Antique Railway Cars Saved

 

It seemed Christmas came early to Aspen Crossing this year, with Santa using five lo-boy trailers to deliver a Snow Plow, 3 Boxcars and a Caboose.

However, in reality it was Aspen Crossing who played Santa to these relics of yesterday’s railroad by saving them from the salvage yard and providing a new home. These cars had been in a long line at Skiff, Alberta awaiting demolition. The line grew shorter each day as the old cars made that final trip to the scrap yard. Finally, only five remained. Aspen Crossing had adopted these in order to offer a piece of history to the public for many years to come.

Jason Thornhill, owner of Aspen Crossing, says these cars will be on display to educate future generations on railway operations of yesteryear.

These old boxcars were the utility haulers of the railway carrying everything from soup to nuts. Imagine, the back breaking job of loading and unloading these cars with lumber, sacks of feed, dry goods, groceries, etc. On the inside are markings indicating how high grain could be piled. Special cardboard had to be used at the doors, to seal the grain before loading through a hatch at the top. A hole was punched in this cardboard, and an auger inserted for unloading. Talk about labour intensive!

The snowplow would be pushed along the track by a locomotive. The plow operator sat in a cupola overlooking the rails ahead. He had controls for folding snowplow wings at RR crossings. Also, he was able to adjust the blade between the tracks to the desired height. With the snow plow attached, a train engineer was literally “running blind” and depended on communication from the snow plow operator, thru whistle signals or radio, to speed up, slow down, stop, etc. There are many awesome examples of railway snowplowing to view on YouTube.

The caboose had many uses, mainly serving as an office for the conductor. He was responsible for the train (the boss of the operation). His duty was to oversee the crew. An engineer couldn’t move the train until he received orders from the conductor. The small windowed extension on top the caboose is called the cupola. Here the conductor was able to sit and oversee the whole train. Often a caboose was placed on a siding to become a temporary jobsite office. Many had cooking and sleeping facilities. Aspen Crossing now has four cabooses on

location. You are able tour one to see what went on inside. They also have a Cabin Caboose available for overnight stays

These five lucky cars join an impressive collection, including the crown jewel of Aspen Crossing, an1887 pullman dining car, that once was former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s private rail car. He was the last prime minister to campaign from the railway. If you close your eyes, you can almost see our 13th Prime Minister engaging a huge crowd from his position standing on the rear platform, jowls waving, as he closes an era in Canadian history.

At Aspen Crossing there is no charge to the public to view these pieces of antiquity from bygone days. Located on Highway 24 just outside Mossleigh, Alberta (about 45 minutes SE of Calgary)Aspen Crossing is easily recognizable by the replica 1905 CPR Station, yellow CPR caboose and 1887 dining car.