Andy Cassidy is an ex-Canadian Pacific Railway employee who worked at Vancouver's Drake Street Shops until they closed in 1981. He started recording photographs of the shops with an Kodak Instamatic camera, moving on to a Canon AE1 film camera, but today uses a modern digital camera sharing his photos online with a group of railroaders, railfans, and modellers. His images and stories about the shops first appeared on OKthePK's Last Call page in July 2010 being published periodically for some months. In this article, his previously published railway wisdom and images are assembled here in about the same order as previously shown back then, but with the addition of new un-seen photos and tales inserted where appropriate - William Slim.


Canadian Pacific Railway
Drake Street Shops
Vancouver British Columbia
N49.273628  W123.121581   (Roundhouse)
 
The Drake Street Shops and yards are long demolished with only a few stalls of the roundhouse remaining to house Canadian Pacific Railway locomotive number 374, the engine which pulled the first passenger train into the City of Vancouver.

The Canadian Pacific Railway's (CPR) first official train arrived in Port Moody at the East end of the Burrard Inlet on 4 Jul 1886. The line was extended into what is now Vancouver, and the first official train to arrive there was on 23 May 1887. CP had to have servicing facilities to maintain the equipment, so a makeshift roundhouse and shop was built on the Burrard Inlet side of town near Pender and Carrell Streets, but this was only a stopgap measure, as a newer and more complete facility was being built over on the North shore of False Creek at the foot of Drake Street which would be completed in 1888. It was a 20 stall roundhouse, and over time a number of changes were made to the structure and surrounding buildings and track. Too much to get into here. I was obviously not there in those times. However, I was there in its final days of operation, and along with others closed the place down in late 1981.

After that date we had moved into new digs out in the Coquitlam Yard, but that's another story. There was also a roundhouse in the Coquitlam Yard, but a much smaller facility than the Drake Street Yard shops in Vancouver. It closed in 1981 when they moved their small staff over to the new Diesel Shop.

There are a number of good stories I recall about the Drake Street Roundhouse, but I'll share two that were significant for me.
 
The Diesel Shop portion of the Drake Street Roundhouse was at the north end, and consisted of pits 10 through 12 that were set up to maintain diesel locomotives. The three pits were deeper than the standard pits in the roundhouse to be able to work properly under the trucks of the diesels. Pit 10 was always covered with boards. It was primarily used for doing head and liner work with the overhead crane. Pit 11 was set up with reinforced concrete pads for the jacking of units. We did not have a drop table, so we had to jack up the units and wheel the trucks out onto the turntable, then over to Pit 12 where they were repaired. That shop area was also equipped with an overhead bridge crane, as mentioned above, that ran the span of the three pits. Four 35 ton Whiting Jacks worked as a set and could handle the weight of a GP9 or an A unit. Anything heavier had to be lifted with the resident steam crane.
 
First though, to set the stage, when we had to remove the trucks from some switcher for repairs, we set up the jacks and lifted it way, way, up. We would move the trucks out by means of an old generator set welder we kept for that purpose.
 
Basically, we'd connect the welder to one of the two traction motors in the truck, and that would provide the power required to drive the truck out from under the unit. The way we controlled this movement was very primitive. After connecting all the leads and turning on the welder, you'd pick up two bare ended long leads and touch them together momentarily to complete the connection and get the truck moving. Hopefully the right way! With DC current, this meant a lot of arcing and sparking that was hard on the eyes, so generally you held the leads behind your back and made the connection. I had a few old coats catch fire this way.
 
With the truck successfully moving out from under the unit, we wheeled it out onto the turntable. That was another risky maneuver, as sometimes the leads would stick together and you'd be yanking away at them to break the electrical connection. But if the truck got moving too fast, it would fly off the far end of the turntable onto the ground over at the CP Transport side of the roundhouse. They had removed the rails there, so that made it a problem to get it back onto the turntable. Most of the time though, you wheeled the truck out, stopping it in the right spot by putting a stick under the wheels. It had to be centered on the table for balance, otherwise the table would not turn. So positioning was critical. Also to note here, was that the shop doors (or barn doors as some would say), would have to be open and blocked with the locking dogs mounted on small posts outside the doors.

One afternoon, I was assigned to move a truck out from some Baldwin switcher that had a grounded Traction Motor. So I set it all up and moved the truck out to the turntable, moved the table over to track 12, reversed the electrical connections and started wheeling the truck back into Pit 12. I happened to be standing next to the welder just inside the door on Pit 11 while making and breaking the electrical connections with the cables. No problem, moving the truck off the table and up towards the shop. However, what I didn't realize was that I hadn't locked the barn door open on the far side. Unfortunately I couldn't see it as the other door was blocking my view. The wind had caught the door and moved it just foul of the movement. So there I am, merrily moving the truck in, very slowly I might add, and next thing you know the truck hit the door. If the door had been an inch either way, it would have just smashed the door up. But it hit dead on the end with all the striking force against the main post the door was hinged to. The main post is a great big 12 inch square, or larger, vertical post mounted on a concrete support about 8 inches high. Well, the truck knocked the post right off the support, then smashed the door. The whole corner of the building sank down. I thought I was going to be fired for sure, but they laughed it off the next day and the B&B came by and fixed it up with no hassle. I was sweating bullets there for a while!
 
Another near miss experience that was very scary came when we were jacking up a switcher one day. Initially you placed all four jacks under the jacking pads of the unit, and then manually raised the jacks to just make contact with the pads. Once all set, you used the master controller to lift all four jacks in unison to the height required.

