A story from the days of Steam!

 Todays story comes from Thom Cholowski, Administrator of the Historic Saskatchewan FB page. Enjoy 73

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Funny railway story from the steam days as told to me by a veteran Canadian Pacific Railway engineer.

Alex Lucak (1918-2011) had a 35 year career with the CPR beginning in 1943, working primarily out of Sutherland (Saskatoon). I had the pleasure of interviewing him several times about his career and he shared many colourful stories, especially about his time working on steam locomotives.

Alex was normally a quiet, dignified and proper gentleman in the time that I knew him, but as he got to know me and understood my background (having worked almost 20,000 hours as a steam locomotive engineer/fisherman/mechanic, mostly on ex CPR steam locomotives), he found somewhat of a kindred spirit who, as I ‘spoke his language’ gradually viewed me as a colleague rather than a curious youngster.

As his trust grew, he began to readily share life experiences and open up. He loved talking, becoming more lively in his stories and - I say this with the upmost respect- started to freely use more and more ‘colourful’ language that would be wholly appropriate in the cab of a locomotive.

When Alex would share his stories with me, a funny thing would happen, almost every single time. Alex used to walk hunched over, with a stoop and the assistance of a cane. When he would begin his stories he would shuffle over to a chair and get comfortable sitting with his hands on his legs, leaning forward for the important details, raising his bushy eyebrows, while his right hand rested on his cane. As the story went on, Alex would start to wave his hands around and at some point, he would stand up to ‘go through the motions’ to demonstrate his adventure. Invariably, by the time he reached the end, the cane was gone and Alex was up out of his chair, bouncing around the room, hands wildly gesturing, standing fully upright, slapping his knee and laughing heartily.

One time, at the end of a story his wife Anne came in and in shock said ‘Alex! You’re standing upright!!!’, to which he replied with out missing a beat ‘Well how the Hell else am I supposed to stand?’😆

Anyhow, on to the story.

Alex had just completed his 3 student trips under the supervision of a ‘set up’ fireman and was called up off the spare board to go on his first trip by himself on a night time freight run onboard a #2500 series, G2 class ‘Pacific’, 4-6-2 locomotive. This class was not equipped with a ‘mechanical’ stoker to feed coal into the firebox, so Alex had his job cut out for him shoveling a scoop full at a time into the hungry firebox.

The run was between Sutherland and Wynyard, a distance of 113 miles, and with the heavy freight train, Alex would have to shovel by hand almost 14 tons of coal to get the engine over the road.

They had just passed the halfway point at Lanigan when Alex paused to wipe the sweat from his brow. He gazed up at the engineer’s seat box and his blood ran ice cold.

The engineer was no where in sight.

The cab of a CPR steam locomotive is a small, cozy place that is designed for a singular purpose of running a locomotive and there is nowhere a person can hide. Alex, frozen in fear, mid pose as he was wiping his brow, quickly scanned the cab for any trace of the engineer.

He was simply gone.

Alex quickly took stock of his situation. He was completely alone in the cab of a steam locomotive, at night, doing 35 miles per hour, with a fully loaded freight train behind him, full of steam and heading to Wynyard, and the engineer, THE person in control of the whole show was nowhere to be found.

Frozen in absolute terror, Alex contemplated his options and indeed, the entirety of his life and the choices that led him to this exact moment.

Before Alex could react, he watched the engineer shuffle by the OUTSIDE of the cab window, hand over hand, swing in through the cab door and assume his position in the engineer’s seat. He adjusted his coat and pants, pulled out his pipe placing it between his teeth, tamped and lit it and set his hand authoritatively on the throttle as if nothing had happened.

Alex stood there dumbfounded. The engineer looked up and down at him and said ‘What…the headlight was dirty!’

Alex shook his head in disbelief and went back to the routine of taking a shovel of coal, taking a few steps ‘doing the dance’, stepping on the pedal to open the ‘butterfly’ doors of the firebox to feed the iron horse and repeating the process until the got to Wynyard.

Now for those unfamiliar with steam locomotives, what had happened was this- the seasoned engineer, knowing that this was Alex’s first solo trip had pulled a prank on him.

While the train was running at 35 miles per hour, and while Alex was preoccupied with shoveling coal, he had set the throttle, and using the handrails along the outside of the cab and boiler, walked along the length of the speeding locomotive to ‘wipe the headlight’ with a handful of cotton waste, at the prow of the engine and return! Some joke!

I will always treasure the stories told to me by Alex and his fellow railroaders of that generation who have long since gone to the great ‘roundhouse in the sky’.

