Canadian National Railways Historical Association
Canadian Pacific Railway Historical Association
Amtrak (Link fails continuously)
locomotives. As time passed, and customers on the line vanished, Canadian Pacific would operate a few freight trains, with service to the old Molson brewery near Burrard Bridge possibly being one of the last. As the line fell into disuse local home owners along the line began planting gardens as close as a foot from the rails in some cases. CP was willing to sell the right-of-way to the City of Vancouver, and valued it at $400 million. The city's offer was $20 million. With Hunter Harrison as their new CEO the railway commented it would now begin to use the line to store cars and commenced to rip-up the encroaching gardens. The city responded with a cease and desist injunction but a court ruled in CP's favour. How could they not? The gardeners were trespassing. So, after 15 years of bitter fighting, meaningful negotiations ensued with the resulting sale of the corridor to the city at a price of $55 million. The city then removed the track, paved the right-of-way for bicycles, and renamed the corridor the Arbutus Greenway with a promise for a future rapid transit line. Hmmm... which may stir up the residents once more! The video was recorded on 18 Jan 2017 before the track was removed.
In 1871, a tiny nation, just four years old, it's population well below the 4 million mark, determined that it would build the world's longest railroad across empty country, much of it unexplored. This decision, bold to the point of recklessness, was to change the lives of every man, woman, and child in Canada and alter the shape of the nation. Using primary sources, diaries, letters, unpublished manuscripts, public documents, and newspapers, Pierre Berton has reconstructed the incredible decade of the 1870s, when Canadians of every stripe, contractors, politicians, financiers, surveyors, workingmen, journalists, and entrepreneurs fought for the railway, or against it. The National Dream is above all else the story of people. It is the story of George McMullen, the brash young promoter who tried to blackmail the Prime Minister, of Marcus Smith, the crusty surveyor, so suspicious of authority he thought the Governor General was speculating in railway lands, of Sanford Fleming, the great engineer who invented Standard Time but who couldn't make up his mind about the best route for the railway. All these figures, and dozens more, including the political leaders of the era, come to life with all their human ambitions and failings.
In the four years between 1881 and 1885, Canada was forged into one nation by the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Last Spike reconstructs the incredible story of how some 2,000 miles of steel crossed the continent in just five years, exactly half the time stipulated in the contract. Pierre Berton recreates the adventures that were part of this vast undertaking, the railway on the brink of bankruptcy, with one hour between it and ruin, the extraordinary land boom of Winnipeg in 1881-1882, and the epic tale of how William Van Horne rushed 3,000 soldiers over a half-finished railway to quell the Riel Rebellion. Dominating the whole saga are the men who made it all possible, a host of astonishing characters, Van Horne, the powerhouse behind the vision of a transcontinental railroad, Rogers, the eccentric surveyor, Onderdonk, the cool New Yorker, Stephen, the most emotional of businessmen, Father Lacombe, the black-robed voyageur, Sam Steele, of the North West Mounted Police, Gabriel Dumont, the Prince of the Prairies, more than 7,000 Chinese workers, toiling and dying in the canyons of the Fraser Valley, and many more, land sharks, construction geniuses, politicians, and entrepreneurs, all of whom played a role in the founding of Canada west of Ontario.
One of the Railroads of America series. Black and white photographs, reproductions, maps. Canadian National Railways is the largest and one of the oldest of the world's railway systems. Its whole story is told for the first time in this definitive history, its stormy early years, its growth, paralleling, indeed shaping, the growth of Canada itself, and its status internationally today. It is an epic of a great railroad from the pioneer days in the 1830s, when the scream of the locomotive whistle in its ponderous flight across the countryside promised an almost psychic release from the bondage of their isolation and loneliness, to the the technologically sophisticated 1970s.
Author Tom Murray provides an unprecedented look at a national icon, from its genesis amid the turmoil surrounding World War I to its acquisition of the Duluth Missabe & Iron Range Railway and its lease of BC Rail, both in 2003. In addition to exploring Canadian National operations and equipment through depression, war, modernization, and acquisitions, Murray explains how the railway affected, and was influenced by, the vast and varied regions it served. Marvelous photography from top shooters and Canadian archives, along with period timetables and print ads, illustrate CN's extraordinary geographic reach, diverse operations, social and economic roles, both as a government entity for 70 plus years and more recently as a privatized industry exemplar.
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