So we did all that and the unit is almost at the top of the required lift when I noticed about a 1/4 inch gap between the jack and lifting pad on the corner closest to me. What's going on? I go to the other side, where the other guy is supposed to be watching what's going on, and the jack on the far corner was not operating at all. It's at the bottom! So now we've got a unit jacked up in the air with only TWO jacks kitty corner to each other. We managed to get the unit back down okay, but I'm telling you, I was shaking in my boots. If that sucker had come down due to a slip, or if a jack broke under the weight, we'd have been killed for sure. Luck was on our side that day.
 
I could go on and on about this kind of stuff, but you get the idea. Safety then, isn't what it is today. Even so, very few people ever got hurt back then... thank goodness.
 

Calgary Alberta - Due to the influence of the British train people, cleanliness was rigidly maintained in all Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) operations, including the roundhouse and engines. Nevertheless, the roundhouse was, in pre-1914 days, the world's worst place to work, according to Mr. N.R. Crump, retired chairman of the CPR, who started his illustrious career with the company as an indentured apprentice in the roundhouses at Revelstoke and Field. His father, former Superintendent of the Kettle Valley Division, worked in the Canmore roundhouse in 1892, according to a photo in the Glenbow Archives.
 
All apprentices were indentured for five years, so it was impossible to quit once the papers were signed. There was a choice of work, machinist, boilermaker, pipe fitter, blacksmith, and tinsmith.
 
In winter the air of the roundhouse was foggy and stagnant, resulting in lung trouble. There was no exhaust fan, and ice built up on the windows and doors, and had to be chopped off frequently.
 
There were no safety measures whatever, and as a result, there were many accidents.
 
The turntable was quite short at first when engines were relatively small, and was turned by a group of men forcing it around by main strength. As engines became larger, so did the turntable and finally it became necessary to use an air motor to turn it.
 
As Mr. Crump remarked, he'd rather work in an abattoir on kosher day.
 
V. Burns - 31 October 1981.
 
N.R. Crump died 26 Dec 1989 at age 85.
 
Norris Roy had started with Canadian Pacific in 1920 at age 15 as a machinist's apprentice and became president in 1955, later CEO (Chief Executive Officer) until 1972, but he stayed on the board of directors after his retirement.
 
He was born in 1904 in Revelstoke, son of a superintendent who had immigrated from England.
 
He worked in the shop for 15 years, but managed to get an education by doing home study and taking leaves of absence. He got his undergraduate degree and a Masters in engineering from Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, USA, then known as "the railroading school".
 
Later he returned to Canada, refusing job offers in the U.S. He was a staunch federalist, urging a greater sense of national unity despite his view that the country would never become truly bilingual.
 
He saw Canadian Pacific as "the greatest example of repatriation of ownership and control in Canada".
 
During the 30 years that he served in the upper echelons of management, he received 7 honourary degrees and was a director of numerous companies and charitable foundations. He was a governor of the Montreal General Hospital. He was named a companion to the Order of Canada in 1972.
 
He leaves his wife of nearly 60 years, Stella, and daughters Ann King and Janice Cook and 7 grandchildren.
 
Toronto Star - 30 Dec 1989.


 
Back in 1980, I worked at the Drake Street Roundhouse, but those roundhouse days are a far cry from working in a Diesel Shop today.
 
I remember when things got to a head at one point regarding safety, and a S&H committee was set up.
 
At the first meeting some of the guys started barking about the spraying of polyurethane paint in the shop (It's very bad for the lungs).
 
The General Locomotive Foreman at the time just laughed them off and told them to suck it up.
 
That would never happen today.





There are three interior photos of our Oil House. Unfortunately, for some reason I never took any good pictures of what the exterior of this building and the surrounding equipment looked like. What was I thinking? Must have been that afternoon shift messing with my head.
 
In any event, as you can see from the attached, we had only the best of accommodations here. A first class building with all the amenities. Like a floor, walls, leaky roof, and windows. Oh, not to mention the resource library of outdated manuals, and complete stock of required hardware in a first class drawer organizer.
 
Man, it was chilly in this place when cold outside. Even with the steam pipes hot. This building was just east of the Foreman's office on the service track. So we were in and out of there all day. At coffee break, one could possibly get in on the local poker game in session.
 
The lead photo above shows the "hanging gardens" of Fairbanks Locomotive Manuals. They haven't been used in a while.

By the time these shots were taken, things were winding down pretty fast at Drake Street.
 
The last passenger train, The Canadian, Number 1 West and Number 2 East, were arriving and departing from the Canadian National Railway (CN) station on Main and Terminal under VIA's control.
 
So the power was not coming to us to be serviced, and consequently the Road Switcher assignments out of Vancouver that provided power protection for the passenger service were now running out of Coquitlam.
 
All we were looking after were the Yard Units assigned to us.
 
That amounted to about 20 units.
 
Mostly MLW's (Montreal Locomotive Works) and a couple of Baldwins (Baldwin Locomotive Works) by this time.
 
We picked up some GM 1200s (General Motors) later on, and they went with us to Coquitlam.

The first photo above right was taken inside the Locomotive Foreman/Engineers Booking-In-Room building that was east of the roundhouse in the servicing area.
 
Here you can see the clock, the clock correction board, and the power assignment board.
 
As you can see, the clock is anything but heritage.
 
We had a mechanical pendulum clock that was standard in all facilities for years, but a few months prior to this photo being taken, the original clock was removed in the middle of the night, and replaced with this clock by persons unknown.
 
I have no idea who claimed that clock, but I'd venture a guess it ended up hanging on some officials rec-room wall.
 
All I know is that everybody was some cheesed off when it got swapped out.
 
Also in the photo is the assignment board, out of date by this time as all of the passenger and road switcher assignments were long gone by then as mentioned above.
 
The clock correction board was very important in the old days, as everybody's watch had to be precise.
 
So that board indicated any error of the current clock reading, and the Engineers checked that against their own watch.

In this next shot yours truly is sitting in the outside office. By this time it was just a glorified sitting area, and if it wasn't for the phone, I wouldn't be there.
 
