Canadian Railroads > MLW Monday BCR M420W #640 Prince George,BC. 3/23/83

BCR #640 sitting outside the Prince George Shops on 3/23/83. This unit would be involved in a wreck along with a few more M420Bs at M.P.104 on the Takla Sub. a little more than 10 years later on 1/30/94.

---

Any idea what is left in PG?
I would think the CN would have moved everything to their side of the tracks.

Last time I was in Prince George, 2013, the BC Rail loco shop was a busy place.  After CN took over BCR, a lot of locomotive servicing and repairs was done at the BCR (south yard) shops. Very little was done at the CN loco shops. Several trains for the CN side originated and terminated at the BCR south yard instead of the CN yard. Also locomotives were cycled through on trains from the BCR side to the CN side and vice versa. Also the BCR car shops were busy as well as the new wheel shop. Before I left BCR (2008), it was a normal thing to have several crews in the "bull pen" going on or off duty. Oddly with several crews there I did not know the fellows as usually they were CN employees. For some reason or other the CN guys were not friendly to the BCR guys, some sort of animosity.

The BCR loco shop has a 2 bay "trip center" for servicing locos, several fuel racks as well a newer sanding tower. Also the shops did inspections and repairs in 3 of 4 other bays. One bay had a wheel lathe for truing wheels without removing them. Radio shop did communication repairs and DPU setup and sequence testing.

Images of the BCR Prince George locomotive shop, taken at the south end looking north.
Doug



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/17 06:33 by hoggerdoug.

---

---

hoggerdoug Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
. Before I left BCR (2008), it
> was a normal thing to have several crews in the
> "bull pen" going on or off duty. Oddly with
> several crews there I did not know the fellows as
> usually they were CN employees. For some reason or
> other the CN guys were not friendly to the BCR
> guys, some sort of animosity.
>

​There certainly was a certain "stand offishness" between CN employees and those of other railways. Odd, because for running trades employees, the work rules and agreements were very similar to those on CP.

​Back in the aerly 1980's, someone in Jasper gave me a CN Mountain Region ball cap, which I wore regularly working as a running trade employee at CP.
I would get comments from supervisors and co-workers.

​Later, I had a union position that had me meeting and talking to CN and BCR workers. They were not "stand-offish" then because I was not immediately identified as a CP worker.