A Tour of the Heron Bay Subdivision

Featuring the Photographs of Eric D. Gagnon

The Heron Bay Subdivision, also known as the "East End", runs from White River to Schreiber.

Following railway procedures, White River is mile 0.0 and Schreiber is at mile 118.3.

In the late 1970s, there were 13 named "stations" on the subdivision.
According to the rulebook, a station is a place designated by name in the timetable - and seldom are there actually station buildings at "stations" these days.

In the 1950s, station buildings would have usually housed telegraph operators, business offices, and waiting rooms for passengers. Railway facilities near a station building might also have included steam locomotive related structures like coaling towers or water tanks. With the dramatic increase in road building and private automobile travel after World War II, and the elimination of steam locomotives on major Canadian railways in 1960, this all changed.

This is what you are likely to find at a station today:
Canadian railways are still calibrated in miles by mileboards.
Traditionally, crews can pinpoint a location by:

Our Tour Begins ...


CP Rail Heron Bay Sub White River station

At White River, our engine crew gets on board for the trip over the subdivision. The building at the left was generally technical and administrative offices and equipment.

The passenger station is at the right. Historically, this is where crews assembled, booked in for duty, received orders, a clearance (i.e. a "train permit" indicating which train orders you possess), and reviewed bulletins and other information needed for their trip.

As seen in this profile from 1915, we will be generally travelling downhill until we reach Heron Bay and Lake Superior. Rather than heading farther inland across the many deeply-gouged valleys and disturbed drainage left by the various ice ages, or the hundreds of lakes and muskeg to the northwest, much of this section of the railway was constructed along the rocky shore of Lake Superior with numerous rock cuts and fills.

In the 1880s, the work was done more easily and more quickly when it could be started at many points along the shore at once - they were building to a government deadline. Ship transportation was essential for supporting construction sites during most of the time the line was being constructed. The discrete sections of the Lake Superior line were blasted from the hard ancient rock until all they all linked up.

CPR CP Rail Heron Bay Sub track profile
Lake Superior is at about 602 feet above sea level. The altitude of the various stations is printed beside their names.


We'll be running west from White River to Schreiber, and looking out the tailend window most of the way at what has just passed.

All maps are oriented so that north is at the top.

Leaving the town of White River, we often travel along the White River itself as it finds its way to Lake Superior. At White Lake, we reach Mobert at mile 22.5, the site of a First Nations reserve.

CP Rail Heron Bay Sub Mobert, Ontario

At Mobert in 1984, we are riding in the rear dome of The Canadian, Train Number 1, as we meet an eastbound freight. At the left edge of the photo is a Hudson's Bay Company store. The Hudson's Bay Company was established throughout Canada before the CPR went through. Surveyors often depended on HBC fur trading posts for help if they had health, provisioning or other difficulties - particularly if they were caught by an early winter. The Mobert store was only just relocated here in 1888.

At Struthers, mile 33.5, was a branchline which ran up to the mine at Manitouwadge. At Struthers, a "wye" (a Y-shaped track junction) was available to turn locomotives and trains.

Think of the Struthers wye as a triangle which points north:
Here's how it would work to turn a westbound:
We, however, are still heading west and looking back at Pringle at mile 44.
CP Rail Heron Bay Sub, Pringle Ontario

As you can see, it is often quite flat in this section where there was glacial meltwater deposition, and the track is pretty straight. Facing our tailend is the "absolute" signal which protects the siding here at Pringle. The silver instrument case supports the electric switch and the signals and the round fuel tank is for the switch heater fuel.

Photographs by Eric Gagnon:

In 1986, my brother went west to document the state of the classic wooden grain elevators, before so many of these "prairie sentinels" in small settlements were torn down. They were replaced by fewer, centrally-located "concrete silo" elevators which use computerized controls to move the grain from bin to bin. Although it was not part of his mission, he got up at the crack of dawn and stayed "on duty" in the dome car for my benefit for about six hours to record these views of the Heron Bay Sub and similar views of the Nipigon Sub.

You will be able to better understand the woof and warp of the Heron Bay Sub courtesy of Eric and his work to document it.

His first picture was taken of the Pic River bridge at mile 54.4.

