Private moment goes public in Galt rail yard
FLASH FROM THE PAST
A hug … a kiss … and the guys in the rail yard are all having a hoot!
That sounds like a line from an old folksong but it came to mind when I first saw this real photo postcard from Cambridge-Galt’s past. Some 35 men, including one with a drum plus a black-faced wagon driver, are rubbernecking an intimate scene. In a carriage whose horses seem anxious to be off, a bearded man and fancyhatted woman embrace and canoodle while ignoring the onlookers.
What has pulled all these people together? The crowd is made up of railway employees and passengers standing beside a Canadian Pacific Railway baggage car. However, the presence of the drummer and the costumed driver imply this was not just a spur-ofthe-moment coming together. In all likelihood we never will discover the story behind this photo — unless someone has the same postcard with details written on the back.
The c. 1910 scene is in the CPR’s rail yards surrounding Galt’s passenger station on Malcolm Street. That section of north downtown Galt had an interesting background. Andrew Taylor writes in his book “Our Todays and Yesterdays” that the general area of today’s Water, Samuelson, Yorke and Roseview streets comprised the village’s cricket grounds. Horse-racing and agricultural fairs were also held there until about 1871.
That was the cricket grounds’ final year. Fourteen acres of land on the river’s west side had just been donated to the community by William Dickson Junior “to be used and enjoyed forever as a public park and pleasure ground.”
In 2018, Dickson Park is still fulfilling that mandate. But let’s get back on track. The Credit Valley Railway began in the early 1870s, planning several lines running west and north from Toronto. The St. Thomas branch linked Milton, Galt, Ayr, Woodstock and St. Thomas.
North Dumfries and Galt councils provided a $110,000 bonus to lure the CVR, whose surveyors reached Galt in 1873. They told head office about the vacant Malcolm Street lands near the east end of the proposed Grand River bridge. George Laidlaw, CVR owner, purchased the old cricket grounds and put up rudimentary freight and passenger buildings.
CVR crossed the river in grand style with a 900-foot-long bridge featuring five spans of iron with trestles at each end. Taylor described in detail the initial, unofficial test run on Dec. 18, 1879. On the east end of the bridge, “the levers were set for slow movement and the crew jumped clear, leaving it to cross the bridge on its own.”
At the west end another crew leapt on board and took control. The first train over the Galt bridge!
Satisfied with the preliminary trial run, official and more complex testing took place at noon on Christmas Eve. Three 60-ton engines did various manoeuvres 75 feet above the Grand while bridge engineers measured track movement and deflection. “Less than five-eighths of an inch in the centre span,” reported James Filby in his history of the CVR, “The Third Giant.”
To wrap up the formal assessment, three crossings at slow, medium and high speed were made. That day, as on every occasion since, the bridge did its job perfectly. Over the years there have been numerous upgrades and modifications to the structure but in a way, this is a 140-year-old veteran still doing its job … and it has outlasted its original owner. CVR didn’t survive long, and by 1883 the line was taken over by Canadian Pacific Railway.
CPR erected the stone-based red-brick passenger building in 1899 to replace the temporary structures built by Credit Valley. Today, the 1899 building still stands, although modifications have altered its appearance. In 1991, Cambridge-Galt’s CPR station was placed on the Directory of Designated Heritage Railway Stations by Parks Canada.
Like so many of Canada’s passenger stations dating back a century or more, CambridgeGalt’s no longer welcomes travellers: the final scheduled passenger run was in July 1971. However, freight trains regularly pass the station just before or after crossing one of Ontario’s most historic river bridges.
The post card club meeting Wednesday, Jan. 10, welcomes Win Boyd for a presentation on CPR’s worldwide rail, ship and plane transportation network: Victoria Park pavilion, 80 Schneider Ave., Kitchener; doors open at 6:30 p.m., presentation at 7:30.
For another Flash from the Past about Cambridge-Galt’s CPR history, visit www.therecord.com/ living-story/6526314-flash-fromthe-past-galt-native-was-amongvictims-in-1956-cpr-crash (bit.ly/2Cn4qJu).