Remnant of the rail age disappears - From the Cluttered Desk with Keith Roulston

The photo on the front page of last week’s Citizen of the removal of the older water tower from CP Railroad days stirred memories for an oldtimer like me.

 

As Blyth approaches its 150th anniversary in 2027, it’s hard to forget its centennial in 1977. That was the same year Goderich celebrated the 150th year of Tiger Dunlop picking the site as the termination of the Huron Trail.

 

Prominent residents in Goderich helped organize the excursion of a steam train, pulled by an old steam locomotive, to run from Guelph to Goderich. Many of the facilties for steam locomotives had long disappeared since diesel engines began pulling trains, but the water tower still existed in Blyth, so a stop was arranged in Blyth for the engine to fill up on water.

 

I remember, as editor of the old Blyth Standard at the time, being on hand with Jill and our kids to welcome the train. We weren’t alone. Hundreds of others crowded the old station. As the train prepared to leave, I hurried westward to where the tracks passed under County Road. 25, to get photos of the train steaming under the tunnel and disappearing toward Goderich.

 

It was 11 years later in 1988 that CP Rail announced it would abandon the Guelph-to-Goderich line. I remember being unhappy at the time. I got up early to photograph what I thought was the last train to run the route. Later the rails and ties were removed. And I remember being outraged when someone phoned me at The Citizen, to warn me that a power shovel was busy tearing down the overpass that had originally carried the north-south CN trains over the east-west CP trains (the CN ceased service during World War II).

 

Thankfully, many residents in Goderich reacted quickly when they heard the rail line was closing, and raised enough fuss, and enough money, to prevent the long bridge that carried trains over the Maitland River, from being destroyed. It was turned into a pedestrian bridge that has become a major Goderich attraction as walkers experience amazing views of the valley, the Goderich harbour, and the lake beyond.

 

In Blyth, I remember the day the old station was moved from the railway property to the Old Mill south of town and repurposed as part of the retail leather business.

 

Looking at the ideal riverside area along the old tracks, the late Diane Radford and Doug Scrimgeour developed the Blyth Greenway Trail that used the railway right-of-way from the remnants of “the arch” to the western limits of Blyth.

 

Later still, Walton’s Chris Lee came up with the idea of the Guelph-to-Goderich (G2G) Rail Trail. Little by little, the old railway line has been improved and updated. The former tunnel under County Road 25 has recently been rebuilt, allowing trail users to travel without having to bother neighbours.

 

Ironically, Blyth probably gets more visitors from the G2G trail than it got from the railway. In fact, the biggest problem is that cyclists avoid Blyth’s main street as they use back streets to travel to Cowbell Brewery.

 

I’m probably typical of why there are few railway lines serving most of the province these days. Growing up on a farm northwest of Lucknow, we had the tracks of the Stratford-Kincardine CN route cut our farm in half. As boys, we’d love to find pennies and leave them on the tracks to be flattened by trains. Trains weren’t all good. We had a wrecked car in our orchard that had been hit when my father had dropped a wheel off the crossing one winter morning and the car got stuck just before the train was due. He escaped safely but we couldn’t afford to lose a car.

 

The first time I rode in a train was with my mother and brother when we went to visit my older sister, then working in Toronto, and visited the Canadian National Exhibition. Later, when I was in school, Jill and I used the train to visit my parents. But, like most people, we got a car and never used the railway again. Railways first stopped providing passenger service then, as trucks replaced freight service, trains were replaced. Now one train is left in the county: the CN rail that carries loads of road salt from Goderich’s Sifto Salt mine to large urban centres.

 

And so, the railways that were once so vital to the lives of our towns and villages that an early reeve of Blyth organized financial support for that old north-south line from Wingham to London, were deemed to be obsolete by many. And we were left with things like the G2G trail and, until recently, the old water tower in Blyth.

 

While seniors, like me, may be sad to see the last remnants of railway days disappear, younger residents have changed much more  - taking their shopping to larger towns with huge stores offering greater variety and cheaper prices than small, local stores can offer. This is the way of the world now, but it was nice to have that brief reminder of the past last week.