Caboosing Around

I grew up living beside the tracks in the west end of Toronto. The trains rumbled by constantly and most of the time I paid little attention to them. They were just part of the neighbourhood and I took them for granted. I didn’t dislike trains. I guess I just didn’t care or think much about them.

These days I know a lot of people who would love to have grown up beside the tracks. They’re train fanatics. Maybe it’s because trains generally and passenger trains in particular seem to be on the decline. Whatever it is, there’s nostalgia for trains and everything associated with them.

I’m catching it too. You know I’m not really that old but I can remember seeing steam engines go by the house when I was kid. I have vivid memories of my mother running to the clothes line after a big, black, smoky steam locomotive roared past the house. She had bed sheets on the line and didn’t want them to be covered in soot. Even though I clearly have those memories, I’ve questioned it because steam engines have been gone for a long time. I wondered if somehow I had imagined it. But I did some research on the web and discovered that steam engines were used in the Toronto area into the late 1950’s. I think one of the last ones was retired in 59. So I would have been 5 or 6 at the time but old enough to remember the smoke and noise and power of those mighty machines.

I’ve been thinking about trains because recently I had the opportunity to meet a couple model railroad enthusiasts. These are the guys who still play with toy trains and in some cases have been doing it for over 50 years. They build elaborate recreations of railways and rail yards with buildings and rail crossings and towns and mountains. The layout can take up an entire room in the basement or in some cases the entire basement. The trains, especially the newer models come equipped with chips that make the sound of rumbling diesel engines and the clickity-clack of the cars rolling along the rails. They even make their own smoke. These guys love trains, both the model versions and the real thing.

Then I came across a notice from the town of Grand Bay-Westfield informing us the town is trying to find a new home for our caboose. It’s been there on a rail siding beside the NB Southern Line serving as our Tourist Information Centre for many years. It’s a wooden Canadian Pacific Railway caboose dating from the 1912 – 1930 period. The railway got rid of cabooses on the ends of trains back in the 1980’s, replacing them with a high tech box that tracks important information about the operation of the train. Efficient I suppose but not nearly as nice to see as an old red caboose.

The town doesn’t need it anymore because the Visitor Information service has been moved into the new Brundage Point River Centre. The town says it doesn’t want to sell it, just transfer ownership to an individual or group who will conserve it as an important part of our railway heritage. Understandably they don’t want the taxpayers to have to pick up the tab for the continued maintenance of a caboose we no longer need and we don’t want to pay for the cost of relocating it to another location either. So that leaves it totally in the hands of train lovers. I truly hope some group comes forward to claim the little caboose for part of an exhibit or a business or maybe even another tourist information centre somewhere else in the province. I want to see it go to a good home. After all, it may one time have seen service at the end of train pulled by a steam locomotive that thundered by my old house one summer day, many years ago.