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Caption: Trailing behind a transfer of piggyback flats lead by rebuilt CP GP9u 1534 (previous photo here), CP wooden caboose 436994 brings up the rear through the John Street interlocking in the downtown Toronto Terminals Railway trackage around Union Station, passing the revised mural at the base of the CN Tower. Lots of old wooden vans (common CP parlance for a caboose) held on until the end of the caboose era in the late 80's, mostly in local, yard and transfer service.
This particular old steam-era wooden van was originally built in 1941, and is typical of the hundreds CP had on the roster for decades, even well after CP populated its fleet with hundreds of modern steel vans. Sometime around the late 1960's (68-69?) it got the typical plywood modification, where large sheets of plywood were installed on its sides over the old tongue-and-groove wooden siding. Photos show it in Montreal QC in 1968, and then doing time on the Dominion Atlantic Railway (DAR) out east in Nova Scotia during much of the 1970's, and ending its career operating in the Toronto area in the 1980's in local and transfer service, still listed on the roster in 1987 along with many other old wooden vans. It was retired and became a private residence up in Belmore, Ontario in 1991. The Guelph Historical Railway Association (GHRA) eventually acquired and restored 436994 as one of their centerpieces, which including removing the plywood sides and revealing its original wooden exterior.
Richard Sanborn photo, Dan Dell'Unto collection slide (with thanks to Kevin Reed for passing this one on)
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Some notes for the GHRA fellows: in 1968 it was still tongue-and-groove wooden siding in the old boxcar red/brown paint with the usual block lettering. It was probably overhauled in 1968-69 with the plywood sides and painted into the short-lived red/yellow “action script” paint with Script lettering (just before the CP Rail/multimark rebranding), that it kept throughout the entirity of the 1970′s. It was overhauled and repainted October 1981 in action yellow with multimark, and had the end ladder rugs and roofwalks removed.
Thanks for this one Dan. There’s a shot floating around somewhere of our van in Stratford. To get to Belmore it was taken up to Wingham and trucked from there. It would be the last move over the Kincardine Sub.
Nice photo and write-up.
There is a photo of it in John Hardy’s Rusty Rails book of it sitting at Wingham after it was set-off. He makes note of the rail movement as well.