Update: January 2008
Rolly Martin Country
This website has no affiliation with the Canadian Pacific Railway, CP Rail, or any other corporation or organization.
Unless otherwise indicated: photographs, precision
diagrams, and whimsical text © David J Gagnon
I began this website a few years ago to salute my friend Rolly,
and
to relive the very brief railway operating career I had on the CPR along
the north shore of Lake Superior.
From
dairy farm experiences as a student, to the railway experience, to
hospital and management work,
and volunteer work with railway
preservation and new immigrants to Canada,
I have always been
interested in
understanding systems, ideas, human behaviour, and history.
In the end, I am really no more than a student of history and old technologies.
- My laptop perches on top of a
standing desk, overlooking our backyard which contains Canadian
conifers and my wife's astronomy observatory.
-
A little to the north, passenger and freight trains rumble by, day and night, and whistle at a nearby grade crossing.
-
A little to the south, Lake Ontario laps at its broken limestone shore (except in winter!).
Through the efforts of many others on the internet, I have often travelled far away from this location through their websites.
I hope to return the favour.
David J. Gagnon
Formative Experience Gallery
all photos by L.C. Gagnon
Hiding in the weeds while working as a trainmaster for the Boston & Maine.
B&M switching at Springfield, Massachusetts,
during a vacation trip to visit an American cousin.
On trackmobile patrol at Lachine, Quebec's, CNR station.
Trackmobile headlight is turned off when clear of the mainline.
The old Lachine mainline ... "It divided the land ... it divided the man"
With my grandfather and CNR 6153 at Turcot roundhouse on a hot, humid summer day.
Performed a cab inspection before the engine departed for an excursion run.
Ready for a pull-by inspection at Montreal West.
On a trip to visit my grandfather at Lac Saguay, Quebec :
Pere Antoine Labelle (1833-1891) statue at Labelle, Quebec.
To stem francophone economic emigration to the US,
Labelle sought to have the Laurentians opened up by French Catholic colonisation.
The railway line to Labelle which later continued to Lac Saguay and Mont Laurier was one of his great causes.
The Ayrshire farm of my great-uncle and cousin at St. Andrew's East, Quebec ...
Scottish genes, too.
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