Around 1790, French entrepreneurs built the first local trading post where this river meets Lake Superior. The river formed a natural highway for First Nations trappers with furs to sell. The post was later absorbed into the HBC and moved to Mobert in 1888. Later, when extensive logging began to the north, the Pic would be often choked with logs floating down to Marathon. Previously named Peninsula, that Lake Superior settlement was the site of a CPR railway construction camp, a railway tie mill, and later a large pulp mill.

CP Rail Heron Bay Sub, Pic River bridge

The extra rails between the shiny ones are known as "guard rails" and it is everyone's fervent hope that they will be successful in their purpose of keeping derailing rolling stock travelling over the bridge instead of plunging over the side. With the elimination of vans from the tailend of trains, the railways have since built "sidewalks" along one side of railway bridges to allow the conductor (who today rides on the locomotive) to walk back to correct problems if his tailend is on the other side of a bridge. Before these new-fangled sidewalks with railings, you walked the ties over the bridge if it was necessary to protect your train by flagging, etc.

The sun was just peeking over Heron Bay station at mile 55.2 when my brother took the shot, below. The CPR built a number of these two-storey, boxy stations at places such as Heron Bay, Marathon, Terrace Bay, and Red Rock in the 1940s and 1950s. Today they are all gone. At this point, Heron Bay was still a passenger stop for The Canadian by "prior arrangement". An eastbound freight is on the passing track as we travel on the main track.

CP Rail Heron Bay Sub, Heron Bay Ontario station


Below, is the tailend of that eastbound freight as we continue to travel the main track at Heron Bay. In this case, the extra rails you see are replacement rail. Continuous welded rail, CWR, or "ribbon rail" has replaced 39 foot bolted sections on almost all main lines. Anchored first at one end, the sections are pulled off a special train in 1/4 mile lengths as the train slowly pulls away from the anchor point. When it is time to do the actual changeout, these 1/4 mile sections are heated, secured to the ties, and then welded to form a continuous rail with no "clickety-clack", requiring much less wear and maintenance.

With CWR there are no expansion/contraction joints in the track every 39 feet and the heavy rail is very securely spiked and anchored to the ties. So during cold weather, the cross section of the rail decreases slightly as longitudinal contraction "stretches" it. The cross section increases during hot weather. Freaky, eh?

CP Rail Heron Bay Sub, Eastbound freight at Heron Bay

You can see by the open door of the van that someone was standing outside to inspect us as we rolled by. The red lights are tailend markers indicating the end of the train as required by the rulebook of that time, and the white lights are for inspecting the track and passing trains at night.


CP Rail Heron Bay Sub, West end of Marathon

We see Lake Superior for the first time at around Mile 56 and we'll stay quite close to it for about the next 130 miles. Here, Eric has just passed through the town of Marathon at mile 63. Its natural harbour, created by a peninsula of rock, is the site of a large pulp mill. The pulp is shipped to the U.S. for manufacture into tissue and other paper products.

In the late 1930s, the Marathon Paper Mills Company of Wisconsin became involved in tree harvesting over an area of several hundred square miles. The logs were floated to Lake Superior, formed into large booms, and taken across to Wisconsin. The harvest area was subsequently enlarged. In 1944, a subsidiary of the company began construction of a the pulp mill at what was then the town of "Peninsula".  In the picture above, we are just "west" of town. To the left is the siding. To the right is a small yard holding cars from the mill. Generally, the mill does its own switching with its own locomotive.

CP Rail Heron Bay Sub, Marathon Ontario map
Marathon: the photograph was taken at around mile 64 looking south ("timetable east").

CP Rail Heron Bay Sub, Approaching Red Sucker Tunnel

The sun is getting a little higher in the sky as my brother's train approaches Red Sucker Tunnel at around mile 71. You can see how much of the line was chiselled into the rocky shore - using the technology of 1885. In the foreground you can see a smooth fill which probably covers the remains of a temporary wooden trestle, which has been buried for almost a century. That's Lake Superior. Soon the train will be closer to lake level.

CP Rail Heron Bay Sub, Red Sucker Tunnel west end, rock slide fence
The train has just passed through Red Sucker Tunnel. The tunnel has a concrete lining to help prevent rock falls. Imagine what the terrain here was like before the railway came and how much rock had to be moved by horse and manual labour in the course of drilling and blasting the tunnel. Then rock and fill had to be moved in to provide a roadbed suitable for laying track.