Just to my left was where we had the Yard Unit Scheduling Board, but it was removed and put into the current office of the day which was moved to the old Electrical Foreman's office west of the roundhouse.
 
Behind me in the picture is the pass-through to the Engineers lockers and booking-in-room. By this time there were none checking in or out.
 
This office was an interesting place.
 
At times it was home to mice, and at times rats. As I primarily worked the 16:00 to 24:00 shift there, that was when you'd see and hear them. Every night, at about the time when Bruce Chapman would call for an update on things (Bruce worked the power desk in Montreal), this mouse would poke his head out from behind the wall between the Engineers locker room and the office. I'd be sitting there eating my soup crackers, and would throw over a few crumbs. Eventually he got bold enough to come over to my chair, and in a few weeks he was eating out of my hand! John Vint, AKA (Also Known As) Scotty, who worked 08:00-16:00 named him Egburt. He ended up with a mate, then three or four kids.
 
One night I was sitting there and right on time Egburt sticks his head out to see if it's safe to come out. In the mean time I hear this noise there, then suddenly these three little guys come barrelling out and over top of Egburt. I guess they were having a game of tag or something. Well, Egburt freaked out, and you could hear him yelling at these unruly kids to get back in the nest. Of course they complied. I guess they got a lecture after that on the dangers of being a mouse and how to conduct themselves in the dangerous public areas.
 
On another occasion, a Labourer who was on the 24:00-08:00 shift as Fire Watch was catching a few Zee's in the office. He woke up only to find a rat on the desk, and another one sitting on his lap! He wasn't too happy about that.
 
In those days we had no cell phones. So when anybody called, they had to be patient and let the phone ring 50 times or so, as I could be anywhere in the shop, a long way from the phone.
 
We had a loud Klaxon Horn mounted outside the roundhouse, and you could hear it blaring away from anywhere in the facility. Usually it would be the crew clerk calling, or Bruce Chapman looking for an update on the local power. That was the highlight of my evenings. He'd always be in a hurry to run over the power issues etc. If he had his way the call was over in 30 seconds, so I always tried to drag out the conversation by expanding on all the issues, plus telling him things like how I was cutting my grass in the middle of winter here when they were knee deep in snow back in Montreal. I think I had him on the phone for 15 to 20 minutes or so at times.This photo is more about people than equipment. It is March of 1973. I was near the end of my tenure as a labourer, and on this day working with two other fine fellows, Cosmo... I can't recall his last name, and Pat Scorda. Both of these gents have passed on now. CP 1403 sits on the service track in front of the old oil house where their photo was taken.
 
Labourers were the hardest worked group of guys in those days. We all worked under the watchful eye of the Labour Foreman, Angie (Angelo) Grafos. He was a real task master! If you were one minute late, either leaving early for a break or returning from one, he was all over you. When the passenger units arrived on the shop track, the labourers hustled out ASAP (As Soon As Possible). We'd each grab a burlap sack of rags and a broom stick, climb into the units, and start wiping down the engine. In most cases the engines were covered with oil, and it was all over the floor of the engine compartment. Sometimes it was so bad we needed two sacks of rags. The engine top deck seals leaked profusely on the old A and B type engines in these units. The A and B series of engine is long gone from CP now, thank Goodness! The new top deck covers have a seal configuration that's much better. Some days the oil would be 1/2 inch thick all over the floor of these units. Also, because they'd just come off the road, the inside of the carbody was stinking hot, especially in the summer. We didn't mind it so much in the winter though, as it was a nice break to get in from the cold.
 
Some people can't stand the noise units make. I, on the other hand, loved the sound of the engines up close. So one of my favourite times while wiping the engine down was when Alec Watt, the Assistant Locomotive Foreman at the time, would come out and load test the units. He'd get in the big chair and the Electrician would isolate each unit in succession. Alec would then load the unit that was on-line back and forth to check the loading, dynamic brake, and see if there were any wheel slip problems. With the relatively short track length, he'd load the unit in throttle 8 and also apply the independent brake. I just loved when the unit really loaded up hard. Being a mechanical sort, I discovered the Layshaft. (The Layshaft is kind of a manual throttle for a diesel locomotive engine that's usually located in the engine compartment.) One day I decided to give the engine a boost when Alec was doing his load testing. So when it was at full load I gave it a shove in further. Well, next thing you know the engine overspeed tripped and the bells started ringing as the unit shut down. Of course, I didn't know what had happened at that time, so I just went on with my wiping duties. A machinist and Alec came in to check things over and reset the tripped overspeed. While they were both scratching their heads trying to figure out why it tripped, I didn't say a word!
 
After wiping down all the innards, we'd then get to washing the exteriors. And when that was done we had to clean both the front and rear cabs. I swear we were the only ones to ever do this, as every cab I ever cleaned was just black inside. We had to get all the cab paint looking clean with no streaks, plus the glass. Grafos would then do his inspection. If it wasn't to his liking you had to keep on it till it was. Actually, I got along pretty well with him, whereas quite a few others didn't.

This is a shot of CP 3716 that sat on the stub track to the south of the two service tracks. That track used to connect to the turntable at one time, but had been cut short a few years earlier. It was a rough looking bird sitting there. I never would have thought it would run again at the time, but it was rebuilt in the Drake Street Shops in 1975. It's currently in fine form at the Kettle Valley Steam Railway in Summerland, British Columbia, on what's left of the Kettle Valley rail line.

