"Watch the curves, the fills and tunnels
Never falter, never quail
Keep your hand upon the throttle
And your eye upon the rail." ~Life's Railway to Heaven
Have you ever heard the expression “growing up on the wrong
side of the tracks”? I never could make sense of that saying. To me, there is
no such thing as the wrong side of the tracks; both sides are equally wonderful.
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| Tracks leading to White River |
I grew up in northern Ontario; in a tiny, whistle-stop town
called White River, where life was simple and everyone knew everyone else. We
spent thirteen years in the “big gray house” on the corner of Winnipeg and Monck,
which means the greater part of my childhood was spent living “on the tracks.” Our
house was directly across the road from approximately 9 tracks and just up the
street from the station. Trains were perhaps the most faithful things in my
childhood; winter or summer, rain or shine, snow or fog, you could always count
on those big engines roaring by.
As a child, I spent hours in my parents’ bedroom with its
two big windows that overlooked the tracks. The steady routine of the railway
does become part of you after a few years, and I soon learned to recognize the
various trains, trucks, and signals like the back of my hand.
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| This photo was taken from my parents' bedroom window; you can see how close we were! |
The train always blew
its horn for the Road 500 crossing just behind the sawmill, about two miles
from our house. Those lonely whistles were both my lullaby and my alarm clock,
the first thing I heard in the morning and the last thing I heard at night. I
remember one evening, though, when something went wrong with one of the train
horns. When the engineer sounded the horn before the crossing, I believe the
switch must have gotten stuck in the “on” position, because it kept sounding
one long, continuous blast for the entire time it took for the train to travel
the two miles from the sawmill until it passed our house, and up until the
engine came to a stop at the far end of town. Needless to say, we were nearly
deafened!
As a child, the trains fascinated me. If I was out playing
in the yard, I stopped everything to wave at the engineer when those engines
rolled through town. Often, I was rewarded by a hand fluttering in greeting
from the cab, and often a short blast of the horn. Then, I would lean on the
fence and watch those railcars lazily rocking through town, heading west or
east to all sorts of places. Apparently I also became a familiar sight to the
men who made their living driving the big locomotives. I’ll never forget
walking with my parents alongside the tracks one day when we stopped to wave to
a VIA passenger train going by. To our astonishment, the two-car train slowed
down and came to a halt right in front of us. The engineer poked his head out
the doorway and hollered to me, “Are you the little girl who always waves to
the trains?” When I replied in the affirmative, he shouted back, “Come on down
to the station sometime when we’re there, and we’d be happy to take you for a
ride!” Sadly, we never took him up on that offer. I’ve regretted that ever
since.
Watching the trains was always an interesting pastime; you
just never knew what would go by. Besides the ordinary mix of grain cars,
tankers, flatbeds, boxcars, vehicle decks, and loads of hydro poles (like those
above), some trains consisted entirely of loads of metal rails, stretching from
car to car the entire length of the train. One day an old-fashioned steam
engine passed through, on its way to a museum somewhere out west. Another day a
circus train went by. I always liked to see the “army trains”; trains carrying
army equipment. Flatbeds were filled with tanks, army jeeps, and lorries of all
shapes and sizes.
Of course, the most fun part of daily rail life was watching
the “machines” go by. All sorts of yellow equipment for doing everything one
could imagine to the tracks; building, repairing, maintaining, and plenty more
that I know nothing about. They came rolling quickly, heading from one worksite
to another and making various hums, roars, and funny honks as they passed by.
Sometimes a crew would set up in front of the house and stay there for a while;
they could have a track practically taken apart and pieced back together in a
matter of hours.
Some of the sights were pretty odd, like this smiling
outhouse going for a ride! I guess he was a welcome sight wherever he went,
hence the smiley face!
Sometimes when a snowstorm blew up, the machines had to be
shoveled out before they could leave. It wasn’t unusual to see an army of
workers wielding shovels walking along the tracks to free some piece of
equipment or another.
I spent a lot of time at this station. I remember as a
little girl, walking hand-in-hand with my father down that very platform to
watch the trains come in. We could always hear the grumble of the engine long
before we saw it. We would keep watching, and finally a cloud of black smoke
would roll above the trees and the engine (or engines, sometimes as many as
nine or more) would come huffing into view. The ground would shudder, and the
noise of the train would increase to a deafening pitch. We’d have to scream to
be heard as the airbrakes were applied with an ear-splitting shriek. Then the
locomotive would glide by mere feet away, shaking the ground until I didn’t
know what was vibrating more, the ground or my legs! Finally, the train would
slow down and come to a rumbling, snorting stop.