Alberta MTC Line at Supertrain 2025

 During Supertrain in Calgary this year I was interviewed by the Ham Radio Blogger Vince d'Eon.
Check it out!
73

History in the making... with a golden key!

 PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT ASSISTS CAMP FIRE GIRLS IN OPENING NEW NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS IN NEW YORK. WASHINGTON, D.C. MARCH 6. THE MUCH COVETED HONOR OF BEING THE FIRST YOUNGSTER TO PRESS THE HISTORIC GOLD TELEGRAPH KEY USED BY PRESIDENTS WENT TODAY TO CAMP FIRE GIRL JANE BRANDT, RIGHT, AS SHE ASSISTED PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT, HONORARY PRESIDENT OF THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS, IN LIGHTING BY WIRE THE CROSSED LOGS AND FLAME LAMP IN THE ORGANIZATION'S NEW NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS IN NEW YORK CITY. TODAY'S CEREMONY MARKED THE 27TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS. ON THE LEFT IS CAMP FIRE GIRL MARGARET PATSY BIRGE.

Welcome to 2025.

 Hello everyone and welcome to 2025.

The Calgary chapter of the Morse Telegraph Club says goodbye to the old year and hello to the new on a high note indeed.

Membership continues to climb with the addition of several new members including one young girl who is a junior high school student and is the youngest member in all of the MTC. She joined the CG chapter after attending a telegraphy camp at Calgary’s Heritage Park.

The Calgary chapter initiated a junior telegrapher program at Heritage Park in the fall of 2023. The program now has ten young lightning slingers learning the trade through that program, with more to come I’m sure. My thanks to chapter secretary-treasurer and MTC Board member Marilyn Maguire, and Janice Povey, for their stewardship and mentoring of the next generation.

On a sad note we had to say goodbye to two members last year with the passing of Bill Atkinson in February and Nick Bobrownik in August. We also noted the passing of Edmonton chapter member Jim Crone in May who assisted Calgary chapter members at Heritage Park’s Railway Days in 2023. May they rest in peace.

The Calgary chapter will be holding our annual general meeting in late March. While the date has not yet been determined, I expect it will be held once again at the Nichols public library.

Chapter members will again be attending Supertrain, Calgary’s annual and Canada’s largest model railway show. The show will go on Saturday April 5 and Sunday April 6, in the Olympic oval at the University of Calgary. Our booth will feature information on the art and science that is Morse and we will host a working, multi-station landline Morse network as we did last year. It’s our expectation that we will connect it to the Alberta MTC line as well. Please visit: https://www.supertrain.ca/ for more information on the show.

And speaking of the Alberta MTC Line, as of the end of 2024 we had 5 active stations on the line. A sixth site, in BC, will be connected later this month. Kevin Jepson, the project’s Wire Chief and network administrator, tells me that he has more than two dozen museums wanting to join or wanting more info. The concept of connecting museums with landline Morse telegraph equipment to a working network is proving to be popular. My thanks to Kevin, and Tim Taylor, for moving the project along so well. If you would like more information on the line project please visit: https://alberta-mtc.blogspot.com/.

Lastly I want to mention that members of the Calgary chapter, and members of the Heritage Park Morse Telegraph Club, will again be demonstrating landline Morse at Heritage Park on Tuesdays and Saturdays from May to September. For more information on the park please visit: https://heritagepark.ca/.

That’s all I have for now. Until next time stay well.

73

Ken Ashmead, President
Morse Telegraph Club, Calgary “CG" Chapter

Telegrams to Santa 2024

 I hope everyone had a great Christmas and are looking forward to a safe and enjoyable New Years!

This year was the first "Telegrams to Santa" event held during Heritage Park's Once Upon a Christmas (OUAC) held during the first three weekends of December leading up to Christmas.

Two of our Junior Telegraphers
sending messages to Santa keeping
up the steady traffic for the kids.

"Telegrams to Santa" was a joint effort of the Heritage Park Morse Telegraph Club and the Calgary (CG) Chapter  of the International Morse Telegraph club and featured the talents of our Junior telegraphers sending telegrams to the North Pole on behalf of the children attending  OUAC.  Our Junior telegraphers, 13-15 years in age, were manning the key at Midnapore Station at the park and sending across the Alberta MTC Line to the North Pole office (in the back room of the station) where another Junior telegrapher received the message and replied back. The children received an official colour telegraph form with the reply from Santa and stamped with the Midnapore station stamp as a keep sake.

A Junior Telegrapher 
manning the North Pole station. 

The event was very popular and there was a steady stream of families coming through the station to send their messages. This was important this year because there was a postal strike on so kids couldn't send their traditional letters by mail!