These next two shots were taken from the roof of the roundhouse. First off, anybody who happens to know what Drake Street looked like in the past will see right away a massive number of changes. Primarily the removal of the entire steam related infrastructure as you may have seen in older photos. At this time all that's left is the bare minimum to service the local yard fleet of Baldwins and Alcos (American Locomotive Company), plus the passenger units and their backup units, primarily GP9's in the 8500 series which were equipped with steam generators for passenger service. So in this picture you see Baldwin CP 7069 in tuscan, grey, and yellow with script lettering resting on the turntable after moving out of the roundhouse. In the background on the south service track is SD40 CP 5538 in Action Red Multimark paint, and over on the stub track is CP 3716 in storage. You can also see the two diamond crossings on the wye. In the past the stub track the 3716 is sitting on also crossed over the wye track. Some spare locomotive wheels adorn the small stub tracks.

In this second shot from the roof, 7069 has been turned and lined to the North service track. I'm quite sure that's Johnny Dipalma switching for Angie Grafos in the Cab. Now you can see our standby GP9, 8515, over behind the oil house. The spot on the north service track beside the 5538 is where we did all the routine servicing, watering, oiling, and washing etc. of the passenger and transfer units. At the far left of the photo is the engineers locker and booking-in room adjoining the Locomotive Foreman's office next to the car beside the building. That was my office later on. Mouse infested place. Anybody remember Egburt? Down past the oil house are the lube tanks. The fuelling and sanding took place farther east up by that yellow box car. If you look closely you can see the sand tower there.

The tower was fed by sand from the sand house over to the right of the single fuel tank and two tank cars in the top middle. One tank car was diesel fuel, and the other was a spare "Bunker C" car that we used for fuel in the Powerhouse.
 
The Sand House is a place I should have taken more pictures of, and is worthy of note here. To most people sand is sand, big deal. Well there's more to locomotive sand than meets the eye. Sand needs to be dry and of the proper size and consistency to flow in a locomotive sanding system. On my second day working at this place I was given the task of working the sand car. Sure, what's that all about I wondered. Well, about four of us labourers head up to the sand house. I was under the wing of fellow labourer Albert Derdowski. There was an OCS (On Company Service) gondola car full of sand sitting beside the sand house. What do we do here I said. Albert barked out "We shovel ALL the sand into the Sand House." You've got to be kidding I'm thinking. There's a lot of sand in this car. And it's all wet to boot! At least 30 tons worth, maybe more. So we shovelled sand ALL day and got it transferred in to the sand house. Well that's just the start of it.
 
The next day I'm up at the sand house with Albert and he's going to show me the ropes on drying and transferring sand to the sand tower. All that sand we shovelled the day before now was going to be dried and blown up to the tower. Not all at once though. This was a one man job because it takes time to dry wet sand. The sand house had a drum dryer. This is where I wished I had pictures. Imagine about five 35 gallon drums end to end at an angle of about 25 degrees or so that rotates slowly on rollers. At the high end of the drum you shovel in the sand. Not too fast! At the bottom end of the rotating drum is a section made of fine mesh screen. This separates the fine sand from the coarse stuff that's waste. Also at the bottom end is a burner that shoots a good size flame up the barrel. Very similar to the kind of burner that was found in oil furnaces in most homes years ago. The burner was fed by diesel fuel from a drum outside the sand house which was empty.
 
So the first thing we do is go to the fuel stand with empty 5 gallon containers and fill them with diesel fuel to fill the 45 gallon drum outside the sand house. Once that's done, we blow the pipes. The dried sand we produce goes into an underground tank that is connected to the top of the sand tower by a two inch pipe. To get the sand in the tank up to the tower, we have to blow it up with compressed air that is supplied by the shop air compressor. But before we start we need to ensure the tank and pipes are clear. This is the most important and dangerous part of the job here. The top of the sand transfer tank has a pipe extending up to the base of the sand dryer. We have a pipe cap with a handle welded on it which we screw onto the open pipe, knock it tight with a hammer, then turn on the air. If you can hear it blowing through the pipe and exhaust at the sand tower we are good to go. Having cleared out any residual sand and moisture that might be in the tank and line we shut off the air and remove the cap.
 
Okay, so now we put a large funnel in the pipe to the sand transfer tank so the dry sand can go in, and put a bucket at the end of the drum screen to collect the large stuff that is waste. When the bucket fills up we will toss it out the door. Next we light the burner and turn on the drum roller, with a switch on the wall, that's the easy part. We are good to go.
 
So now Albert shows me how to pace myself shovelling wet sand into the rotating drum. "Not too fast now or wet sand will get in the transfer tank. We don't want that because the compressed air will not push the sand up to the top of the tower if it is the slightest bit wet." So we shovel sand slowly into the top of the drum until I get the hang of it. Of course Albert had to show me how to use a shovel! At first I had sand flying all over the place. "Just take a bit and let it lift off the shovel into the chute." Okay, I got it.
 
So we fill the transfer tank and shut everything down. "Okay, now we blow it up.". Right... we take the funnel out and cap the line. The air valve is opened, and sure enough, you can hear the sand bumping through the 2 inch underground pipe and up the side of the sand tower. In a minute or so, the transfer tank empties and the pipes on the side of the sand tower are banging away like they are going to come apart. Suddenly a great cloud of sand dust emerges from the vent at the top of the tower. "Okay we are done that load", Albert says. On to the next one.
 
So now I'm doing it on my own. All's well as far as I'm concerned. I fill the transfer tank, put on the cap, and open the air valve. Thump thump, and that's it. What's going on? Well, I was too hasty shovelling so the sand in the tank is moist. When I turned on the air the pipe got major constipation. Now What? Here is the REAL dangerous part!
 
