My father, George W. Yeats, started railroading while still in his teens and living in the northern part of England. After a few years he decided that there wasn’t any future for him with the railroad in that area so in the early nineteen hundreds the decision was made to emigrate to Canada. Once here, he hired on as a (stoker) fireman with the Canadian Pacific Railway at Kenora Ontario. At that time the CPR were experiencing high traffic volumes because of the heavy grain movements from the prairies to Fort William Port Arthur (Thunder Bay). Many trains of grain and lumber plus cars of manufactured and settlers goods made up the bulk of the heavy westward trains.
One cold damp winter at Kenora was enough for dad and he decided to move west to Calgary where the winters were just as cold but the air was drier. The CPR also needed railroad men in Alberta so an experienced railroader like him was hired immediately. All told, Dad’s railroad career lasted for nearly fifty years from the late 1800’s in England until he retired, in 1947, at age 65 as a locomotive engineer in Calgary Alberta.
My brother Floyd also went to work for the CPR at Alyth roundhouse, in Calgary, when he finished school in 1937. He was holding a fireman’s job when he joined the RCAF during the early part of the war. In 1946 he received his military discharge and returned then to the CPR and a steady firing job. All of Canada’s railroads were experiencing extremely heavy, post war, traffic so Floyd’s promotion to engineer came by 1948 and he held that position for the next thirty years, until he retired in 1979. Floyd had made a few trips firing for Dad before going into the armed forces, but not as many as I did because, for many years, both he and Dad were both working as engineers at the same time.
My twin brother Harold also worked for the CPR, as a Trainman and conductor, after he received his discharge from the Canadian Navy in 1946 but I don’t believe that he ever worked on the same train as Dad. He and Floyd had a few trips together and Harold and I worked on the same trains many times even after Harold got promoted to Conductor and I as Engineer. Us Yeats boys also had a younger sister who was also employed by the railway in the communications department. So, for a while, in Calgary, there were four members of the Yeats family employed by the same railway!
My first trip on a locomotive with Dad took place just after I turned eighteen, while I was earning wipers pay (33and 1/3rd cents per hour or $2.66 per day) and was working as a “Hostler’s Helper” at Alyth roundhouse. If we wanted to qualify for promotion it was necessary for all of us young wipers to make several student trips, on our days off and without pay, to try to learn the skills required before being able to fire locomotives on the road. For me one of these runs was with Dad, in 1942, on a hand fired coal burning “D”10 4-6-0 locomotive on the line north of Calgary. This would be the first of many trips that I was able to make with my father.
My promotion to the position of locomotive fireman came in December 1942 and five months later, on May 10th 1943, Dad and I were called for a trip together from Calgary to Field B.C. At that time Dad was holding a regular freight pool job on the Laggan Subdivision and I was assigned to the Fireman’s Spare-board. Our locomotive was the 5326, a very large, heavy “Mikado” class “P”2 2-8-2 which was a coal burning, stoker equipped, freight engine and was built by MLW in 1923. It weighed nearly three hundred tons.
At this point I would like to elaborate as to what a steam locomotive’s mechanical (not automatic) stoker consists of and the method used to maintain a proper fire. First there is a cast steel auger, which has two flexible joints. This auger first runs in an open trough, located under the coal supply in the tender. The two cylinder steam powered engine that drives the auger is located at the front of the tender and is connected at the point where the auger enters a heavy, enclosed, circular steel casting where a crusher is located. Then, just above the point where the tender is connected to the locomotive, the auger has a flexible joint inside of the ball joint of the outside casting. The auger has one more flexible connection to enable it to angle up toward the back head of the boiler where the casting that encloses it is attached to the boiler. The valves that control both the stoker speed and the distribution of the coal to the fire are located on the back boiler head, at the fireman’s station, in the locomotive cab. These consist of the stoker engine throttle valve and a master valve, which leads to a manifold that contains five smaller steam valves which control high pressure steam jets which are located in the firebox, just inside and below the door and above the steel coal distribution plate. This is the plate on which the fuel is dropped when delivered from the tender. With these controls the fireman has the ability to control the speed of the fuel supply and the proper efficient distribution of the coal to every part of the firebox so that it can be consumed in the most efficient manner. When the steam jets blast the crushed coal off the firing plate the finer particles burn while still suspended in the super hot flames much as does the bunker fuel oil when used on locomotives designed to use that type of fuel and the heavier lumps of coal drop onto the hot fire bed to be consumed there.