The tall fence at the left is a slide detector fence. Snow, ice, or rocks of any size, can come cascading down the cliff.

If this happens, and the wires are broken, the intermediate signals protecting the track at the fence are set at "stop".
A train must then proceed at restricted speed, prepared to stop short of an obstruction on the track.


CP Rail Heron Bay Sub, Mink Tunnel, Lake Superior
If you have already seen a photograph of the CPR along Lake Superior, there is a good chance it was taken here at Mink Tunnel at mile 73. Besides making the railway line picturesque, the tunnel was made to avoid having to blast and remove a much larger quantity of rock - the tunnel structure buttresses a large section of mountain. Compared to the previous pictures, notice that the line has descended closer to lake level. You can see the serpentine islands of Lake Superior which spent a good deal of time under mile-thick sheets of ice during periods of glaciation. This is another good place to have those slide detector fences to protect against rock, snow and ice slides.

CP Rail Heron Bay Sub, Echo Lake at Coldwell Ontario
Looking east at Coldwell

Train Number 1 is going into the siding at Coldwell (notice the switch points). Coldwell is my favourite siding on the line. Sort of like a jet landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier, an eastbound freight coming down the steep hill here would often be stopped in the siding by the dispatcher part of the way down the hill at Coldwell, facing Echo Lake with this view.

Unlike a jet pilot, the engineer couldn't hit the throttle and go around again if he didn't stop where he intended.

So, on a stopped eastbound freight, we'd sit at the red light and the train slack would adjust itself as thousands of tons tried to work its way down the hill against the brakes. Pretty soon, the westbound would come around Echo Lake as it continued its 4.5 mile run up the westbound ruling grade - a run from Mink Tunnel to the summit at Neys.

Power Control - the people in Montreal who assigned locomotives to trains - thought about ruling grades. On a subdivision, a ruling grade is where your train is most likely to stall - so they gave you just enough power to make it ... most of the time. Other times, the engineer used his experience so you didn't have to stall and take the train up the hill in two parts.

What's the big deal?
  • For one thing, the locomotives are raising, let's say, 8000 tons vertically - this takes power.
  • For another thing, although the steel wheels on rails are nearly frictionless, steel grinds against steel as the train goes around curves and this creates more resistance for the locomotives.
  • And for another, another thing ... on paper , a single locomotive may be rated at 2400hp, but after ten years of heavy daily service it may not still put out that much and/or it may be having a "bad day". 
Sometimes engineers didn't have the kindest words for Power Control.

At Coldwell, a westbound freight engineer is well into a curvy uphill battle to keep his train moving. The fact that a certain eastbound headend trainmen doesn't mind getting stuck here while the westbound struggles against the grade is never considered by Power Control or the dispatcher.

Certainly the engineer of the eastbound didn't need the fun of trying to stop on the hill, creeping forward toward an absolute stop signal until his tailend finally called "In the clear at Coldwell Extra 5744 East ." for a classic CPR "just in time" meet.
CP Rail Heron Bay Sub Mink Tunnel and Coldwell Harbour, Coldwell Ontario
Port Coldwell was once a prosperous little fishing village with a station, railway water tank, store, buildings to support the fishing industry and numerous houses for the townspeople who were employed by the railway or in fishing. Lake trout were netted from boats and brought back to the wonderfully sheltered Port Coldwell harbour. In summer, fresh trout were provided to the dining cars of passing CPR passenger trains, or packed in ice for shipment. By the mid-1950s the fishing industry was finished - mainly because of the sea lamprey.

CP Rail Heron Bay Sub, former Coldwell Ontario townsite
Here my brother has caught the former Coldwell townsite as Number 1 continues through the passing track. The store and buildings were on flat space to the left of the tracks and the fishing docks and packing plant of Port Coldwell were off down the hill to the right. Number 1 is still in the process of climbing and is about halfway up the westbound ruling grade to Neys.

Let's stop here and talk about eastbounds for a minute.

