The peaked roof in the foreground is that of the two sided sand-house tower in which dried sand was stored for yard and road steam locomotives. The sand was poured down pipes into the sand domes and cab bunkers of engines below. These sand domes were located on top of the engine’s boilers where the sand would stay warm and dry until needed to increase the traction on wet or slippery rails. The sand in the cab bunkers of oil burning engines is poured into the combustion chamber of the firebox to blast the soot out of the boiler flues when the engine is being worked hard. In the right background is “Alyth” overpass which crosses over the main line tracks and the west end of the yard. It is now replaced by a four lane concrete structure that is part of a main road called the “Blackfoot Trail”.

Looking at the tracks, from left to right, the first two are storage tracks where wood slabs are unloaded and stored as well as where several box cars are kept to store various other supplies required in the steam shop. The wooden slabs are used to light up the fires in all coal burning locomotives after they have been serviced. The next track holds two box cars loaded with low grade boiler coal for the steam plant under the tall smoke stack and the four tankers contain fuel oil which is emptied into a sump located below the rails. From there the oil is piped under the next three tracks then pumped up into the large steel fuel oil tank where it can be used to fill the fuel bunkers of oil burning locomotives before they head west on the Laggan Subdivision. There were no oil burners used in any other direction out of Calgary at this time.

Tracks four, five, and six were called “the yard side of the shop tracks and the first two are where locomotives used in yard service are kept ready to go to work in any of the over twenty assignments in each twenty four hour period, seven days each week. The next track (6) is where in-coming yard locomotives are spotted, over the deep ash pit, to have their fires cleaned after their tenders have been filled with water and coal on the way past the water stand-pipe and coal chute. The only time yard power in placed in the steam shop is when they need to have work done on them (boiler washouts etc.) otherwise they are stored on tracks 4 and 5 and they are lubricated then watched by the hostler and his helper. The two locomotives on track five are both “V 4” (0-8-0’) 6900’s or “M4” 3400’s. Standing on track six in the foreground is a small “U 3” (0-6-0) 6200 and behind it is a former road locomotive a “M2” (2-8-0) 3600 that has been converted for yard service. The vee shaped number board plus the classification lights on either side of the smoke stack and electric style headlight is a dead giveaway. Behind the 3600 is another (2-8-0) “M4” 3400. These yard locomotives are all coal burners. The two oil burning “R2” (2-10-0) decapods, assigned to Alyth, are missing from this photo because they are probably both at work on the hump or some other heavy transfer job.

The seventh track that holds two old boxcars (note the dangerous, broken roof running board) and four “Heart” convertible gondolas runs under the coal chute, where coal is unloaded into a bin under the rails ready to be elevated up to the top level of that high structure. The track then runs past the sand house then down, at least six feet below shop track level where laborers can shovel the hot ashes into the gondola cars. Both of the tracks on either side of the ash pit are elevated about four feet above the concrete platforms from which the workers can do their ash shoveling.

The track to the right of the ash pit is the incoming road shop track and there are four coal burning locomotives on it. The first two have had their fires dumped and are each ready to proceed over the wash rack and be placed on the turntable and from there into one of the thirty-six stalls of “Alyth Roundhouse”. These four engines have had their tenders filled and the sand domes topped up and, after servicing in the shop, their fires will be relit and they will then be moved south eastward out toward the coal chute on the next (outgoing) shop track. The tenders will be filled with coal and water and the supply man will watch them until their crews arrive to take them off the shop track and to their trains.

On the next track, which curves to the right past the oil tank there are five water cars, three of them steel and two wooden ones. These are used behind some of the smaller locomotives assigned to “way freight” and “mixed train” service where their water is used to fill the cisterns at the maintenance of way men’s (section men’s) homes and also to supplement the locomotive’s tender water supply.

The last sharply curving track at the very right of the picture leads around to the north end of the “Back shop” and is used to bring car-loads of supplies such as locomotive parts like boiler tubes, spare wheels, water pumps etc. for engines being repaired in that newest addition to the roundhouse.