There were a few technical glitches but on the whole the MTC Line connection worked very well and the Juniors did a fine job of handling the traffic even  assisting with queue control when the lines got long.

A description of some of the technical issues can be found in the report on our mailing list here:
Alberta-MTC groups.io mail list

An impressive number of messages were sent to the "North Pole" during OUAC:

Sat 7th    89
Sun 8th    91
Sat 14th   105
Sun 15th   88
Sat 21st   117
Sun 22nd   113

Total      603

In the interests of keeping things moving the messages were not being copied by the receivers, but they were actually being sent. Listening to the sounders at both the Midnapore station and the North Pole the code was very clear and would have been easily copied without the time crunch of a long line up! 

For the first time doing such an event it worked very well. The fantastic effort of our Juniors, and with the support of Heritage Park, the HPMTC and the Calgary Chapter of the MTC, this event was a great success.

Well done everyone and congratulations on helping to make the season a bit brighter for all the kids and their parents!

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year and best wishes for a prosperous, healthy, and safe 2025!

73 
Ciao
Kevin Jepson (KJ)
Instigator and Wire Chief
Alberta MTC Line Project

Rogers Pass CPR Station 1889 or 1890

 This photo from the City of Vancouver Archives shows Mt. McDonald summit in the Selkirks in 1889 or 1890. At a height of 9440 ft this is the top of Rogers Pass and looks quite nice in the Summer time.

The winter on the other hand, could have snow almost up to the eves!

  CVA 1376-375.22 - Mt. McDonald summit of Selkirks.

There are four telegraph lines on the pole to the left of the station and all the lines come down to the bar under the eves of the platform roof.  There are likely cable drops that run from that bar into the operator's bay you can see behind the fellow with the blacksmith's apron.

The wires continue to a similar bar on the other end of the platform and then carry on down the line.  

Full size image is available at the Archives.

Here is an enlargement of the signal, signs, and operator's bay.  The station sign says Rogers Pass and the telegraph sign has an interesting swoop to it.

 I think this guy in the doorway, without his jacket, is probably the operator who was on duty when the shot was taken.

A Near Run Thing

 From the Syracuse Post-Standard, Sun., Feb 17, 1946

 Jim Jackson gazed from his kitchen window, early one February morning in 1903. and remarked: 'She's comin' from the northwest an' I'll bet we're goin't to have an old ripsnorter. When you see the snow comin' down slantwise that way, you can get ready fer a storm."

The wind howled around the big white house on the hill, across the tracks from Mallory depot, and the soft flakes were falling faster and faster. And, as I struggled down to the depot for the morning passenger train, it was getting worse by the minute. No passengers emerged from, or boarded No. 7 that morning - and that was the last train we saw for some time. Clayt Fellows, section boss, showed up for a brief survey of the situation and then he and his men holed up in the section house to await developments.

All morning and afternoon the storm increased in fury and the uproar of its mighty travail was almost deafening. My telegraph wires had been unworkable since late morning, and on the road between Richland and Salina, I had no means of knowing their position, or condition.

About 4 p.m. I got my switch lamps ready and started south with two of them. One was to be placed at the junction of Corbett's spur, and the other on the sidetrack switch stand. The wind was blowing ferociously, the snow was swirling in such compact clouds that it was impossible to see a single foot in any direction, except at intervals, when the storm lulled for a few brief moments.

I was walking down the center of the main track, when suddenly from out of nowhere came a mental urge, intuition, "hunch," or whatever you care to call it, that I should step across to the adjacent side track. Almost involuntarily I did so - and I had taken not one step from my new location, when a snow plow, pushed by two engines whizzed by on the track I had just left! All I got was a slight addition to the storm's mighty roar, a ghostly flash, a shadowy, fast-moving mass - and the show was over!

Must I admit I was a bit weak at the knees for the next few minutes? Sam Hollingsworth, one of the engineers on the plow, said afterward that he got just one glimpse of me as i stepped over to the siding. He claimed he could sense, by my leisurely manner that I had no idea there was anything behind me. And he swore mightily and oft it was so close, that had I been two inches larger at the waist, the snow plow flange would have hit me! Jim Jackson was sitting in his big chair by an east window, and during a break in the storm he saw the plow bearing down and apparently running right over me. Grabbing his coat and cap, he ran down the hill "faster," as he said, "than any 72-year-oldster ought to travel." Plodding down the side track, he finally glimpsed a form ahead of him and yelled lustily, but I didn't hear him. I went on and set my lamps, and returning, met him.

We went back to the depot, and my day's work being done, we went up the hill for supper. As we left the station, however, Jim's wife, "Car'line" came plowing through the snow in eager search for us.