First, we leave the air on and go for coffee hoping that in 15 minutes or so it will clear itself. No such luck. The 100 PSI air is now trapped in the tank. To relieve the pressure we have to remove that cap. With hammer in hand Albert slowly backs off the cap. Once it is turned a revolution or so we now step outside the door. There is a long wooden 2 x 4 sitting there. He grabs it and opens the door just enough to slide in the 2 x 4 using it to hit the handle on the pipe cap to rotate it off. POW! The cap blows off like Mount St. Helens. Now I know why we don't want to bung this thing up. Holy s--t man! If a guy were to be in the building when he took that cap off he'd be killed for sure. (Now I look back and wonder why they didn't have a manual relieve valve in place to bleed off the air if this happened. Safety wasn't a big thing in those days.) Now we call the B&B plumbers to come over and clear the line. They aren't too happy about it...
 
Well, I learned how to dry sand properly in the end, and found it to be one of the best jobs. It was an easy pace all day and nobody would bug you. I didn't mind the unloading of the gondola after that either. Put your brain in neutral and just coast along... those were the days.
 
To finish off, we used to have a labourer who was real jumpy. I won't mention names. He was a real gentleman, but very excitable and could be unsafe. One day he was drying sand and plugged the tank. Fortunately for him, I came by just as he was half an inch away from removing that cap with a hammer in hand and his face almost directly over it. "STOP!" I yelled. If it had come off... well I don't like to think what I would have found had I shown up 5 seconds later. I was shaking.
 
One of our now retired Trainers from Field Ops, Leif Sorensen, acquired a number of old photos taken of the Drake Street Shops and other locations in the downtown Vancouver Yards. This collection was a gold mine to me, as that's my stomping ground, and I always wished I'd taken all these photos and more, but I didn't. So, when these came along, I was quite thrilled. Unfortunately, I'm not sure who actually took the pictures, so I can't give proper credit.

This photograph at the Drake Street Shops looks east from the "Y" crossing in front of the turntable. On the north track tp the left is FP9A CP 1418 and a B unit number 19?? partially visible, with steam locomotive 4-8-4 Hudson class H1e number 2862 on the south track to the right. This photo taken in 1956 was before my employment at Drake Street Shops.

The first shot of CP 4070 is quite interesting in that the CP 4070, a General Motors Division model FP7A, was used in the making of the movie Silver Streak starring Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, and Jill Clayburgh back in 1976. The locomotive was painted in a fictional "AMRoad" livery still keeping the Canadian Pacific number. Many of the scenes for Silver Streak were filmed at various locations in Alberta such as Calgary, High River, Okotoks, and Drumheller.

This second CP 4070 shot is facing northwest with an unknown GP behind. This was the time I was there. The oil tank and wooden water tower in the earlier photo are long gone by this time. Look at all the crud on the ground between and around the rails. There was no consideration for environmental responsibility in those days. We flushed everything down the drain. It just went right out into False Creek. A very polluted area to this day. About where this picture was taken was a mound of oily sand and goo about six feet high. We just kept dumping it all there back then. There's lots to tell regarding these photos. To just clear up a few things that might come to mind here, first, Consolidation 3716, built 1912, was donated to the City Of Port Coquitlam. It arrived and was stored outside at Drake Street in 1966 where it deteriorated till rebuilt in 1975-1976. It is still currently running up in Summerland at the Kettle Valley Steam Railway. Just look that up in Google and you'll see tons of info and photos of it there. I was up there briefly in Sept and by chance caught it at the Trout Creek Bridge. CP 2860, 1940 built, 4-6-4 Royal Hudson spent most of its time working between here and Revelstoke, then a few years in Winnipeg before being sent to the deadline in 1959 where it sat for five years. It was sold to the originators of the West Coast Railway Association and was sent here, where it sat from 1964 till 1973. Logistical issues messed with the original plans, so it just sat idle in the roundhouse till the overhaul started. Ownership also changed in that time.

These next photos are 1968 give or take. When I started at Drake Street the CP 3716 was parked along with a few other pieces of equipment on the stub track south of the two main tracks that lead into the roundhouse. It was one rusting hulk let me tell you, and I thought at the time that it was impossible to ever resurrect this thing. Well, I was VERY wrong about that. It is currently looking very fine indeed on the KVR. The CP 2860 which was fortunate to be sitting inside the shop on the then pit number 2 was by contrast looking like it could be fired up anytime. Which in fact it was some years later after a minor going over. I'll always remember that day, as they got it steamed up behind the oil shed. It had steam coming out from all over the place. Bill Silver, the General Locomotive Foreman of the day, got in the big chair and took the controls in hand. Opened the throttle and away it went. The problem was though, the throttle got stuck with some slag or something internally and would not shut! So there he is going from forward to reverse and back, and at the same time opening and closing the throttle in futility trying to stem the flow of steam to the cylinders. Eventually he applied the brakes and got it in the neutral position, killed the fire, and just let it sit there venting through the cylinder drain cocks till it cooled off. Anyhow, further to the story, the cause of the stuck throttle was a broken poppet in the throttle body, and on that test the boiler pressure was only brought up to 75 PSI. This and other details were told to me by Dan MacDougall who was extensively involved in the overhauling of it in the beginning. I was there, but not involved with the overhaul. There's not much electrical on steam engines.


At the east end of the Drake Street complex was Smythe Street, and just beyond that was the old Cambie Street Bridge. The first photo shows CP 2863 in 1953 crossing Smythe Street and taken from the bridge. They have no doubt just dropped a passenger train off at the Vancouver station and made their way through the Dunsmuir Tunnel to the Drake Street Yard for servicing. This area is totally different now with all the post Expo development. Lots of good old cars I wish I had now in that shot. Note the kerosene targets and the flagman's shack.

 

 
The second shot is indicated as 1957 but is not of good quality. Too bad because that would have been a great photo. The locomotive at the old sand shed is a 4-6-0 Ten-Wheeler, class D10, number unknown and one of the most ubiquitous CP steam engines. In the background to the left, (North), one can see FP7 or FP9's at the new fuel stand/sand tower area getting serviced, and another set closer near the oil shed. Again, no numbers are visible. Too bad. The shot is taken from the west side of the turntable pit, and you can see a bit of the pit and table in the foreground.In this section we are continuing photos of the Drake Street facility taken before it was closed in 1981. These are the last shots I have from the roof of the old Drake Street Roundhouse. In the first shot above passenger units CP 1408 and 1411 have been turned on the wye and delivered to the north service track in front of the oil house.
 
