Coast to coast through Jackfish

• Walk
• Horseback
• Red River cart
• Canoe (paddle and carry)
• Sailboat
• York boat (row and sail)
• Steamship

• Sturdy metal snow plow with extendable wings attached - please return to your seat if the train accelerates to take a run at a snowdrift 
• Kerosene headlight and "all the bells and whistles" (actually one manual bell and one steam whistle for safety and signalling)
• Courteous flight deck and cabin crew who aren't afraid to stand in the snow (good thing, too)
• Sturdy wooden coaches heated with state of the art wood or coal stoves. And featuring:
• Contemporary kerosene illumination 
• Upholstery stuffed with straw or horsehair
• Gravity fed drinking water
• Very cool "Track-Vue" toilets which operate without water - but hopefully some quicklime sometimes
  
• A probable top speed of 30 mph, except for areas of rough track and snowdrifts
• We'll stop periodically for meets with other trains, coal and water ... and if we get stuck
• Thanks for riding the CPR north of Superior in 1887.

What were passenger trains like in the early 1900s?

Imagine you are our westbound postcard writer of 1904, watching the Lake Superior scenery pass as you sit in a first class section (think "business class"):

There are many imperfections in the glass of the single-paned window at your left arm. You've opened it a crack and breathe some of the cold, healthy woodland ozone to help clear your head. You didn't sleep well last night in this nice but stuffy, rocking, creaking car. This "Sunday" doesn't seem normal without church and the usual events of home. The train and its crew are eternally restless on this day of rest.

Your first class coach is about six cars back from the locomotive and you can frequently see it and its ever-changing black, grey, or white plume as the train curves around mountains, rock outcroppings and bodies of water. As you look to Lake Superior at your left, the sun sparkles off the lake and there are serpentine, forested islands scattered in it at random. Large expanses of ice float in the open lake and the bays are still frozen. The telegraph lines dip like swallows in flight between the posts which flash by.

Staccato barks of exhaust come from the locomotive as it works hard up hills - other times it is strangely silent. When it whistles and rings its bell approaching stations, tunnels or bridges, the sound often echoes off the sheer granite cliffs, across the bays, and the surrounding forests. The wooden coach creaks and lurches over uneven patches of track. Its wheels rhythmically click over the rail joints every second or two.

Some passengers are talking quietly. Many are silent: watching the scenery, reading, writing like you, thinking about their destination, or just bored. Until these awe-inspiring views of Lake Superior, there was a terribly endless procession of trees, rock cuts, small lakes and swamps passing your window. What a boring piece country it must be to live in - so far from every hint of civilization. How do these railroaders stand it? Approaching each tunnel or large rock cut, a solitary figure standing beside the track signals to the engineer as the train approaches - he must be communicating that there is no fallen rock and that the passenger train can proceed safely. What a lonely life. Where do children go to school out here?

Thank goodness for the food in the dining car. It is expensive but tasty - and the service is first class. You never know who you'll meet when the dining car steward takes you to a table with an unoccupied chair. How do the waiters avoid disaster with those heavy trays of food and drink? Can they get a sound night's sleep floating and bouncing along this river of iron?

A CPR dining car menu circa 1905:

For a change of scenery, first class passengers could visit the observation car at the tailend of the train. Looks like a pretty good party going on here! The steward (standing at the right rear in the white coat) would serve hot and cold beverages and snacks. In this photograph, there are a couple of passengers hanging out on the rear outdoor platform. There, far from the locomotive, the steel wheels on the steel rails would be the loudest sound they would hear.

• the trans-Atlantic steamships which brought the immigrants over
• the colonist cars which took them to their new homes
• the land which was sold to the immigrants
• the railway lines and branchlines which would bring manufactured items to the prairie settlers
• the railway lines and branchlines which would take away the crops grown by the newcomers
• the CPR knew a thing or two about "industrial vertical integration", eh?

• CPR provides:
• the seat/bed, or an upper bunk with a straw mattress
• a cooking stove in one end of the car
• You and your family:
• provide and cook your own food
• provide any bedding you want to use

Famous people who passed through between White River and Fort William

• Troops sent by the Canadian government to put down the second (Saskatchewan) Riel Rebellion. Travelling in early April, they covered the uncompleted sections around Lake Superior on foot, by sleigh, and by railway construction flatcar. The Lake Superior section was finished by the middle of May, completing the CPR between Montreal and the western mountains.

