I am well past my 80th birthday; had 40 years of service when I retired at age 55 from C.N. Telecommunications. I have been retired about 27 years now but well recall spending many a year on a Fairmont Track Motor Car running up and down the track maintaining train dispatchers telephone wires across the prairies and British Columbia. I was lineman in Boston Bar for quite a number of years; my first lineman position was Rainy River Ontario, my last Edmonton City with my territory going west over the Wabumin Subdivision.

In that 40 years of service and thousands of miles running a motor car with trains coming & going on the same set of railway I only had one accident—a head on collision with Passenger Train #3 one day about 10 miles east of Lytton around midnight. It was a dark and very stormy night. I got a line-up and left Boston Bar going east at 22:30, no trains shown except passenger train 1 and 3 running about 1 hour late by Blue River at that time.

I had two things against me. One, I’d just come off of the Prairies, where you can see trains coming for miles, either the headlight or smoke. Second this was before radios on trains. There was a complete line failure so I thought most likely a slide, as there were rocks coming down at slide locations as I proceeded. No signals as this was prior to CTC and no slide fences.

I got to Lytton with no problem from Boston Bar. I stopped there and tried the phone to see if I could get the dispatcher No luck as the line was still down. I said to myself, “in a storm like this I could be here all night waiting for the train”. I convinced myself that it was too important to just sit there and wait. I had to fix what ever was wrong so that the trains could run normal. So onto the little speeder and away I went down the track heading east.

There is a set of tunnels you go through several miles east then a single tunnel on a curve. I stopped at the entrance to the first tunnel and hooked up my phone. The line was dead. At that point the wires went up over the tunnel, so I went through the tunnel, stopped and tried to call again plus listen for train noise. Nothing.

Back onto the speeder, I started to move into the last tunnel and looked up on top of the tunnel—there was my trouble. Falling rocks going down over the tunnel had hit the pole line knocking over the pole and mixing up the wires. Plus now my second problem was upon me, the train was coming out of the mouth of the tunnel, about 100 feet away from me and closing fast! I jumped off the motorcar, hit the rock wall and nearly bounced back into the train’s path about the same time as it hit my motorcar. The Train went into emergency and got stopped about ½ mile past the point of impact. The motorcar was just a mangled wreck.

I got on the train and went back to Boston Bar; borrowed another motorcar. I got the material I would need to fix up the mess back over the tunnel. I made the repairs and had the lines working by late morning. I remember thinking at that time on my way home to Boston Bar, there must be an easier way to make a living. I never did look though, once a railroader, always a railroader.

After that accident my fellow workers knew me as flat wheel Al, as the train had locked up the wheels just for a few seconds but enough to flatten some wheels sliding along steel on steel.

When W.C.R.A had its displays located in Cloverdale (in the 1980’s) I donated some railway dispatcher’s equipment with some old telephone material out of the dispatchers’ office in Kamloops. This was surplus after installation of C.T.C. I also donated the Velocipede presently on display at our Railway Heritage Park in Squamish.

This Velocipede was supplied to me at the start of the Trans Canada Highway rebuild and upgrade in the early 1950’s at Jackass Mountain. I installed a telephone there so they could call the train dispatchers to get train locations coming into that area at a given time, so that the blasting of rock could be scheduled to not interfere with trains passing by.

The contractor would get the all clear; blast and then I would put my velocipede on the track, pump my way through the railway tunnel; look over the telephone lines and fix whatever was necessary. I would ride back through the tunnel; call the dispatcher if all was well. I would sit and wait for the next blast. At the completion of the highway upgrade, I just kept the velocipede. I had it in my yard in South Surrey for several years.

Have a good day and stay on the rails.

(and thanks, Al for your story and continued interest)