After supper we sat rather quietly in the big cheery living room, discussing my near-adventure and listening to the wild hullabaloo outside. Finally, Jim looked at me with a speculative eye, and remarked: "Y'know, I don't hold, generally, to the use of liquor, but it seems to me, Bert, that in memory of a dumb out-an' -out miracle, we could do worse than to celebrate your good luck with a nice hot toddy - that is, providin' of course that we had anything to make it with!"

The old rascal knew that I had a bottle of Tucker's rye up in my room. I used to get a reasonable supply of that famous brand at Garlock's liquor store, across from the old New York Central depot, whenever I came to Syracuse. Perhaps the reason my supply was a bit low at that time, was due to the fact that I hadn't been in town for some time!

Anyway, we had our hot toddies - one apiece - and, although Car'line sipped hers in very small portions and with a most deprecatory manner, as if she did it under protest, she left no final dregs in her glass. Jim related again, in full detail, the story of his one and only extended journey beyond the confines of Hastings- a two weeks sojourn in Oswego on jury duty, 'way back in the '70s. It had been a great adventure for him and he seldom failed to recount it, exhaustively, whenever he could induce any listeners to stay within hearing distance, long enough for the telling.

One of his favorite episodes of the occasion was about the waitress at the old Adams House in Oswego, who, at the end of each dinner, came to the tables and chanted: "Apple, mince, cherry, raspberry, custard an' punkin," to which outburst, Jim claimed he always replied, "I'll take a small hunk of each!"

"And," he used to chuckle, "I always got 'em, too!"

Then, when the yawns became alarmingly manifest, Jim arose from his big morris chair, knelt beside it; and, while we reverently bowed out heads, he offered thanks in his own sturdy and unflowered tones - thanks for the preserving hand of the Father, which had been held over me that day...And, folks, when he had finished, I felt myself nearer to the Throne of God than I had ever been before!

So - a mighty storm howled and raged outside; the force of nature seemed to be at war; but here, within, was peace and comfort and thankfulness and good fellowship. Perhaps just a tiny preview of heaven - who may know? Jim and his Car'line have slept for, now, these many years; but I never journey by the big white house on the hill without thinking of that day, long ago, when death passed so closely by me, that I could feel the brush of his ebony wing.

From the Chief Dispatcher

 Hello everyone. I see pumpkins and witches are showing up in the stores and on people's lawns so it must be time for my fall update. Much has happened since my last one in June so here goes.

Weekly telegraph sessions continued at Calgary’s Heritage Park on Tuesdays and Saturdays with members staffing Midnapore and Laggan stations. The normal course of things had us demonstrating Morse code and sending “name grams” down the wire. We also hooped up train orders to each passing train.

On Sep 14 and 15 members from MTC Calgary, and two from MTC Edmonton, manned three of Heritage Park's four former Canadian Pacific Railway stations for the parks Railway Days event. We did the usual agent operator sorts of things. Members of the junior telegraph club helped at the stations and hosted the telegraphy component of the children’s railway challenge at Shepard station. MTC Calgary members also staffed the millers cabin on the promenade which was set up as a commercial telegraph office. Information on the Alberta line project was prominently displayed.

We closed out our weekly sessions on Thanksgiving weekend. Saturday practices will likely continue
in Midnapore station until it gets too cold.

A most exciting possibility for the telegraph club will be handling telegrams during Heritage Park’s annual Christmas days, this year occupying the three weekends in December prior to Christmas Day. Telegrams to Santa, called Santagrams by Western Union, were once a popular and lucrative undertaking for telegraph companies.

To my knowledge Christmastime telegrams have not previously been offered at Heritage Park and we are looking forward to bringing something new to the park.

MTC Calgary finally received its chapter charter from the international office of the MTC. Having this will allow us to more easily incorporate under the Alberta Societies Act. This is an important step if we want to seek financial help from any level of government in covering some of the costs of the line project, which could be substantial.

And speaking of the line project a brief update is in order. Both the Days of Yore and Railway Days events provided great opportunities to showcase the project with seven and six active stations online respectively. Interest in the line project is growing. Currently the project has five active stations; two at Heritage Park, the museum in Didsbury, AB, our MTC agent in Cardston, AB, and the Dispatcher's station in the Wire Chief's office. Very soon the SS Sicamous in Penticton BC will join the circuit as well. At last count we have more than two dozen other museums wanting to join the fun. This is truly amazing and our wire chief, Kevin Jepson, is to be commended on a job well done! Kevin will be offering a more substantial project update very soon.

That’s all I have for now. I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.

73
Ken Ashmead, President
Morse Telegraph Club, Calgary "CG" Chapter