Canadian Railroads > CP's Cote St.Luc yard, 1969

Back in the 1960's, CP would issue releases for photographic purposes to visit their yards and facilities around Montreal.

I also owned my first good SLR camera, a Pentax Spotmatic.

On weekends, the various switch engines from around the Montreal area would be sent to the Cote St.Luc diesel shop for servicing and a great line of them would form beside the diesel shop.

In April 1969, the new "CP Rail" image and paint scheme was six months old, but as yet not a single yard engine had been repainted.

For many years, Cote St.Luc had a hump yard, and MLW switchers 7033 and 7038 plus booster B101 are shown at work on the hump assignment.

7012 is interesting as it has one AAR truck and one "Blunt" truck and is also equipped with a "Watchman" heater (in front of the engineers window). The Watchman heater was a small diesel powered furnace which heated the engine block to prevent freezing in the winter. It replaced a person, (sometimes a boy of as young as 14) who watched locomotives at yards without a shop staff.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/17/12 10:53 by eminence_grise.

eminence_grise Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Back in the 1960's, CP would issue releases for
> photographic purposes to visit their yards and
> facilities around Montreal.
>
>

It was still pretty friendly in 1973, the year that my best friend and I graduated from our universities and in celebration, we were looping around the US, and touched into Canada to hit Montreal, Toronto and back to New York at Niagara Falls. We found this yard, stopped by a tower and asked if it was possible to have permission to photograph. The operator called the shops and said, “I have a couple of railfans here from California. Can you take care of them?” We drove to the shops, was met by the superintendent, given hard hats, and we were taken outside. After five minutes, our host said, “Oh, you two know what you’re doing. Just stop by the office and drop off the hard hats when you’re leaving.” And with that, we were left to ourselves. And moments later, my camera a mamiya/sekor 1000DTL ceased to operate, but that’s another story. We wandered around all of that action red and white, marveling at the Canadian hospitality.

There was a side note. No sooner than the shop superintendent left us, a company car screeched to a stop in front of us. Out emerged a CPR uniformed policeman, who demanded, “Do you have permission to be here?” To which we responded, “Yes, Mr. ____, just left us to go back into the office. He said we didn’t need to be escorted.” The office visibly deflated when he found out we had permission to be there, and knew the name of the superintendent!

Oh, to be 21 again. And one other thing: during these exchanged in July 1973, no one spoke to us in French. My gosh, did we look that American?

Lee Hower –Sacramento, California

PS - Phil, thanks for the great photos - as always!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/18/12 13:26 by mcfflyer.

Had a simlar experience when I was there in the 70's a number of times. Would just show up, tell them I worked for the railroad in the U.S., show them my rules card and they would tell me to have a good time. Never once signed a release or hasseled by anyone , including CP police.I would hate to try that now.