June 2009

The last stock car

                Born in 1929 the last stock car now sat on a siding in Pearson waiting for the weeds and tall grass to cover the ancient wheels.   It had been there since last October.  The birds and small children had made homes and forts on the inside.  An upgrade in 1961 had given it some new life but real work was fast disappearing.   Like a Vaudeville act with brand new legs.   It just didn’t matter any more.

                As a result, I would soon be witness to the passing of an era.  This fall the old CN stock car, along with the last in the Winter Valley fleet, would be put to use one more time.  Paul had called about a shipment of beef planed for Len’s Meats.  Both surviving cars would be picked up tomorrow, loaded at Fox Creek, and delivered out to the plant this weekend.  Then they would be exchanged with CN in the Edmonton and moved to Winnipeg for scrap.  After nearly 50 years of faithful service they will be replaced by a growing trucking industry.  Signs of the times I guess.

                The Aristocraft paint wasn’t correct anyway. That maple leaf never graced a lowly stock car but I liked the ‘look’ of it and so it was one of my earliest acquisitions.  Joined later by a yard sale purchase of a different colour scheme that would become Winter Valley 723.  Both cars fitted into my mid seventies world but were seldom used (as in the 1:1 world) simply because I had no work for them.  With the completion of Len’s they both came off the shelf.

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            I arrived in Grande Prairie just as 5006 and her running mates were being fueled after the trip from the city.  The reliable old geep would be shopped here over night but the newer SD, serviced by contract with CN, still had work to do before bedding down.  The crew had already uncoupled her and was preparing to bring home that stray CN stock car, if the wheels still turned, and move it, along with our own 723, to a convenient grain siding for the night.  Both of them would be in the consist for Fox Creek in the morning.

                The facility at Grande Prairie isn’t large enough for my railroad.  It was large enough when construction was just underway but not now.  I have a plan to bring a track off the main line behind the furnace and hot water heater and between the Grande Prairie grain elevator and the line into Fox.Creek.  That line would branch into a four-track, ten-foot long stub end yard parallel with the GP fuel track and ending at a main support post.

            This would cut the ‘lounge’ area in ½ but it would still leave a useful social space.  It would also give me more than enough room to make up trains away from the main line.  That old chesterfield would have to go, sofa to some of you, but it’s been McLeods bed anyway and should be put out of its misery. 

                As expected Paul was there when the empty cars arrived.  Paul was the operator at the UGG and an avid camera buff.  Was he here as a witness to history; as a caretaker of the grain siding or to ask me how I liked my new Zenit E type SLR?  I blew what I though was a smallish fortune on this baby when Simpson’s catalogue had them for $89.00.  That seemed like a real bargain when confronted with the three or four hundred dollar price tag attached to the various American and Japanese models.  We all laughed at the translated Russian user’s manual though.  “You WILL be taking photos of Lenin’s tomb.”   Well, perhaps not.

            So I loaded a fresh role of ASA 64 and I set myself up to watch ’06 shove the cars into the consist for their move south.  Both would be set in two or three cars behind the engines.  Far enough from the diesel fumes to be safe for the cattle yet close enough to be handy for the crew.  On the road back the cattle would be under the care of the conductor who would have to check them every hour and also oversee the food and water.

            These Aristocraft cars are not a Canadian design.  This wasn’t an important issue for the Winter Valley car, short lines often use whatever they can find, but plans are underway for some small changes to the CN car that would make it more or less true to prototype.  Molded on number and name boards will be removed and rebuilt in the correct location.  The whole car will be repainted boxcar red and numbered somewhere in the 175000 – 175149 series.

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                And that would be pretty much my whole story here until we got those cars back on the property.  That gave me an evening and whole new day with Loree’.  And if my stars were aligned - perhaps longer.  When I had told her I was planning on doing a ‘The Last Stock Car’ photo story for the local paper – and I would be up in Pearson for the weekend – she quickly arranged to take some time off work and head south.  I knew she’d be staying at the town’s only good motel but my camera and I found her shopping at the local IGA.  A real good sign. We’d be eating in.

                So while Loree’ was picking out a much healthier breakfast than I was normally accustomed to, Shreddies and a strawberry milk, I was standing at Pearson Tower waiting for my subjects to move through.  Traffic on Home Street had already stopped at the lights and I could hear the grade crossing signals for the Veterans Street crossing three blocks away.  Minutes later the power roared past and the last stock cars were on the road once more.

