Railroad Memories, 1959-60, by Brian Bosnell

From MemoryArchive

Who: Brian Bosnell
What: Railroad Memories
When: 1959-1960
Where: Brantford, Ontario, Canada

CNR-TH&B-LE&N:A BOYHOOD RAILROAD TRILOGY

I am convinced that in some past existence I was a "brakeman".

I grew up in East Ward not far from the nexus of railways that haphazardly meshed where the Parking Garage is now. In my first image I see my mother and I walking across the Market Street Bridge. Just below, calmly venting steam rests a locomotive. My mother must have motioned to the engineer to blow his whistle. He did. I cried, startled as the sound of the released steam pierced my ears.

Most of my boyhood summertime activities meant some involvement with the three railroads. The CNR (Canadian National),the LE&N (Lake Erie & Northern) and the TH&B (Toronto,Hamilton and Buffalo) all joined together in that old canal basin to exchange box cars. Whether it was fishing in the Grand or swimming at Earl Haig Pool the three railways always provided tracks to balance on, and trains to watch. Any empty car, provided someone hadn't reached it first, had its compressed air tank "relieved".

We named the three railway bridges that crossed the Grand River in order, The Big Black Bridge, The Silver Bridge and The Small Black Bridge. We knew the daily train schedules in a general way and would often slip down between the ties over the concrete, mid-river abutment and wait for the shunting engine and several cars to pass overhead.

The LE&N was a radial line (electric like a trolley) at that time. During my swimming lesson days at Earl Haig Pool I often watched the three or four car freight "arc" by. The word arc is appropriate if you have ever seen and heard a trolley rumble along the rails.

Since I spent a great deal of time at Earl Haig I knew that when the yellow, one man "putt-putt" went by the freight wasn't far behind. It always preceded the train.

Occasionally an open tanker car half-filled with foul smelling, glue factory bound, horse (cow) hides would be parked on a short connecting line to the TH&B. Courageous was the boy who climbed the ladder and "walked the plank" along an edge of that rail car.

The spirit of those rail lines still seems to follow me. Many years later I lived at the end of Burwell Street precisely where the old LE&N tracks passed by. That section from Cambridge to Brantford had become a spur line of the CPR. I watched from the bank on Parkside Drive as the last caboose ever to ride those rails rocked into the distance. I waved to the brakeman standing on the platform of the caboose.He returned my wave. I sensed a melancholy in that wave.

The word brakeman no longer exists.