Canadian Railroads > London: A Cold & Snowy January '77

London Ontario on a cold and snowy day in January '77....40 years ago this weekend.

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Very cool... I mean neat. Great atmosphere! Thanks for posting.

Brrr!

KG

I would imagine the "control compartment" on a Budd car in that kind of weather would have been brutally cold with little or no insulation on the front and I'm sure plenty of air leaks around the doors.
 

This brings back memories. Thanks for posting this.
Bob

Thanks for posting your photos.  I really like Budd RDCs.
I remember January 1977 well.  It was cold and snowy here in Kentucky also.
ALLEN

What an evocative shot, and almost a black-and-white, with the pop of red. Well done, and thanks for posting.
Fred

London and area can certainly have a lot of snow starting mid-November. My next trip to London is in two days and I'm pleased the forecast is for +9 C. with rain.

CN did spray expanding foam insulation inside the control cab. They also provided the engineer with a forced air plug in heater and a portable chair. These were railroad shop made and substantially built. Never the less, the engineer would pack them when he had to change operating cabs.

​CN provided an arbitrary thirty minutes  (or time consumed) over and above other "terminal detention" pay when engineers had to perform other tasks than air brake tests on a train. I would say the extra pay was earned packing a chair and heater.  Packing a roll of toilet paper, not so much.

​Some long established CN work practices and pay survived into the Via years, but vanished with the re-written working agreement after 1990.

​CP engineers lived with the uninsulated cabs and used the fold down seats provided by Budd, and didn't share the arbitrary 30 minutes awarded their CN counterparts.

They did have to pack the portable "gyralight" headlight from cab to cab without extra pay.

​Conductors on RDC;s on both CN and CP often packed a large wooden crate which included paperwork, some tools and either an electric coffee pot adapted to operate on 72 volts, or a similarly modified hot plate and kettle. 

Railbaron Wrote:
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> I would imagine the "control compartment" on a
> Budd car in that kind of weather would have been
> brutally cold with little or no insulation on the
> front and I'm sure plenty of air leaks around the
> doors.
>  



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/17 11:51 by eminence_grise.