  • Just as a westbound usually makes its greatest effort as it climbs to the summit of Neys - an eastbound does as well.
  • Neys is rated as the big hill for the 118.3 mile subdivision in both directions in terms of its ability to stall trains.
  • Westbound grade: Mink Tunnel to Neys. Eastbound grade : This bridge to Neys.
  • Since the dawn of time and W.C. Van Horne, there has been a 30 mph curved bridge at the bottom of the hill. 
  • This is the bridge over the Little Pic River at mile 81 - you can see the white mileboard at the left.
CP Rail Heron Bay Sub, Little Pic River Bridge Mile 81



  • Below, on another day, here's a picture of it with a westbound train (coming downhill) showing a fair amount of brake smoke.
  • Notice how small a person would be if they were beside one of the locomotives.

CP Rail Heron Bay Sub, Little Pic River, Mile 81 bridge
When a train ran east - up this ruling grade (toward the camera) to Neys - it was not supposed to exceed 30 MPH on that curved bridge. That meant that it couldn't get much of a running start at the hill. The engineer's experience was often used to meet the challenge. Sometimes, if things were really bad, the engineer would resort to a secret weapon ... the headend trainman.

"What does a headend trainman know? How could he be of any use to anyone in a situation like this???"

You've got the gist of it.

Well, the "wired as one" locomotive consist would often include one potential museum piece that was either:
  • deliberately isolated from the engineer's controls, but physically connected ... or ...
  • it had decided it had enough seniority that it could take the rest of the day off ...
  • (e.g. overheated, low coolant, low oil, some excuse)
So?

The engineer would see the handwriting on the cab wall and knew he was unlikely to get up the hill comfortably the way things stood. So in utter desperation (I am only describing the engineer's mental state when I was in the same cab), the headend trainman was given a quick course, as the train rolled along, on how to bring the ailing beast back to life - at least long enough to get part way up the hill before it shut down again ... "Turn the selector from 'isolate' to 'run' ... press the red button" ... stuff like that.
The last instruction was usually: "Be careful and hang on."

This operation had to be performed in the cab of that particular off-line locomotive unit - which might be a few locomotives back. So you would walk along the running boards, which might be covered with the precipitation of the day, and try not to slide under the waist-high handrail as the units swayed. It was interesting crossing the gap between the units because sometimes the dainty steps and safety chains over the couplers between the 200 ton, counter-rocking units weren't quite set up to make things easy.

And one way or the other, you ended up making part of this little excursion as the locomotives passed over that bridge.

Now, if you fall off or between locomotives, I don't think the surrounding scenery makes any difference - it just changes the nature of the clean-up afterwards. It just seemed more impressive when there was the possibility of slipping off the locomotive and off the bridge at the same time.

To a 19 year old, it was kind of an adventure.

I wish that just once I hadn't been so business-like - and that I had stood out on the running board and enjoyed the scenery as we crossed the bridge! There is quite a view of Lake Superior from there.

OK, let's get back on our westbound passenger train and see what else might pass by the tailend window

CP Rail Heron Bay Sub, Jackfish Bay

Eric has captured another one of those ice age ground-down islands in Jackfish Bay as we begin to make our way around Tunnel Bay around mile 100. We have travelled over 100 miles from White River by now.

And if you're still reading this, you may feel as if you have walked the distance along the railway ties.

Jackfish was the site of another fishing village and it also served as the major coal importing port for this region of the railway between 1895 and 1950. Lake freighters carrying Pennsylvania coal would dock and unload. The coal would be loaded into hopper cars and stored in marshalling yards just to the east. From there it would travel to division points like Schreiber, White River, and Chapleau to refill freight steam locomotive tenders.

For example, a freight locomotive might be assigned at White River roundhouse to run to Schreiber pulling a freight train. It might stop for water at a couple of spots on the way. At Schreiber, the fire would be cleaned and any other maintenance would be done by the roundhouse staff there. The coal tender would be refilled at Schreiber for the next journey. The locomotive's fire would be banked or blazing, depending on when it was needed for duty. Its next assignment might return it to White River.

Passenger locomotives and passenger conductors and trainmen "ran through" over more than one subdivision. To keep their schedules tight, the locomotives of passenger trains stopped right on the main line at Jackfish and got their coal from a coaling tower which was quite close to the coal dock.

If you can figure out my mileage numbering on the map below, the Jackfish settlement, coal dock and coaling tower were between mile 99.5 and 100. The yard where the coal cars were stored was at today's siding - which is labelled as Jackfish on the map.

