners since 1966? 67? ...anyway long time.
Wow! Sounds like Friday night in Hamilton was fish n' chips night, just like Friday night in New Jersey is pizza night. Or any other night for that matter. Pizza night used to be Saturday night until the Church dropped the "fish on Friday" rule.
We have a saying in New Jersey, "Seven days without pizza makes one weak!"
When I was in high school my part-time job pay went for First World War fighter plane model kits, as a matter of fact I converted my O gauge layout into a German airfield circa 1917. I didn't try to explain what American trains were doing circling the Red Baron's hangout.
I don't know what's happening in Canada but it breaks my heart slightly to see the First World War Centennial coming and going here in the US with hardly a burp. A book on American WW1 veterans I purchased in the 70's probably summed it up pretty well. The author said "World War Two, Korea, Viet Nam, and the Space Race pushed the Doughboys into the background a lot faster than anyone suspected." Sad, but it's really a forgotten war here.
Firelock76I don't know what's happening in Canada but it breaks my heart slightly to see the First World War Centennial coming and going here in the US with hardly a burp.
I think it may be more a matter of perspective. In the US you have that beautiful mounument to the Viet Nam War where you list all 56,000 lost soldiers. I just checked and the population then was about 200 million. In Canada during WWI we lost 50,000 soldiers, but our population at the time was only 8 million. Which means for anyone who had family here before WWI, like myself, it affects many things, like our family make up and where we live today. It may be subtle, and sometimes not fully understood, but effects of that war still make up part of who we are today.
Bruce
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere" CP Rail Public Timetable
"O. S. Irricana"
. . . __ . ______
Firelock76- There were numerous remeberances across the land in 2014 and continue as we remember major battles, such as Vimy Ridge, as the 100 years approaches again for each battle.
Canada, as you well know, but maybe not others, entered the war right at the outset in 1914 alongside Britian so were in it 3 years longer than the USA.
Every "podunk" town across the land has a WWI Monument, far more than WWII Monuments. It lists the dead from the town, usually a Cairn or mounted canon.
WWI history is fascinating unto itself. Mankind found industrial slaughter in place of all the high hopes for a limitless future that the Victorians assumed would be. I think your own Civil War was a slight preview of that.
The anniversaries have been a pretty big deal up here.
Harper will visit the National War Memorial on Parliament Hill and deliver remarks at the nearby Canadian War Museum overlooking the Ottawa River.
LIAM RICHARDS/THE CANADIAN PRESS
Stephen Harper said Canada's terrible sacrifice in the First World War made this former British colony truly independent – and he drew parallels to Ottawa's support for beleaguered Ukraine today.
On the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War, the Prime Minister, speaking at the Canadian War Museum on Monday, said from a nation of eight million more than 600,000 Canadians were mobilized in the war effort. By the time the fighting ended, more than a third were killed or wounded. Upwards of 66,000 died and more than 172,000 were injured.
"Yet, amid the appalling loss, by any measure, Canada, as a truly independent country, was forged in the fires of the Western Front," the Prime Minister said.
Canada joined the fight without debate in 1914 after the decision was made in London to declare war on Germany in 1914, but at war's end in 1918 it had a separate seat at council that drew up the Treaty of Versailles.
"When the great nations of the world gathered, we must never forget that our place at the table was not given to us," Mr. Harper said.
"It was bought and paid for on the gas-choked battlefield at Ypres, where John McCrae wrote his immortal work In Flanders Fields; at Vimy Ridge, where Canadian men united under Canadian leaders, achieved a victory that had eluded so many others; in the long, muddy slaughter along the River Somme; in the drenched and cratered wasteland of Passchendaele, where Lieutenant Robert Shankland earned his Victoria Cross; in the sombre and blood-soaked field hospitals, where Beatrice McNair would become one of the first Canadian women to receive military honours for gallantry, standing by her post and comforting her patients while under bombardment."
Mr. Harper announced Canada is expanding the honor guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the National War Memorial. For the next few years, this expanded vigil will take place between the commemoration of the Battle of Vimy Ridge on April 9 and Remembrance Day on Nov. 11.
Although Canada has not pledged troops to Ukraine, Mr. Harper made comparisons between Ottawa's support for Kiev in the face of Russian aggression and deployments over the last 100 years.
"Our commitment to values has never wavered," he said, citing Canada's heavy contribution to the conflict in Afghanistan in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"And it is why today, we stand once again beside friends and allies whose sovereignty, whose territorial integrity – indeed, whose very freedoms and existence – are still at risk," the Prime Minister said, referring to Ukraine and Russia's seizure of Crimea.
There's a significant difference between sending soldiers to war and sending cash or diplomatic support to Kiev, but Mr. Harper didn't elaborate on his comparison. "Wherever, whenever, those values we hold most dear have been threatened, Canada has been prepared to defend and preserve them," he said.
Mr. Harper noted that Canadian troops distinguished themselves in battle between 1914 and 1918 even as tens of thousands paid with their lives.
"The young men of 1914 were inexperienced, but determined," he said. By the end of the war, he said, they were admired by allies and feared by enemies. "They were called the shock troops of the British Empire," Mr. Harper said.
