A National Passenger Chronicle: (Volume 1) A History of Canadian National Railways & Predecessor Passenger Services
First volume in Dale Wilson's through history of the Canadian National railways and their predecessor passenger lines, such as the Grand Trunk and the Intercolonial.
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By Steam Boat and Steam Train: The Story of the Huntsville and Lake of Bays Railway and Navigation Companies
A great little book about romantic holiday steamers and the small train that linked them.
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Calgary’s Electric Transit: An Illustrated History of Electrified Public Transportation in Canada’s Oil Capital
Calgary’s Electric Transit is the story of electric street railway, trolleybus and light rail vehicle transit in Canada’s western city of Calgary, Alberta. Calgary was founded in 1875, when the North West Mounted Police established a new fort – Fort Calgary. A big boost for Calgary came eight years later, when the Canadian Pacific Railway – building westward to the Pacific – reached the Bow River in 1883. Calgary became an important centre for Canadian Pacific operations and has since become the railway’s headquarters location. By 1909, Calgary boasted a population of 30, 000 people. In July of that year the Calgary Electric Railway began operations with two cars, sixteen employees and three miles of track. The system quickly grew and the following year became known as the Calgary Municipal Railway. Through its forty years of street railway service, Calgary acquired passenger cars from such well-known Canadian builders as Ottawa Car Manufacturing Company, Preston Car & Coach Company and the Canadian Car & Foundry. In addition, the system’s roster included used cars from several sources in the United States. Totalling 113 cars in all – plus a scenic car – it has been a daunting task to secure photos for this book. Many superb images have been discovered, illustrating the operation of streetcars in different sections of the city. There are over 150 streetcar photos. Finding trolleybus photographs has been a challenge as well, but the authors have succeeded in gathering a fine selection representing all classes of 'trackless trolley' coaches purchased new and acquired used from other US systems. You’ll see streetcars and trolleybuses operating in the city centre, in the rural suburbs, and in residential neighbourhoods. Coverage of today’s modern rail transit cars is outstanding. Now called 'light rail vehicles', all classes of these LRVs are represented, operating in all seasons, and over most portions of the system, illustrating the many varied and unique Calgary urban environments. Rich, carefully composed black and white photos are rounded out with a fine showing of subjects in colour. There’s a variety of photos to interest everyone with an interest in the development of Calgary as a city: the construction of 'The Bay', early scenes in Bowness Park, and some views of the streetcars serving seemingly unpopulated fields that today are thriving subdivisions. Whether you’re a railway enthusiast or simply interested in Calgary’s history, you’ll find Colin Hatcher and Tom Schwarzkopf’s 200-page account of Calgary’s Electric Transit a fascinating, informative and enjoyable reading experience.
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Canadian National Steam!: A Locomotive History of The People’s Railway
An updated and expanded text based on Clegg & Corley's "Canadian National Steam Power", outlining the history and technical development of steam power as influenced by the different CNR Motive Power Chiefs. It includes a summary of all classes with wheel types, road- and builders-numbers, a list of all predecessor and subsequent owners of CNR power, a builder's list of CNR steam power, a bibliography, plus hundreds of photos, with spectacular colour covers. Includes a guide to the individual locomotive roster volumes, plus an extensive series of appendices covering across-the-classes items such as livery, sales, leases, appliance application (inc. compounding, gearing, superheating, feedwater heating, smoke deflectors, stokers, oil burners, cab and tender designs).