Think of the work involved in building a railway line in the 1880s. You have already seen how most of the hills are granite with just enough soil to support trees. When you consider that railways usually rise a maximum of 2.2 units vertically for each 100 units travelled horizontally .... where else could you put a railway line through this country?

CP Rail Heron Bay Sub, Jackfish and Tunnel Bay map

The road you see is the Trans-Canada Highway. I can tell you that it doesn't look bad on the map, but between the rockcut on Santoy Mountain and the spot labelled "motel" you travel down quite a ski-jump if you are driving. Blasting and filling along the shore was about the only way to build in this location.

Tunnel Bay is about 1/2 mile across at its outlet. Who knows what kind of bridge you'd need to construct to withstand Lake Superior's "sea" storms and wind-rammed ice. How deep would you have to go to place your bridge footings in the bay - which is up to 24 fathoms deep (3 boxcars placed vertically, end to end). The CPR builders had hundreds and thousands more miles to think about building in the 1880s, so Tunnel Bay never got a bridge.

Instead of an impossible 1/2 mile bridge, your train travels 3 miles, close to lake level, around the huge bay. It is a very impressive experience because the train is dwarfed by its environment. The experience doesn't really fit into a camera.

Building the CPR was more about achieving nationhood for Canada in the 1880s - coast to coast - than it was about building a railway for the most elegant and showy operation 125 years in the future. A lot of money and a lot of rock was eaten to build an all-Canadian route, rather than building through easier terrain in the U.S. as original Syndicate member J.J. Hill and others would have preferred.

Van Horne, Stephen and Smith might be interested to find out that the CPR eventually formally obtained that type of parallel line in U.S. ... and that the originally costly, problematic, and generally "slow" Lake Superior route is today equipped with modern traffic control systems and locomotives, and is often used to expedite priority freight by avoiding the rail bottleneck at busy Chicago.

CP Rail Heron Bay Sub, Jackfish Tunnel west end
My brother snapped this photo of Jackfish Tunnel just before mile 102 (the tunnel is on the map above, too). It curves a little but you can see through to the other portal.

If you were riding with Rolly, he would tell you that the Last Spike on the Montreal to Winnipeg section was driven at mile 102.7 in May 1885. He pointed out the cairn to me on my first trip with him one night - before I "knew" him.


So maybe after this "tour" you can recall a few of the key locations by the features of the old 1915 profile. Some of the names have changed over the years.

Westbound from Jackfish it looks like a hard pull to Schreiber, but there are a couple of undulations in it, and the track gets pretty straight so there is less "wheelage" resistance to slow us down.

CP Rail Heron Bay Sub track profile
Altitude above sea level in feet is shown beside each station.

"Black" near the Black River is now named Terrace Bay and it is the site of another forest products mill.

Here Eric has shot the east end of Schreiber yard. Meanwhile the headend of Number 1 is beginning to make its sweeping left-hand turn to reach the station.

CP Rail Heron Bay Sub east end of Schreiber yard

Fighting the sun and the double-glazed rear window of the dome car, my brother got this shot as the train pulled out of Schreiber and it shows the final few feet of the Heron Bay Sub. The since-removed track immediately to the left ended in front of the station when I worked there, and it held something special which is long since gone.

CP Rail Heron Bay Sub Schreiber yard and station

Before hi-rail vehicles (trucks which can run on railway tracks using drop-down flanged wheels) were issued to company officials, Superintendent Al Small, could inspect his 555 mile Schreiber Division using other transportation. His Car 10 was usually sitting in front of Schreiber station in 1977. Car 10 looked just like this:

CPR business car, observation car at Kenora
I took this shot as Number 2 arrived in Kenora near the end of a 1979 western trip to Vancouver (out by CN, one day turn-around in Vancouver, back by CP).

At Kenora, what was probably the official car belonging to the Superintendent of the Kenora Division was heading out on the tailend of a westbound freight. This would be a little more stylish and traditional than thumping along in a hi-rail truck today.

Imagine seeing the Heron Bay Subdivision, including

Mink Tunnel, Echo Lake, the little town of Coldwell, the Little Pic River bridge, and Tunnel Bay

from the rear platform of one of these cars.




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