Canada's highest military honour, the Victoria Cross, has not been awarded to a Canadian soldier since 1945. "It is difficult to measure heroism," he said. "But, if the awarding of our greatest military honour tells a story, then let the record show that of the 98 Canadians who have earned the Victoria Cross, 72 of them did so in the First World War."
Mr. Harper reminded listeners that all Canada's veterans of the First World War have now died.
"The last survivor of those courageous men and women who went off to war a century ago – John Babcock – passed away in 2010," he said. "No longer can they tell their stories of courage and honour and duty. But every time that we take a stand to defend the values for which they fought, and for which so many died, we remember their stories in the only way that really matters."
Thank God you folks remember! Thank God someone remembers!
When I was a kid growing up in northern New Jersey in the 60's it seemed like every town had a World War One memorial with an appropriate Doughboy statue on it. I guess my fascination with World War One began with those statues, those odd uniforms didn't look anything at all like the ones the guys wore in all those World War Two movies I used to watch. "Who were those men?" I asked myself. "The World War? When was that?" It was called The World War here in the US. The number "One" came later. Anyway, I made it my business to find out, and what a study it was. Sadly those statues are curiousities now. I wonder if today anyone young looks at them and wonders as I did.
But on the other end of the spectrum, World War Two is still hot-hot-hot, as far as movies, TV shows and documentarys, and even video games are concerned. Probably lots of reasons why, and no one reason. You can start with the "cast of characters" and just go from there.
The irony is, there would have been no World War Two without World War One.
Firelock76The irony is, there would have been no World War Two without World War One.
And there may not have been a WW II if Treaty of Versailles had been conciliatory among the parties instead of vindictive.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACD Firelock76 The irony is, there would have been no World War Two without World War One. And there may not have been a WW II if Treaty of Versailles had been conciliatory among the parties instead of vindictive.
Firelock76 The irony is, there would have been no World War Two without World War One.
Amen brother! Remember the old saying, "Don't kick a man when he's down?" The South was kicked hard when it was down after the Civil War and we wound up with the Ku Klux Klan. The Germans were kicked even harder after World War One and we wound up with Hitler and the Nazi Party.
President Wilson should have known better. He grew up in the Reconstruction South and remembered what it was like, as a boy he even saw Sherman's army come through. As a lawyer and historian he might have guessed what was going to happen but sadly, he didn't.
Thank God the lesson was learned after World War Two. Compare the Treaty of Versailles with the Marshall Plan. What a difference.
Wilson had many failings, but it is a bit unfair to suggest that he was in favor of the punitive peace terms after WWI, or the failure of the League of Nations. He understood the possible consequences, and he was right.
Tom
Firelock76 BaltACD Firelock76 And there may not have been a WW II if Treaty of Versailles had been conciliatory among the parties instead of vindictive. Amen brother! Remember the old saying, "Don't kick a man when he's down?" The South was kicked hard when it was down after the Civil War and we wound up with the Ku Klux Klan. The Germans were kicked even harder after World War One and we wound up with Hitler and the Nazi Party. President Wilson should have known better. He grew up in the Reconstruction South and remembered what it was like, as a boy he even saw Sherman's army come through. As a lawyer and historian he might have guessed what was going to happen but sadly, he didn't. Thank God the lesson was learned after World War Two. Compare the Treaty of Versailles with the Marshall Plan. What a difference.
BaltACD Firelock76 And there may not have been a WW II if Treaty of Versailles had been conciliatory among the parties instead of vindictive.
Firelock76
The South had John Wilkes Booth to thank for the vindictive treatment that they received after the Civil War. Lincoln wanted the country to heal it's wounds, with him killed by Southern sympathizers the healing mood and leadership was eliminated from the reconstruction period.
Booth certainly deserves a lot of the blame, but the fact was there were a lot of "bitter-enders" up North that wanted to see the South punished, and punished hard. They'd have gone after the South even if Lincoln hadn't been killed.
Without Lincoln around to keep them in check the Radical Republicans pretty much had their way. Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson tried to persue Lincoln's policy but without Lincoln's finess and political genius he just couldn't pull it off. A complicated story, too involved to go into here.
Coming soon to completely eliminate all life off the planet: World War Three!
How lucky we are in Century Twenty One. Now we have two nuts in power who can push a pretty red button and start a nuclear holocaust without any notice.
Sadly, the War Between the States continues to be fought deep in the warped minds and cold cold hearts of way too many redneck rambos. Ditto with neo-Nazis!
Thankfully, "Train Nuts" worldwide share a common interest in The World's Greatest Hobby that brings together railfans of all ages and genders on a global scale regardless of race color creed or religion, who enjoy fellowship with one another, with families and friends, be it prototype or model, Big Boy or Thomas, with solid God* given determination to treat each other with respect and dignity.
Railroads in reality have no borders or walls. The sound of a steam locomotive whistle, mellow or high pitched; a diesel air horn, Nathon or beep beep, bring goosebumps to railfans worldwide who have no nationality but are simply wonderful human beings who share a profound love of trains.
*The Railroad Evangelistic Association publishes All Aboard, a free online railroad magazine and is open for all to read who share the love of trains.