CP 8515 still rests on the north side of the building, and CP 5538 and CP 7069 sit patiently on the south service track just east of the crossing. CP 3716 is asleep on the stub while CP 7067 pulls the Canadian (Train No. 1) through the wash rack. 7067 is sporting a new Action Red Multimark paint job.
 
Although it's not obvious looking at the photos, looking at them from an environmental point of view a lot has changed over the years. In a nut shell, all runoff and drain lines at the place just went through a crude oil/water separator (that was rarely serviced), and then dumped into False Creek.
 
I remember one day somebody dumped a crankcase full of oil into a pit in the Roundhouse. The next day all the boats at the new False Creek Marina were floating in an oil blanket. Everybody was hitting the panic button over that one. Like I said, all the wash water from the yard and in the shop went into the drink.
 
The shop fuel tank sat within a miniscule berm that would never contain any kind of spill.
 
Fuel oil at the fuel stand was frequently spilled without consequence. (Although it was nothing like they did at the old Coquitlam Roundhouse, where we frequently worked in a sea of diesel fuel from all the overflows). When we cleaned out all the sludge from between the rails on the Drake Street service tacks, we just dumped it on the ground east of that fuel tank. There was a mountain of it there! Those yellow and brown drums at the corner of the oil house contained Active Chemical Industrial Detergent that was full of caustic.
 
We also had a steel tote of this stuff on the other side of the building, and also one in the roundhouse. Sometimes the valve at the bottom would get left open and leak all the detergent out. No oil/water separator in the world can deal with that, so out to False Creek it went!
 
If you wanted the hull cleaned on your boat, you just floated around False Creek for the day and all the debris was eaten right off. (Well, that's an exaggeration.)
 
If all that wasn't bad enough, we used sodium dichromate in the cooling systems of the locomotives. This stuff is no longer used due to heavy metal contamination if spilled. We used to sprinkle the stuff on the ground around the Foreman's shack to kill the weeds every year. It did a good job.


After the passenger train was run through the wash rack, the crew backed up and brought it into the centre yard as seen in the second photo above. This day one of the business cars was on board, Van Horne maybe.
 
The yard engine would drop off the train west of the wye switch and come back up through the coach yard around the wye in front of the turntable, as seen in this third shot.
 
Once they tied onto the Park car, they pulled the train around the wye and into the coach yard, as seen in this last photo. I can still hear the cars going over the two diamonds. "Click clack, click clack", and a quick repeat with the truck on the next car. Then a lull as the car passed over till the next set of trucks went through. Finally ending with a single truck crossing over. Those diamonds would flex like Arnold Schwarzenegger's biceps when they went through, especially with the units.


Canadian Pacific's Drake Street Shops in 1973 saw locomotive CP 5534 being lifted by the local Steam Crane CP 414330. They give a complete overview of the task at hand. That being the removal of a truck from an SD40 so repairs could be made to one of the Traction Motor and Wheel Combos. At this time I was under the watchful eye of Labour Foreman "Angie Grafos", and couldn't be hanging around taking pictures when there was other work to be done. Consequently, I only got the two attached shots of this lift. Too bad, because the lighting was 100 percent better, and so are the shots from the old Instamatic.

In addition to those shots, attached are pictures of two GP9's that were kicking around. CP 8515 was a steam generator equipped GP9 that was backup power to Train Number 2, "The Canadian", if required. Note the air reservoir on the roof of the unit. Normally they are down at the fuel tank level, but on units with steam generators the space is needed for the water tank.

CP 8632 sitting halfway in pit number 8 was not typical for Drake Street in that it was not steam generator equipped. It may have been in from Coquitlam for wheel or traction motor repair. All other repairs to GM units were done at Alyth in Calgary. We had virtually no spare parts for GM units in our stores, and nobody had any expertise in troubleshooting or repairing them. Somehow though, we managed to get them out working day to day.
 
Steam crane CP 414330 is currently part of the West Coast Railway Association collection in Squamish, British Columbia. CP 8515 was rebuilt in the mid-1980's to CP 1624 and assigned to Coquitlam Shop as part of the 1624-1020 Mother/Daughter set. CP 8632 was rebuilt as well, renumbered CP 1536, and moved to Moose Jaw.
 
In April 1973 we had Sperry Rail Service (SRS) Car 402 pay us a visit. All they were doing was turning the car on the wye and filling up the fuel tank. The Sperry cars were not total strangers to us as they used to tie up over the Christmas and New Years holidays in the roundhouse if they happened to be working the area at that time. Earlier I sent a shot of SRS 138 sitting in pit number 5 over Christmas 1980.
 
In one shot the car is on the south leg of the wye and you can see a construction crew laying pavement where our first Container Loading Facility would exist. On my previous rooftop shots of this area you may recall is was just a muck hole. Well, the ground wasn't very solid there, and whoever planned out this facility obviously didn't do any geotechnical work. So after they got it all nicely paved over they brought in the new Fantuzzi Lift Truck for lifting the cans on and off rail cars. These things are pretty big, and on the first lift the machine sank right through the pavement into the fill below. Somebody had some explaining to do.
 
In the last shot SRS 402 is on the shop fuel track getting gassed up. Alec Watt was the Locomotive Foreman in the Jacket on the left. Pat Scorda is on the far right doing the fuelling honours. I think Angie Grafos is the gent facing away between Alec and Pat, and the guy with the bib coveralls is one of the crew on SRS 402.