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Canadian National Steam!: Volume 3
The subsequent roster volumes contain the individual locomotive rosters by CNR classes according to similar or related wheel arrangements (including Newfoundland and the Central Vermont). Every steam locomotive is listed, and the roster provides all the information you'd ever want to know (and then some), including build data, ownership history, appliance history, class notes. Volume 3 covers: 400 to 429 — 2-6-0 — Class C 470 to 504 — 2-6-0 — Class D 530 to 929 — 2-6-0 — Class E
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Canadian National Steam!: Volume 4
The subsequent roster volumes contain the individual locomotive rosters by CNR classes according to similar or related wheel arrangements (including Newfoundland and the Central Vermont). Every steam locomotive is listed, and the roster provides all the information you'd ever want to know (and then some), including build data, ownership history, appliance history, class notes. Volume 4 covers: 1000 to 1018 — 4-6-0 — Class F 1016 to 1178 — 4-6-0 — Class G 1200 to 1454 — 4-6-0 — Class H 1500 to 1628 — 4-6-0 — Class I
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Canadian National Steam!: Volume 6
The subsequent roster volumes contain the individual locomotive rosters by CNR classes according to similar or related wheel arrangements (including Newfoundland and the Central Vermont). Every steam locomotive is listed, and the roster provides all the information you'd ever want to know (and then some), including build data, ownership history, appliance history, class notes. Volume 6 covers: 3000 to 1720 — 2-8-2 — Class R 3198 to 3805 — 2-8-2 — Class S 4000 to 4732 — 2-10-2 — Class T 5000 to 5304 — 4-6-2 — Class J 5500 to 5634 — 4-6-2 — Class K 5700 to 5704 — 4-6-4 — Class K
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Canadian National’s Western Stations
Author Charles Bohi has spent countless summers combing Canada's west for information and photographing thousands of stations and structures. The result is this concise, authoritative account accompanied by over 130 photos and sketches. But not simply snapshots of boarded-up stations...almost all the photos are superb action shots, showing the stations in use, occupied, earning revenue, or with today's train passing through. You'll see how the station agent and his family lived in their own depot-home, complete with flower gardens and neatly trimmed hedges. You'll shiver as you think about the waiting room's pot-bellied stoves that the agents stoked, trying vainly to keep cold prairie winds at bay. And you'll learn just what made each station unique and what to look for when you next go "station hunting". With archival research and photographs from CNSIG (Canadian National Special Interest Group).
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Canadian Pacific in Southern Ontario (Volume One)
This work brings together a selection of photographs and reminiscences of the author's days as a rail photographer and railroader, during the sunset period of the great steam era. The author's enthusiasm for steam locomotives goes back far beyond the 1950's. One of the author's earliest recollections is of when his aunt, at the author's urging took him to a local street crossing in Toronto where we spent a pleasant afternoon in the crossing watchman's hut looking at the parade of steam on the Toronto to Montreal main line. About two years later in 1930, one of the greatest events of the author's life took place. His uncle purchased a small farm in Oakville. The farm bordered the Canadian National's Toronto to Hamilton main line. Heaven on earth had been attained! This was one of the busies railroad lines in Canada, with the variety of power from four different roads-- the Canadian National, the Canadian Pacific, the Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo, and the New York Central. Day and night, great trains thundered by, 300 feet from the house.
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Canadian Pacific in Southern Ontario (Volume Two)
This book is covers the operations of the Canadian Pacific Railway in Southern Ontario focusing on the Locomotives.
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Canadian Pacific Railway
Most North American railroads began their lives as local or regional enterprises, growing larger through acquisition and construction. By contrast, Canadian Pacific Railway was conceived as a transcontinental railroad from the beginning. CPR has not only provided transportation; it has given tangible expression to the political, economic, and social connections between Canada's eastern and western provinces. In this marvellously illustrated history, author Tom Murray provides readers with an engaging look at the railroad whose own history is, in many ways, the history of Canada itself. In addition to examining the prehistory leading to CPR's incorporation in 1881 and its current status as one of the continent's leading carriers, Murray explains the colossal geographic obstacles overcome by CPR's founders; motive power and rolling stock through depression, war, and peacetime; renowned diversification efforts that included a passenger ship line, an airline serving four continents, a chain of four-star hotels, and western mining operations; and the colorful cast of characters who laid the groundwork that made CPR what is today. Marvelous photography carefully chosen from the collections of top rail photographers and archives across Canada and the United States illustrate the national icon that began as a railway, became a global transportation system, and evolved into a diversified industrial conglomerate before settling into its role as the respected carrier it is today.
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Canadian Pacific’s Trans-Canada Limited (1919-1930)
Pictorial history of the beautiful Trans-Canada Limited which was the Canadian Pacific's premier passenger train in the 1920s. Illustrated throughout with black and white photos, reproductions of ads and timetables, etc.
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Canadian Railway Scenes (No. 1)
This Exciting book compiled by Adolf Hungry Wolf covers: NewFoundland Narrow Gauge Crowsnest and Kettle Valley Montreal Vignette Winnipeg, Manitoba Surviving steam in Canada and an illustrated listing
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Canadian Railway Scenes (No. 3)
Canadian railway history was made at the Steam Expo in 1986 as three of the country’s best known steam engines met for the first time and probably the last. In this third volume we will discover and learn the history of the C.P.R. “Last Spike” Centennial as well as the “Trans-Canada Ltd.” to Expo ‘86 aboard a restored Luxury Train, and Vintage scenes of CN and CP.