There is smoke coming out of the roof chimney above a locomotive in pit number 34 and it’s probably from a “Royal Hudson” passenger engine that is being readied for it’s evening start of the nine hundred mile run from Calgary to Winnipeg. There is probably another Hudson and Pacific in nearby stalls, which will also be lit up ready to power their eastbound passenger trains. After these three engines have been moved out of the longest pits in Alyth shop, two, or three, even larger, “Selkirk” locomotives that have brought the eastbound passenger trains in from Revelstoke will fill their places and shop crews and wipers will start to prepare them for the three morning westbound passenger trains leaving for Vancouver on the west coast.

It will have its sand reservoirs filled but will not be fueled, unless required, until after it is serviced in the roundhouse and ready to leave for the west. There is no coal fire to be dumped, of course, from this oil burner. Under the coal chute the tender of a coal burning Mikado is being filled by the hostler’s helper then the fire will be dumped at the ash pit, the locomotive will be washed, then it will be run onto the turntable and into the roundhouse for it’s servicing and preparation for the return trip West.

In the center of this picture, under the water tank, there are two outgoing locomotives on the departure track and the first appears to be a branch line freight engine that is going either north to Red Deer or south to Fort Macleod after this 2367, an eastbound this “G3” Pacific gets out of it’s way. The Pacific’s fireman is dumping a few ashes and making sure that his ash pans are tightly closed while the engineer is oiling the cross head guide bars or the little end of the main rod connection. By the color of the smoke it appears that the fire is being built up. This fast running Pacific is possibly going to take the fast “stock train” east and, unless it is delayed enroute, it will run ahead of passenger trains Numbers four and eight all the way to Medicine Hat.

This third Lance Camp picture was taken at a later date because behind the “N2” class 3600 consolidation yard engine, seen on the left, can be seen the top of a, newly installed, large mechanical ash loader that straddles a steel, bottom dump, hopper car that is being filled with watered down hot ashes. The escalator style steel chain of plates carries these ashes from under the incoming road side shop track, the incoming yard side track plus under the next two yard tracks before it rises sharply up to clear the hopper car that receives the ashes. This loader saved an awful lot of heavy shoveling on the part of the laborers that were previously required to perform this duty. The picture was obviously taken during the spring run off when all the ice was melting and the water was running toward the east.

The water standpipe on the yard side as well as the coal chute show up well in this picture, as does the coal-unloading track running through the large coal storage facility. The chute for fueling yard power is sticking out to the left, behind the standpipe and there are a total of four chutes on the roadside to the right as seen in the previous picture. Two chutes are under the storage tower above the incoming shop track as well as two more over the outgoing shop track to the right of the structure.

Locomotive number 5440, a “P2” Mikado 2-8-2, next to the empty coal cars has just arrived from Field, B.C. 136 miles west of Calgary. It’s tender is being filled with water then coal and sand will be supplied before the engine is moved westward to above the ash conveyor where the fire will be completely dumped, and the ashes watered down to extinguish all the flames. This engine will again be moved further west to the rack where it will be washed down before it is put on the turn-table and lined up for a suitable empty roundhouse stall where it will receive further cleaning. Once inside the roundhouse, while wipers complete their cleaning job, shop machinists and pipe fitters will give the locomotive a complete going over and repair any faults while other shop laborers grease and oil the parts required as well as fill the oil reservoirs that supply lubrication to steam cylinders, friction bearings and numerous other wear surfaces. Boiler repair employees will open up the smoke box for inspection plus they will climb inside the firebox, when it has cooled down, to inspect and seal any leaking stay bolts and boiler tubes and inspect the firebrick arch and replace any bricks as needed. They will also inspect the firebox grates and control rods. All this work will probably take several hours and then, when ordered, the fire can be relit and a road crew called ready for a return trip west to Field.

Locomotive 2388, a “G3” Pacific 4-6-2, under the water tank spout has it’s coal hopper full and is all ready to take a passenger train either north to Edmonton or east to Medicine Hat after running light for three miles west to Calgary’s depot. It has a full head of steam and is ready to go as indicated by the exhaust from the pop valve behind the steam dome on top of the boiler.

These photographs, that were taken by my brother Floyd, bring back many memories of days gone by but all of us locomotive engineers and firemen looked forward to working on the new nice clean diesel electric locomotives as they replaced those cold, noisy, dirty, dusty steam monsters.