1). February 9, 1943 - The 20th Century makes a trip over the Michigan Central line through St Thomas on Monday night around eleven o’clock at night because of a train wreck at Dunkirk, New York. It had a big electric light on the rear with 20th Century. The engine on the 20th Century NYC 5254. The Engineers were J. Hardy and William Carter. The firemen were L. Fowler and Mr. Westaway.
2). March 16, 1943 - Oil shipments continue to expand on the local railroads. It has been approved to carry oil in fifty balloons that would allow 10,000 gallons of oil to be carried in boxcars. The B&O have automobile cars that carry four steel tanks.
3). March 24, 1943 - Engine work has been delayed, engine NYC 5232 had the side-rod snap at Rodney, and NYC 5264 just limped in to St Thomas on Saturday. MCR shop men are striving to keep up with the work on Wabash engines.
4). June 11, 1943 - Oil being carried in boxcars
June 15, 1943 - CASO handles 600 cars of oil per day
Woweee! Looks like the CASO was the railfan place to be during the war years, especially if you were looking for some exciting action.
Providing you left your camera at home. I wouldn’t have wanted to be caught dead with one near the place, there’d be too much explaining to do to some rather humorless men in those years.
Diesels running thru the Detroit River Tunnel reminded me that they not only pushed aside the steam locos, but also the tunnel electrics.
Excellent point Midland Mike …another reason to despise them, the electrics were so good looking…very railroady, nothing like them anywhere else. Some would disagree with that but we know they are simply misguided.
The Ottawa Journal, Aug. 12, 1943. CP=Canadian Press, BUP=British United Press
QUEBEC, Aug. 12 (CP) Prime Minister Winston Churchill has left Quebec by train for an unannounced destination but military staff work continues undiminished here today as British, American and Canadian officers prepared for his return and the arrival shortly of President Roosevelt for the two leaders’ sixth wartime meeting. In the interim Canada virtually is being governed from this old capital of what was once New France.
NIAGARA FALLS, Ont., Aug12. (CP) Prime Minister Churchill and his daughter, Mary, today visited this border tourist centre and then motored across the Lower Arch bridge over the Niagara river to Niagara Falls. N.Y. The Prime Minister and his daughter, who arrived at Victoria Park station in a six-car special Canadian Pacific Railway train, viewed the falls area before motoring across the river. Mrs. Churchill remained in Quebec. They saw the falls, which Mary pronounced “absolutely wonderful," the whirlpool and the monument to General Sir Isaac Brock, killed in a battle during the war of 1812. For the British Prime Minister, it was no new sight, but for Mary the tour was one that kept her chuckling with delight. She bought souvenir postcards at one point. “My lad, I saw the falls before you were born,” Mr. Churchill told The Canadian Press when asked if he had been here before. "They have been going a long time.” Later he came over and to
Churchill’s trip to Niagara was the long way to FDR’s in Hyde Park. I believe he returned to Quebec via White River Junction. In 1974, my father wrote this about his father: My father, Joseph A., retired with the distinction of having been the only man in engine service on the Central Vermont who had never once in his career had to “give up his engine on the road.” He was taken out of his regular turn to run Winston Churchill’s special train to the Quebec Conference during World War II, handling the train from White River Jct. to Montreal, because of his reputation as a “smooth man with the throttle and brakes.”
https://www.winstonchurchill.org/the-life-of-churchill/war-leader/1943-1945/summer-1943-age-68/
Wholly Mollee…your Grandfather was the number 1 Engineer on the CV and took Winston Churchills train into Quebec City…Luv how these articles and postings lead to such small degrees of separation.
You must be beaming!