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Canadian Trackside Guide 2004
This is the only comprehensive guide to Canadian Railways: - Locomotives of CN, CPR, VIA, plus Regionals and Industrials - Preserved equipment - Passenger cars - Urban rail transit - Cabooses - Non-revenue equipment - Radio frequencies - Passenger train schedules - Freight train numbers - Railway reporting marks - Maps of major cities detailing rail lines - Detailed divisional maps and subdivision listings for all Canadian railways and their U.S. components, including station names, mileposts, detectors, siding lengths, locations of crossovers, wyes and more
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Famous Name Trains: Travelling in Style With the CPR
Have you ever wondered, while sitting in traffic or waiting to board a crowded airplane, what it was like to travel the rails? In his new book, Famous Name Trains: Travelling in Style with the CPR, former CPR archivist David Laurence Jones goes back in time to describe what it was like to travel on some of the CPR's famous "name trains," like the Pacific Express, the Imperial Limited, and the Canadian. Jones evokes both the practical interiors of the early colonist cars with their communal sleeping arrangements and wooden bench seats, and the luxury of the higher-end cars that looked and felt like rolling men's clubs with wooden veneers, plush carpets, and upholstered chairs. These first-class cars would later become five-star hotels on wheels. Jones tracks the evolution of the passenger train, detailing improvements in engine strength, heating, lighting, interior design, and innovative sleeping arrangements. Although the focus of the book is the CPR's famous name trains, Jones talks about other CPR enterprises that fed into and contributed to the railway. These included the dining halls and mountain chalets built at railway divisional points across the country, the rustic bungalow camps operated in both Ontario and within the Canadian Rockies, and the CPR's iron steamships that sailed the Great Lakes. Steamships like the Algoma, Alberta, and Athabasca provided passenger service between Owen Sound and what is now part of Thunder Bay, connecting passengers to CPR trains heading west. As the reader will find out, the steamships have their own stories to tell, both romantic and tragic. With a Forward by Gary Anderson, director of the Canadian Museum of Rail Travel.
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Gravity, Steam and Steel: An Illustrated Railway History of Rogers Pass
Steep grades, extreme climate, avalanche hazard, tunnels, trestles, and bridges-all in a wilderness setting-Rogers Pass packs a great deal of railway interest into 65 miles of track. Using 80 archival photographs, many previously unpublished, Gravity, Steam, and Steel: An Illustrated Railway History of Rogers Pass tells the stories of railway triumphs and tragedies on one of the most notorious sections of track in the world. For almost 125 years, CP Rail has battled the elements at Rogers Pass, spending hundreds of millions of dollars while creating solutions new to railroading. Gravity, Steam, and Steel was conceived and written as a companion volume to The Spiral Tunnels and the Big Hill, which has sold more than 25,000 copies since publication in 1996. Rogers Pass is a major focus in Glacier National Park (the park visitor centre is there) and the photographic material available from this area is incredibly diverse and interesting. There is no similar title on the market. Train buffs and locals will welcome this book. It will also be of interest the visiting public, many of whom want to broaden a casual interest in Canadian history.
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Great Lakes Ore Docks and Ore Cars
The iron mining industry was quite extensive throughout the area known as the Lake Superior Iron Ore District, which included Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ontario and other prominent iron mining regions to the north-east and east of Lake Superior in Ontario as well Quebec and Labrador. All of the iron ore was transported by rail to a wide number of lake ports on Lake Superior, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. This book lists all of the ore docks constructed on the Great Lakes, as well as their operational life span right up to the present time. Each chapter for each railroad includes the types of ore docks once or currently operated as well as a roster of ore cars from the 1940s to the present time, and includes photos of the ore docks and ore cars, ore car schematics and pertinent data. It also provides some new perspectives for historical and future research, and can be used for the art work of model railroading.
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Great Western Railway of Canada: Southern Ontario’s Pioneer Railway
A look back on the brief and spectacular history of Canada'’s Great Western Railway. This book chronicles the genesis and all-too-brief existence of one of Canada’'s greatest early railways, the Great Western Railway of Canada (1853–1882), a major precursor to the Canadian National Rail system. Today, the Great Western Railway of Canada is a little-known historic line, overlooked even by many railway aficionados. But it was truly a railway ahead of its time. It was a pioneer in combining land- and water-based transportation, including the introduction of river car-ferries and passenger/freight steamships on the Great Lakes. It made waves of a different kind with its acquisition of the American-owned railway linking Detroit, Grand Haven, and Milwaukee. And its mammoth workshops were industrial monuments in Hamilton and London, Ontario, where inventive geniuses laboured to supply the booming rail trade of southern Ontario. It was the ancestor of some of the most heavily used rail lines in all of Canada. This book has been written to do justice to a railway that truly must be considered one of Canada’'s trailblazing lines. Amply illustrated with previously unpublished photographs and a thorough historical record of the Great Western Railway’s locomotives and rolling stock, it offers a ride back in time into the vanishing history of early Ontario railroading.