Visit www.railroadevangelist.com
Go to Links to read current and back issues of All Aboard. Just out: The Spring 2017 issue which is devoted to children.
Firelock76the fact was there were a lot of "bitter-enders" up North that wanted to see the South punished, and punished hard.
Heck, there were well-organized bitter-enders in post-WWII America who were dedicated to keeping Germany at pre-industrial levels and sterilizing them until 'the race' died out.
Much more likely as a problem was the attitude seen by Tourgee in the post-Civil War South, with one example being the 'black codes' enacted between 1865 and 1867. It would have been interesting to see if "Reconstruction" had progressed better, and post-1877 history been less prone to destructive local initiative, had Lincoln remained at the head of government in the first years after the collapse of the Davis dictatorship.
Sorry for the lack of railroad content. If it is any consolation, World War Three will be fought via EMP strike and counterstrike and will probably be relatively self-limiting, unless autocatalytic. And steam locomotives will still work perfectly well...
Trinity River Bottoms Boomer *The Railroad Evangelistic Association publishes All Aboard, a free online railroad magazine and is open for all to read who share the love of trains. Visit www.railroadevangelist.com
http://www.19thcenturyphotos.com/Jennie-Smith,-the-Railroad-Evangelist-126167.htm
https://archive.org/stream/incidentsandexpe00smitiala#page/184/mode/2up
Yeah but....will the train still be running from Toronto to NYC ( big smoke to the big apple) stopping at the Niagara Falls station in time honoured tradition? The Maple Leaf!
On CP it was down to 2 RDC's (TH&B) to Buffalo with sometimes connections with Penn Central and some pretty decrepit equipment.
CN ran lots of daily RDC's to the Falls but Lehigh Valley connections were gone to the Big Apple.
EMP pulse...maybe wipe out my credit card balances, mortgage? That's ok...but probably bank account and property registrations? Mayhem!
Thank You.
Oh yeah, over on the "Trains" Forum site. That was a pretty good thread too until some individuals decided to go glandular.
Now here on the "Classic Trains" Forum we've got WAY too much class for that! Must be the moderating influence of the love of steam that's responsible. Maybe Trinity River's right, the way to world peace is railfanning with some "steam-freakishness" thrown in!
It's amazing, but it seems no matter what country the sight of a steam train really brings people out.
Back to Fish and Chips for a moment- Whenever I go Stateside, that is down to the US, inevitably somewhere I get a burger and fries, or something with fries ...and of course, being a Canuklehead, I search for the vinegar for my fries, with none in sight anywhere, so I request it...usually get weird looks like "why you wanna clean some windows" kind of look...I say "for the fries"..99.99% of the time I am accommodated and sometimes in very creative ways! Little paper cups, in a drinking glass, once in a while in a an oil and vineagar dressing set, which of course has the wrong kind of vinegar, 'cause it's usually raspberry, which will not do at all. Closer to the border even some fast food places have it in little convenience packs. The more heartland and inland the more creative it gets. Ketchup rules down there, everywhere.
Just thought you might find it a totally useless fact you may not know about. Wonder if there is some kind of condiment Americans are used to that we scamble to find when you request it? Don't think we could come up with any "grits" in a real hurry but that's more of a side dish.
MiningmanWhenever I go Stateside, that is down to the US, inevitably somewhere I get a burger and fries, or something with fries ...and of course, being a Canuklehead, I search for the vinegar for my fries, with none in sight anywhere ...
You have a treat in store the next time you come down -- find a Five Guys and order a large fry, either with a burger or solo.
Plenty of the right kind of vinegar (malt) will be ready at the condiment stand, in proper glass bottles. And little plastic tubs to carry it if you want to dip or pour rather than sprinkle.
Burgers are pretty good too, in my opinion.
RME- Thanks for the great tip! ...and Malt Vinegar is the bomb, as the kids say. Wrote it down, Five Guys, now in my wallet for future reference
NDG- I can smell that coffee right through the computer screen! Lots of ways to make coffee but that was a superior method...also perked coffee at home was good as well, anyone do that anymore?
DW&P in St. Alban's, all in the family! The green and gold was a so classy, but did we know it at the time? or just took it for granted. The noodle, or worm, was bold and modern but did not come close to the green and gold.
I know you disliked the multimark on CPR but I found it quite exciting when it first arrived. The grey and maroon did not hold up well in the weather and in service, got ratty looking after a while. However, it was outstandingly beautiful when clean, or looked after, either script or block lettering. No matter.
Look at those old buses in that picture at St. Albans, classic. I still, however, dislike them for what they did to my streetcars and interurbans.
To the right of the cab on the switcher #7919 is an "ESSO" sign in the background. I thought ESSO was only used in Canada, but it appears I am wrong.
Of course it meant Standard Oil, as folks just called it S O and that became Esso.
All our ESSO gas station attendants had jackets, with their name on the pocket, a cap, and a tie and the ever ready pen, tire gauge and small flashlight in the breast pocket.
Thats not going to happen today! Maybe in Beverly Hills?
We still have ESSO...and Hockey Night in Canada.
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