By 1905, the Canadian Northern Railway had forged Canada’s second transcontinental rail link and established its own telegraph subsidiary. In 1915, it added to that network by acquiring the Great Northwestern, which by then was bankrupt.
During this period all newsgathering and distribution was controlled by the large telegraph companies. Weather, disasters, stock market quotations, sports or election results reached into all corners of Canada by telegraph. Commercial telegraphy allowed Canadians to wire messages to family, or to send or receive money through money orders, and so the local station became a focus for yet another community function: maintaining social, familial, and professional bonds. As the railway stations often contained the only commercial telegraph office in town, they were the community’s ear to the outside.
In 1918, the CNoR was bankrupt and its assets, telegraph included, were absorbed by the new government railway, the Canadian National. By the 1920s, Canada had two of its own telegraph companies, the CN and the CP. In 1967 they finally joined forces to become the giant CNCP Telecommunications that exists to this day.
In 1912, the interior of the water tank at Boissevain, Manitoba, also doubled as an office of sorts. Photo courtesy of Provincial Archives of Manitoba.
Fuelling Stops
Many of the way stations were also fuelling locations. Steam locomotives needed two ingredients, water and fuel. Once the wood-burning era passed and coal became the universal fuel, coal tipples and storage sheds were built at divisional stations. But the distance between the divisional points was too great for engines to travel without refuelling. To supplement the supply, coal docks were placed at many way stations.
But far more common at way stations were the water tanks. Because the steam locomotives so frequently needed water for the boilers, water tanks were located at every other station. To access the water in larger towns and cities, the railway simply hooked on to the municipal water system. In the early days, when piped water was often unavailable, the railways erected windmills beside the tank to pump the water to the tank. With the arrival of the coal era, coal-fired pumps were placed beneath the tank, sometimes in a separate pumphouse, sometimes within the enclosed water tank itself. The pumps served two purposes: besides keeping the tank full, the pumps in the winter also kept the water heated and moving, and prevented the supply from freezing solid.
As railway expansion accelerated during the latter years of the nineteenth century, and as technology changed, many early way stations lost some of their functions and were downgraded. When the CPR and the Grand Trunk took over many smaller branch lines during the late 1800s, they increased the train length but reduced their frequency and the number of required station agents. As a result, many of the stations built to house operators were downgraded to caretaker or flag stations. Although they retained their bay windows, they became as silent as the lonely country shelters that they had in fact become.
This early CPR divisional station at Fort William, Ontario, has since been replaced. Photo courtesy of CPR Archives, A 16826.
The Divisional Stations
Divisional stations were the nerve centre for railway operations. Located at intervals of roughly 150 kilometres, these stations were where locomotives were refuelled and maintained, where rolling stock was sorted and made up into trains, and where train crews ended or started their shifts.
Divisional stations provided facilities for coal storage, water changing, and engine maintenance. They also provided offices for staff. Yardmasters oversaw the makeup of trains, dispatchers alerted the agents along the line of their departure, and roadmasters supervised the maintenance of the track and rights of way along which the trains travelled. Divisional facilities might be small on lightly used branch lines, but on the main lines they were often the reason for a town’s entire existence.
Ontario’s White River Station was created as a divisional point where VIA Rail’s “Superior” awaits its morning departure. Photo by author.
Divisional points were where many of the railway men lived. To house the train crews, and to encourage family men to work in these often isolated locations, the railways provided substantial housing. They built bunkhouses for crews in transit, and at smaller divisional points the crew were boarded in local hotels or boarding houses, or in later years in a railway YMCA that the railway constructed for rest and recreation.
Even divisional stations might differ in function. Many divisional points developed into huge operations. The CN divisional point at Hornepayne in Ontario still functions with massive yards and buildings that cover more than 150 hectares. By contrast, Manyberries in Alberta contained little more than a small roundhouse and a watershed. Like many of the little branch line divisional stations, it existed solely to service steam locomotives. A few sidings, a coal dock, and an engine house that might contain only a single stall huddled around the small yards. Forty-seven such smaller terminals existed within the CPR network in Alberta and Saskatchewan alone.
During steam days, a train might spend an hour at a divisional station while the engine was watered, coaled, and otherwise tended to. To cater to impatient passengers, the railways instituted restaurants.
Some were housed in a separate building occasionally attached to the station by a walkway, others were located in the station themselves. These early structures were at first simple two-storey buildings and might contain sleeping quarters for the crew, in addition to a restaurant. Later on, stations added lunch counters right in the station building itself, and the separate restaurant building eventually disappeared from the station landscape. At the divisional point of Fort Frances, Ontario, the Canadian Northern’s original turreted wooden station was moved a few yards away and became a restaurant when the railway replaced it with a larger brick station. In Temagami, Ontario, the original station became a restaurant following the erection of a new, more elaborate Tudoresque stone station.
Patrons enjoy a meal in the CPR divisional station restaurant at Smiths Falls, Ontario. Photo courtesy of CP Archives, 25655.
In smaller communities the railways would contract out the lunch service to a local hotel or café. The Grand Trunk station at Kingston went further and, according to an advertisement, offered this added feature: “Passengers going east or west by the night trains may avoid much unpleasant inconvenience arising from being disturbed at unreasonable hours by driving to the railway station early in the evening where they can obtain comfortable bedrooms and an undisturbed sleep till the hour of departure for the train.”
Then, as snack bar service was introduced right in the coaches, providing the long-awaited inexpensive alternative to the dining cars, as diesel replaced steam and eliminated the need for lengthy stops at divisional points, the lunchrooms were closed and the space converted to offices for divisional staff.
At Cartier, Ontario, the large wooden CPR station contained the restaurant right in the building, a restaurant that later became the roadmaster’s office. At Orangeville, the original separate restaurant building was converted to crew quarters and later became the “station” for a new short-line operation. The original station itself was relocated and was converted into a restaurant. Far to the north in Cochrane, Ontario, the much altered CN/ONR station