                Pearson is a much bigger town than Winter Valley even though it takes up much less actual space on the layout.  The trick is to keep Winter Valley open with somewhat wider roads and lots of space between buildings while I built Pearson with narrower with crowded streets between side-by-side buildings. There are also streetlights in Pearson as well as sidewalks and plenty of signs. Posters suggest a theater and parking meters suggest a busier community.

                How does that song go?  “Monday, Monday.  So good to me.”  Or something along those lines.  Why was I singing that anyway?  It was a beautiful morning.  The weekend had been magic and I was not even at my real work but back in Winter Valley doing a rail fan story on company time.  I set up the tripod at the switch lead to Len’s Meats and watch the set out of two full, noisy stock cars.  The cows were upset.  Perhaps the ride hadn’t been to their liking. A day or two on the ground would fix that.

            At one time Len’s Meats was a major employer in town keeping a dozen or so men and women busy earning good steady wages.  Now Len’s works a shift of around 6 people four days a week.  The future looks steady though.  While they don’t ship to the larger centers any more there are still plenty of butchers around here that insist on the local product.  If Swifts or Maple Leaf moves in as well it will be all over.

            Len’s Meats is a product of waiting for just the right thing to come along and often having visitors into see the layout.  The spur at the far end of Winter Valley sat empty for almost 8 years while I mulled over what I would do with the stock yard idea I had in mind. I told my story to a guest who sent me a picture of an HO craftsman’s type kit that just might work in that odd space.  The HO kit was in the $250.00 range but I knew right away that I could build an almost identical facility, in 1/29th scale, for under $60.00.  Three months in the making but it looks about right.      

            The cattle had already been unloaded when I found the time that day to take a closer look at the operation.  Of course Len had long gone.  His sons had taken over but they had been doing this all their life so there wasn’t so much as a tick in the works as the business was handed over.  A few hours of good feed, clean water and solid ground had settled the girls down as well.

                The whole structure was built, first in basic cardboard, to see how it fit into the space. After a few weeks of viewing that from different angles and making a few changes to doors, windows and the roofline, I built the finalized shape out of ¼ inch MDF.  After that I made each window with balsa wood that had been painted boxcar red, then antique white and then sanded down to let the ‘weathered’ look come through. All the siding boards were also treated one by one before being cut to length and applied.  The same ‘weathering’ technique was applied to all the lumber used for the stockyard.  The sign on the wall was painted with red chalk and sanded down to obtain a very faded look.  The roof is made out of corrugated and painted beer cans.  Sorry, pop cans.

                One last look around.  This car was still in pretty good shape actually.  It’s a shame our small company will get more for the frame, the brake gear and the wheels than the car is worth on our inventory.  We even looked into rebuilding it ourselves but, by necessity, we’re running a pretty tight ship and we have all the MOW equipment we can afford to keep on hand.  And leaving the car ‘as is’ sure wasn’t an option.  It was used on four trips last year.  Time to move on.

            My story would evolve into a short essay on the changing realities that all railways face today.  The highway system is expanding and customers are demanding door to door service that can only be provided with trucks.  The railroad future seems to be in bulk cargo over long distances and maybe a less-than-carload short line like ours is already a dinosaur and just doesn’t know it yet.

            The Aristocraft cars are no longer orphans on the Winter Valley.  The construction and installation of Len’s Meats has brought them new life as well as creating honest work for the two eight hatch reefers on my inventory.  Some simple changes will configure them into more prototypical Canadian type.  Something that was long over due anyway.

                By the evening of the second day both cars were back on a grain siding in Grande Prairie and being set up for their final trip south behind CN 5604.  A brand new GP38-2 that had everyone in the shop looking enviously at her safety cab and all those little extras the engineers, both office and the ‘on board’ types, had conspired to invent.  Symbolic I guess of how things change over time. 

                When WV 723 were first put into service out here coal fired steam engines were the order of the day.  Although oil was becoming the fuel of choice.  The Great War was still the war to end all wars and 80% of the population lived directly off the land in a decidedly rural environment.  Roads were poor and still few and far between.  If you traveled any distance at all you got in behind a 2-6-0 to the city and then a 4-6-2 or a big 4-8-4 took you all around the world.

                So it’s not an anomaly to find a modern, computer controlled machine in the same frame as a 50 year old stock car.  Railway equipment can last a very long time.  It lasts as long as it has a purpose.

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