 
CP 8520 is a typical unit that used to hang around the Drake Street shops. Again, not sure of exact date for this photo but judging from the paint condition would suspect late 1960's and maybe early 1970's. In fact, 8520 looks like the one I was assigned to wash first thing one morning in Oct 1972. As you can see in the photo, the old oil shed is immediately behind the unit to the right. What a grimy hole that was. Anyways, as you can also see, that black pipe running along above and behind the unit is the shop steam line. Just out of view to the right that steam line ran to the oil tank, and to the side of the shed feeding the heat radiator inside, and an auxiliary line to the outside. We had that line piped into a 45 gallon drum of water and Oakite Detergent for washing the locomotives. The problem was that soap mix just never did the job all that well. So, when the boss wasn't looking, we used to fill a pail with the Oakite at 100 percent concentration and scrub the units down with that. It really cut the grease then! The bad part though, was it really cut the paint as well. So here I am scrubbing away on the north side trying to get the units, (Transfer set back-to-back), done before they depart at 09:00 off the shop track. Another guy was on the south side cleaning, but he wasn't doing it like I was. Anyways, then the boss comes out and starts giving me the gears. "Hurry up and rinse that off", he says. So, we both grab hoses and start rinsing. Before the water hit the carbody I knew I was in poop! Once that water contacted the units, all you could see was Tuscan Red running down the carbody like blood pouring from a freshly slit throat. Then as we are rinsing, the power starts pulling out, and he's yelling at me that we are both going to get fired. Holly Shit! We jump into the shop truck and run down to the station at the other side of downtown to see if we can do anything with it before any big bosses see it. Well, thank goodness it ran off and dried out and didn't look any worse than this picture. In the end though, we still hit the paint with 100 percent soap, but just made sure we did small sections at a time. Whew, that was close. LOL!These three shots are of the Compressor Room and the equipment therein. This Ingersol Rand compressor ran flawlessly for years. It had a 100 horsepower GE synchronous motor operating it. As opposed to the same compressor that was in place at Coquitlam but run by a 100 horsepower Westinghouse Motor that was constantly giving trouble. I chalked this up to the physical size difference between the two motors. The GE was considerably larger in every aspect. So I guess the Westinghouse Engineers figured cheaper equals better, but that was not the case. In any event, this particular machine ended up with a second career for many years after at the BC Rail Steam Shop where the Royal Hudson, CP 2860, was maintained till the BC government shut down the operation a number of years ago. Not sure where it is now. When this thing was pumping you could hear it all around the shop. Never ran low on air that I can remember.


It was pointed out to me by John Lachance that these machines were manufactured for the CPR in Sherbrooke, Quebec, next to the CPR Yard there. He also pointed out how these boiler/compressor rooms across the system were kept clean like hospitals, and that was the case at Drake Street. The floors and equipment were cleaned on each shift. They were well maintained.
 
For a time there, I worked in the boiler room tending the equipment. I liked doing that job, but it was pretty hot in that place, which was tough going in warm weather. In the story below I should add that the boiler at that time was fired with Bunker-C, not coal. The water controls were somewhat automated, but by no means perfect or quick reacting.
 
Below is a short story I passed onto John Leeming a couple of weeks ago on one of my more memorable boiler room experiences with regard to the "Apprentice Instructor", Ted Ladd.
 
Yes, good old Ted! He was also the Stationary Engineer, and he got me out of a mess of trouble one day. One of my tasks early on was tending the boiler room activities playing stationary fireman. Well, things go okay when they are working right, but one day the fire dropped out, and the alarms rang. Well, I soon found out I didn't know all I thought I knew about the system! I was running around like a chicken with it's head cut off trying to get things back up and running, to no avail. So, I ended up RUNNING over to the school room, and thankfully he was there. He meandered back over to the boiler room with me, and we got things up and running. What had happened is the Coach Yard guys had put the Canadian on steam and whipped the valve open. Well, that drew a stack of steam, and along with it the water level, which was why I couldn’t get the boiler re-lit. Obvious to me now of course as to what to do, but at the time I was lost. Thank goodness Ted was there!


The reference to Stall No. 1 in the story below needs a bit of explanation. The original roundhouse build was 20 stalls, left to right on the drawing below (courtesy of Jim Booth), but just over twenty years later they demolished the first ten and rebuilt them to be longer. Many years later, stalls 1 to 8 were taken over by CP Transport. The 9 and 10 stalls were then turned into our 1 and 2 stall. No. 1 was where the tank car was kept, and No. 2 was where the CPR 2860 Royal Hudson was stored for years. Those two stalls had a door out back that accessed the toilet and the back of the Boiler Room, shown in orange below. Also included is a Mark Horne photo illustrating those two stalls very well with 2860 poking out of stall No. 2. The fellow standing there is Bob Williams, a Boilermaker whom I worked with.


These pics show the Steam Powered Duplex Pumps used to supply Bunker-C to the boiler. Prior to using bunker-C, the boiler used coal as fuel, but that was before my time there. In any event, bunker was supplied to us by tank car. Only one was in place at a time, and that was placed in the No. 1 stall of the roundhouse. Steam was connected to the car to heat the oil so it could be pumped, otherwise it is just like black tar. (When cold outside it was like rock). Once heated up to 170 F or so, it was pumped from the car into a storage tank located outside the back of the boiler room, and that tank was also heated by steam. The pumping was accomplished by a larger set of duplex pumps located outside by the tank.
 
The pumps in these pictures were the same style as those outside, but smaller. They drew oil from the storage tank and fed it under pressure to the boiler where it was atomized with steam at the injector, (as seen in the previous batch of photos). One was constantly making minor adjustments to the steam and oil pressure at the injector to keep the flame clean. The pumps were amazing to watch cycle back and forth, and again they had to be tweaked constantly as well to keep them from hammering. Just a nice smooth flow was ideal. (Too bad I don't have a video of all this, but this was before video recorders. One gets spoiled by the electronic age these days.) Small trays were in place below all the packing seals that collected drips of oil and water as they accumulated, and they were cleaned out twice a shift. The place was spotless.