Since our house was just opposite the railway, we became
accustomed to noise at all hours. It was especially difficult during the
sweltering summer nights when all the windows were thrown open, and a freighter
would snarl past at 4:00 a.m. Or sometimes, a train that was parked quietly
would suddenly start off with a crash and a clang loud enough to wake the dead.
I remember one time when a freighter, for some reason, got delayed and parked
its engine directly in front of our house. I’m not sure why it was necessary for
the motor to keep running the entire time it was parked, but needless, to say,
after three days of hissing and clicking we were nearly insane!
On a typical day, upwards of twenty trains could go by.
Sometimes there were more and sometimes less, depending on circumstances. If
there happened to be a derailment somewhere along the line, we might have seven
or eight trains parked on the sidings, only keeping the main line clear. I can
only remember a few times when the trains stopped running; for instance, during
the forest fire of ’99 when half the town was evacuated. The trains didn’t run
for more than a week, but the town was miraculously saved by a wind that blew
steadily from the south for a full week, keeping the flames away from the
community. (A real miracle, considering that our winds almost always blew from
the north!) I can also remember a few blizzards that stopped the lines for a couple
of days. Other than that, they stayed on schedule.
During the summer, the air would be filled with the scent of
melting tar and rust from the rails and ties baking in the heat. Shimmering
heat waves would dance over the tracks, and you could see wildflowers poking up
between the ties. Crows and ravens would hop along the lines, eating grain that
was spilled from the grain cars. Occasionally, a grain car would develop a “leak”
of sorts, and then you could see the tracks dotted with small golden heaps of
wheat. I remember my father bringing home a bucketful of barley grains he had
collected while walking home from work (A rail worker gave him permission,
since the grain would have rotted anyway). I liked nothing better than to slip
into my fathers’ dark shed and run my fingers through those icy-cold, dusty
grains. We planted some that year, and my mother made dried-flower arrangements
with the stalks that grew.
Check out this video of a rail grinder like the ones that passed in front of our house!
My favorite summer occurrence was the passing of the “grinder
train” (Rail Grinder). I could always hear it approaching, not only because of
its higher-pitched “nasal” horn, but also because of the buzz-saw-like sound of
the grinders. I always loved to watch the smoke-enveloped rail grinder go back
and forth in front of the house, with sparks shooting from below and a steady
stream of water pouring over the rails to prevent fires. Even in the evening,
when it was too dark to see, the grinder would continue to work with the orange
sparks lighting up the night.
In the winter, you could always count on the snowplows
running through, flinging plumes of snow (and often rocks) in the air. We were
always thankful that no rocks ever came through our windows; some of them came
pretty close!
And then, of course there was the “Big Event”: the Canadian Pacific
Railway Holiday Train. We just called it the “Christmas Train.” It came every
year around Christmastime, raising money for the local food banks. The whole
town would gather near the station, bundled up against the 30-below weather.
The air would be filled with talking and laughing, then someone would shout, “Here
it comes!” and the Holiday Train would come sweeping through the darkness,
ablaze with over 100,000 lights. As a young child, it was usually too cold to
stay for the entire outdoor concert performed from one of the boxcars, but the
best was yet to come anyway… when the concert was over and the crowds had gone
home, the train would slowly pull a little ways away from the station and park
directly in front of our house for the night. Mom and I would scurry upstairs
and poke our heads through the window into the breathlessly cold air and admire
the train sitting silently on the tracks, with its lights twinkling and
flashing and soft Christmas music coming from its speakers. If you squinted
through the whirling snowflakes, you could sometimes see Santa Clause walking
through one of the antique cars, on his way to bed.
Check out this video of the Christmas Train passing through Illinois!
There are lot of things I miss about my childhood; growing
up in a time of innocence, in a safe little town where a kid could be kid, and
where life was slow and as lazy as the freighters that rumbled by. I’m still
young by most people’s standards, but sometimes I feel like the years are
flying past like a passenger train on the run, and I miss the “old days.” Now
that I live in Newfoundland, where there isn’t a train on the island, I find
myself longing to be woken up by one of those loud diesel engines once again.
Every so often I imagine that I hear that lonely, far-off whistle, and then I
get a little lost in nostalgia and promise myself, “One day, I’ll be back.” And
until then, I’ll say a prayer for the folks that ride the rails from coast to
coast. Drive safely, rail warriors, and when you see a little child standing
alongside the tracks, wave and blow your horn, because you might give wings (or
wheels) to a dream.