• Immigrants from Britain and Europe

• Canadian soldiers travelling from western Canada to Europe
• Labourers coming directly from China to work as skilled and unskilled labour behind the front in Europe. Soldiers were badly needed for fighting. The CPR was happy to help the British Empire top off the non-fighting labour pool by using CPR Pacific and Atlantic steamships and trains to transport these Chinese workers. In some cases there was a bond paid for their safe return to China.

• Tourists from Europe and particularly Britain who had heard about the "Canadian Pacific Rockies" and the fine resorts and hotels the railway had built there to attract them. The CPR even employed Swiss mountain guides at places like Lake Louise and Glacier House to promote climbing in the "Alps of North America".
• Fall "Harvest Specials" filled with eastern labourers who were needed to help scythe, stook and thresh all the grain grown on the newly-settled prairies. Farm mechanization gradually decreased the need for this extra labour and these specials wound down for good in the 1940s. My father-in-law said that on the way, these trains stopped at each place where there was a house - and twice if there were two houses.

• On freight cars: men travelling across the country, looking for work

• King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (later known as "The Queen Mother"). This was a big deal because no reigning British monarch had ever visited Canada before. At both White River and Schreiber the two of them were photographed strolling on the platform and talking to people. Because of the intercity rivalry, they attended receptions at both Port Arthur and Fort William.

Perhaps the happiest transit of the CPR and the Lake Superior section:

Now "everyone's" travelling

• Mail (this was how most of the mail was moved across the country - it was often sorted on board)
• Express (premium freight, Eaton's catalogue orders - the "Fedex" of that era)
• Baggage (belongings of the passengers and items like occupied coffins making the trip home)
• Coaches (sitting accommodation only - best for short trips)
• Colonist (spartan immigrant accommodation)
• Tourist sleeper (spartan vacation accommodation similar to the colonist set-up)
• Dining car (for the first class passengers to the rear. The others can buy food from the railway's aisle-wandering snack and newspaper sellers. Or, during train servicing stops, the others are allowed to visit the station lunch counters at places like White River and Schreiber.)
• Parlour car (easy chairs with snacks and drinks for a break from your deluxe sleeping space)
• Sleeping cars (some with separate bedrooms)
• Observation car (more easy chairs with an open rear platform)
  

Finally, here is more fascinating technological detail than most would ever desire to know:

Beginning in the early 1900s there were some significant advances in passenger car technology which were not always universally applied immediately:

• Engineer operated air brakes had already been installed on all passenger equipment, rather than using separate locomotive braking and manually applied brakes on each individual car. There are no air brakes on the equipment in the first photo from 1887 at White River and a more dangerous type of car coupler is evident.
• Steam from the locomotives was piped through the train to heat the cars through radiators
• Gravity fed flush toilets were introduced (i.e. using water)
  
• Steel frames and bodies made new cars less labour intensive to maintain, and protected passengers better during derailments and collisions. Wooden cars tended to "telescope" into eachother and crush passengers during a crash, and wrecks often caught fire from the overturned stoves. (Cars of mainly wood construction were used on some Canadian branchlines into the 1950s).
• Concrete slabs were used for the car floor instead of wooden planks, smoothing the ride on better car suspension systems, and helping to give these steel cars the name "heavyweight cars"
• Six axles distributed the heavier load on the rail better than the four axles used on the wooden cars
• Electrical generators, turned by the coach axles while the train was moving, charged batteries which supplied electric light to the cars. This replaced the long obsolete, stinky and flammable kerosene; and the newer Pintsch gas lights (a patented gas derived from petroleum, similar to natural gas)
• Some cars were converted to be cooled by large blocks of ice which were carried in bunkers beneath the cars. The cool melt water was circulated overhead to "sort of" air condition some of the sleeping cars
• However, the graceful curved clerestories and roofs continued to be made of shaped wood strips with an oil/tar soaked canvas layer which protected the wood from the weather.

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A century after our first passenger train photograph at White River was taken, we see Train Number 1 changing crews and departing west from Schreiber in 1987. Rolly Martin is at the throttle.

In 1990, this train will be cancelled and passenger service on the line will end.

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