Page 5 - Remembering the "Judique Flyer"

ISSUE : Issue 19

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1978/6/1

$ TRAIN WRECK ON GLENDYRE CANADIAN NORTHERN 4-6-0 #79, renumbered GRADE, JULY 11 TH 1912 '> -??-.. • ? 1219 later INVERNESS #1. At Glendyer the Driver William Campbell was killed. Fireman John D. MacDonald injured. steaming engine, you didn't shovel that much. But most of the time you did. You'd pick up the coal in Inverness • the mines would load it, had an engine chute. Then they had a chute here at Hastings at what they called the little pier to load the tender up with coal again. Then driving • the biggest part you had driving an engine was control of your train. Watch what you were doing. The old fellows, when they started first, they really had a hard life. They had open cabs on the engine and they had no curtains on them at all. In the wintertime, yes, no curtains at all. That's 1901 and 1902. Then they started to put curtains on them and tried to get them half fixed for the winter. And if you were on on a real bad day and you were snowplowing it • that driver probably didn't have a dry stitch on. Snow blowing around him and everything else. They had a hard life. All kinds of weather, and sectionmen had it hard • out in all kinds of weather, run-offs and this and that. First of all, when they started on the I&R;, they had no snowplow. So they made a kind of snowplow that hooked on what they called the pilot, on the front of the eng? ine. That used to help break the snow. But as far as snow is concerned, we've got no snow here to what we used to have. None at all. But we kept running. Just kept buck? ing the snow. And you'd get stuck in it and you'd be there shovelling her out. Sectionmen, mostly. And then they'd go up and get some farmers to come shovelling. I've seen one cut here at Creignish • they handled the snow in one cut about 6 times before they shoveled it up over the bank. The fellow who'd be down below on the tracks shovelling, he's throwing it up to the next fellow, and he's throwing it up to the next • till they got it up over the bank. Now that was snow. You couldn't see an engine in some of the snowbanks. It was a good life, in a way. A good clear night you were all right. But you never knew. When you left Inverness, especially in the wintertime, with snow flying, you never knew when you were going to get to Hast? ings • liable to be stuck all over the road. Often out all night. Just stay in the engine. (Did you have a radio to com- miinicate?) No, there was nothing. If you were in trouble • either brakeman would walk to the closest station. But most of the time they knew if it was a heavy storm, that you were going to be stuck in a snowbank somewhere. Farmers came down to shovel • 25 cents an hour. Aw, those old fellows worked pretty hard. They really worked for a living. Fellows today wouldn't do it. They wouldn't think of do? ing it. There was a wreck at Glendyer. Fellow by the name of Bill Campbell, he was scalded right in the engine. The pipes broke and that was it. The fireman that was with him was Steve Gillis. And the information that I got from Steve firing for him was that when they came down the hill she jumped the track on the curve • it's above Glen? dyer Station, what they call the Big Curve • and they thought she was heading up the bank. Whatever happened, Steve said he didn't know, but he had been standing up putting the ejector on her (putting water in the boiler) when she jumped the track. If she went into the bank, she wouldn't have rolled over. But the first thing, she Cards for All Occasions The Card Shoppe Sydney Shopping Centre H,cnic Tables Well-water Ice Cubes Morrison's General Store NRSeC COVB

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