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I Remember Sunnyside: The Rise & Fall of a Magical Era
First published in 1982, I Remember Sunnyside is a mine of golden memories, bringing back to life an earlier Toronto, only hints of which remain today. Like the city itself, Sunnyside was an everchanging landscape from its heady opening days in the early 1920s to its final sad demolition in the 1950s. The book captures the spirit of the best of times a magical era which can only be recaptured in memory and photographs. It also presents the reality of a newer Toronto where change, although necessary, is sometimes regrettable.
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Lord Strathcona: A Biography of Donald Alexander Smith
Donald Smith, known to most Canadians as Lord Strathcona, was an adventurer who made his fortune building railroads. He joined the Hudson's Bay Company at age eighteen and went on to build the first railway to open the Canadian Northwest to settlement. As his crowning achievement, he drove the last spike for the nation-building Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1896, Smith became Canada's High Commissioner in London and was soon elevated to the peerage. He became a generous benefactor to Canadian institutions. This eminently readable biography brings to light new information, including details about Strathcona's personal life and his scandalous marriage.
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McCulloch’s Wonder: The Story of the Kettle Valley Railway (25th Anniversary Edition)
The new edition of McCULLOCH'S WONDER provides train buffs with a long-awaited update to a classic railway history. New visuals capture the dramatic landscape that had to be conquered to complete the railway. Updated sources provide more information about the individuals, from Andrew McCulloch himself to the laborers who made the railway a reality. Governments rose and fell over the project, which linked the Kootenay Mountains with the Pacific Coast, and the railway dominated headlines for a quarter of a century. Although it is no more, the Kettle Valley Railway is just as newsworthy today and lives on in this fascinating story of the world`s most difficult and expensive railway.
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Myra’s Men: Building the Kettle Valley Railway, Myra Canyon to Penticton
It was not your standard railway. Instead of wending its way through the valleys, along the river banks and paralleling the mountain ranges like most railways, the KVR ran across the mountain ranges, down into the valleys, and then up the other side again. Instead of avoiding steep grades, sharp curves, heavy snow, and cold weather, the KVR faced all of these. Instead of traversing through a land rich in people and trade, it operated in a region in want of inhabitants; those who lived there were settled in communities no larger than a few thousand. No wonder it has been called Canada's most expensive railway. Williams has focused his historian’s eye not only on the visionary engineers who oversaw the work, but also on the everyday lives of the immigrant labourers -- the “navvies” -- who blasted the tunnels, laid the tracks and built the soaring trestles on a spectacular rail line that has become one of Canada’s most scenic historic treasures.
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Niagara St. Catharines and Toronto Railway: Electric Transit in Canada’s Niagara Peninsula
From its inception as a horsecar line in 1874, the Niagara, St. Catharines, & Toronto Railway is one of the foremost examples in Canada of an intensively developed and closely integrated transportation system. It operated local street railways, interurban lines, carload and less-than-carload freight, lake steamers, a large motor coach system, and even a circle trolley line around the Niagara Gorge. The NS&T and predecessors include the first electric railway in Canada to have operated without interruption, and the last interurban passenger service. Each aspect of the company’s operations was coordinated with others to form a transportation system which, while comparatively small in area, was very active in operation, and several distinct types of passenger service (local, commuter, inter-city and excursion) were developed. Author John Mills tells the story of all of them, with details on where the routes ran, maps of the line, stations, and connections with the many major railways that served the Niagara Peninsula. There are 256 pages of text, containing nine detailed system maps, a roster of the railway’s rolling stock, and over 300 fascinating photographs, fifty in full colour. Niagara, St. Catharines, & Toronto Railway tells the story of one of the area’s primary people mover operations in the days before automobile travel became dominant. With electric interurban railway cars and city streetcars serving key towns along the line, and ship connections to Toronto, the thriving and growing communities of Niagara Falls, St. Catharines, Welland, Port Dalhousie and others were well connected with other parts of Canada. They were also well connected with USA, thanks to frequent clean-running electric cars that travelled across the Canada-USA border on a regular through-fare basis. With hundreds of photos, many in full colour, the spectacular scenery of the area comes alive. Equipment is described, the system’s operations chronicled, and the excitement of expanding ship and electric transit is captured for the reader.
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