Shop cats seem to be a constant in the railway world, as well as barnyards. There were at least four of them running around the place at the time, and I don’t believe any of them impinged on each others territories. The ones in the story below lived for years after the Event, as noted. We had another that hung out in the Tinsmith area of the Machine shop, and another called Festus that was part of the Electrical crew over in the Coach Yard. Still, rats and mice roamed around aplenty. The two cats in the Boiler room were looked after by another Stationary Fireman there named Pete Lewicki, or Garlic Pete as he was known. He was heavy in the sauce and used to eat raw garlic to cover up the smell. In those days, everybody drank and smoked there. If you didn't, you weren’t part of the crew. As far as I know the cats there were unnamed.
 
Here's one insignificant shot of equipment in the Boiler Room I took at Drake Street. Looking back, I wished I'd taken a stack more, but that was film days, and a roll of 24 cost a few bucks to develop so what seemed like a lot of photos then is a pittance now in the digital age. Before retiring, I had a digital camera in my pocket constantly and usually was good for a dozen pictures almost every day.


The Induction Fan supplied a forced draft to the boiler. The original stack on the boiler was a good 100 feet high, but the top rotted out and at least half was removed for safety reasons. That induction fan played an important roll in keeping the heat moving through the tubes and up the stack. At one point after the stack had been lowered, the heat in the boiler was excessive and the sides bulged out considerably. Not a good situation. That even with about a foot of firebrick lining the walls. Anyway, we had two cats that called the boiler room home. Forget their names now, but one suffered as a result of that induction fan. Not seen in this photo is the other side of this fan. Driven by a 575 volt 3 phase motor the coupling was normally covered by a guard to protect against the rotating shaft. Jim Jacoboni was one of the regular Stationary Fireman working the boiler room one shift after the fan had been worked on the previous shift, and the guard had been removed so the coupling could be serviced. This was around 1970 or so. Well, the one cat decided that walking under the shaft between the motor and fan was a good idea...  NOT! Jim was right there when the cat took his trip, and what a trip it was! He said the shaft caught his tail and the cat was going around like a rag doll with blood spattering all over the place until the tail was ripped off and the cat was lying in a heap against the wall. Jim ran out to get help, but when he came back the cat was gone. He figured it was dead from the thrashing it took. However, he saw that it had crawled out the door by the trail of blood it left behind. Figuring that was it for the cat, he cleaned up the mess, and the guard was replaced the next day. About a month later, the cat came back, minus the tail. He carried on being one of the two mascots till the place closed down in 1981.

One thing I may not have mentioned in these sets previously is that anybody who lived in the Vancouver area likely remembers hearing the "Hooter", as we called it, blowing at 08:00, 12:00, and 16:00 hours on weekdays. As a kid growing up in the West side of town, myself and others would hear it all the time and had no idea where it originated from. Little did I know that Years later I'd be blowing that same Hooter. It was a steam whistle atop the Boiler Room at the roundhouse and at the top of those hours it was the job of the Boiler Room attendant on shift to pull the cord and blow that whistle/hooter for about five seconds. Great fun!

This is the last of the Boiler Room shots. Some other shots around the shop will be added later. These pictures show the steam powered high pressure air compressor, and the two Weir Feedwater Pumps. Also shown is a colour picture of a smaller version of the Weir pump that somebody rebuilt just to give a better view of what they look like. The top portion is the "Steam Engine" as it were, and the bottom portion is the actual water pump.

The high pressure air compressor used to bang away every so often, and to be honest I have no idea what the hell it supplied air to? Maybe the Coach Yard for testing the Air Brakes on the cars. If anybody has an idea, let me know. That's one of the few things I never did figure out there.

The Weir Feedwater Pumps were the heart of the operation. These things were set up so the packing on the piston rods was tight to the point they would squeal when operating. When they did that, everything was good. The thing about boiler rooms, steam engines, and the like, is that a good portion of what you do to ensure things are running properly is to LISTEN. So consequently, these pumps spoke to you about what was going on in the boiler. To the uninitiated ear, when they walked into the boiler room it was nothing but noise and heat. Lots of it and loud! Induction fan running, compressor in the adjacent room banging away constantly, high pressure compressor operating intermittently, the duplex oil pumps running, along with the Weir Feedwater Pumps. And not to mention the fire roaring away in the firebox, etc. Nobody wore earplugs in those days.

Anyway, once you knew what was going on there, you could actually fall asleep. All the noise was like a tune playing away in sync, and as long as everything was ticking away at the right times and speed it was quite relaxing. Those Feedwater Pumps would change pace based on the steam demand. If a lot of steam was being consumed for some reason, these pumps would pick up to a gallop! There was no sleeping then. You had to keep on top of things to make sure the water level stayed in the safe zone. There were automatic controls installed in the plant, but they worked only so-so, Except the low water alarm, fortunately. So, it was all pretty much a game of constant tweaking to ensure all was working properly.

The last thing I'll say about the power plant was that with the exception of the induction fan, the whole place ran on steam. Even if you only had 5 PSI of pressure, it was enough to get all the pumps moving and the fire lit. After a maintenance shutdown when everything was cold, the boiler was started by filling with cold water and starting a fire with compressed air and diesel fuel, which did not need to be hot to pump. Once a minor head of steam was up, and the Bunker was hot enough to pump, you could switch over to the Bunker-C fuel and steam atomization. Then the real heat was produced, and we'd get up to 100 PSI of steam in no time. That boiler was a 100 horsepower unit, so was a good size.