I had only been qualified to fire stoker equipped locomotives for about two weeks before being called for this trip with Dad. This was while working with an engineer by the name of McQuistion on a run from Fort McLeod to Calgary. I had only made one other trip on a stoker equipped engine during the sixteen days since then. So (you see) I hadn’t had any experience on this class of locomotive and this one had a different type of mechanical stoker, but I was determined to do the very best that I could because I knew that my father wouldn’t expect anything less of his son and I didn’t expect to be shown any favoritism. What Dad’s said was “that I was his son as far as the water tank on the outgoing shop-track and then I was his fireman,” and that I was to keep that in mind.
The two of us were required to report for work at 24:55 (five minutes to one a.m.) and the locomotive was due off the shop-rack at 1:40. All of the supplies were checked and, using the scoop shovel, I fixed the fire up to my liking, and tested the stoker, while Dad checked the running gear and oiled up all the necessary parts of the engine. We were both ready to leave the CPR’s Alyth shop track when the head end brakeman arrived to lead the locomotive over to a long track in “P” yard where a heavy drag of grain, coal and a few empty flats and boxes awaited for us to couple on to. It didn’t take long to pump up the air and test the air brakes. We had read the orders for our train and were ready to go by the time the car inspectors gave us the car count and the OK.
My old records show that we left Calgary at 2:30 am and arrived at Field at 12:30 that afternoon, placed the locomotive on the shop track and were off duty at 13:25 (1:25 pm). Twelve hours and thirty minutes from the time we were on duty, back in Calgary, 136 miles to the east. Needless to say both Dad and I were very tired and hungry so very little time was wasted washing up in the bunk house, behind the old YMCA building in Field then going to the restaurant in the “Y” for a good hot meal.
The two of us were called six hours later for an “extra east” scheduled to leave at 22 o-clock but this time our locomotive was an oil burning Selkirk, the 5918 an even larger locomotive then the one we had on the westbound leg of our trip. This was to be my first trip firing an oil burner on the road but I was always told that oil burners were a snap to fire if attention was paid to what the engineer was doing with the throttle and, air operated reversing wheel Dad sure didn’t have a very experienced fireman either direction that trip did he?
Nevertheless it turned out to be a very successful trip and things went very nicely. The Laggan Sub division is all down grade eastward from Stephen, at the Great Divide, which is 5338 high and Calgary is 1900 feet lower and 123 miles to the east. That big Selkirk was easy to fire because only a light throttle was needed to keep the train speed up except for only about three short places where the grade was slightly uphill. After placing our locomotive on the in-coming shop-track at the Alyth roundhouse I walked, proudly, with “Dad” toward the booking in office and on the way my father said that I had done a good job of firing both the coal burner west and the oil burner on the return trip and that he would be proud to have me as his fireman again in the future. (Thanks Dad).
My father and I didn’t get to work together again until Sept. 18th that same year (1943) and, again, it was on the Laggan Subdivision between Calgary (Alyth) and Field. This was to be the first of four successive round trips that we were to make to-gather but on the last of these trips we were called for “work train” service on the “Hill” between Field and Partridge.
On the first of these trips our locomotive was the 5428 and our train was the “Coast Freight” No. 951. This was an important merchandise freight and we were assigned a locomotive that was less then three months old having been built by the Canadian Locomotive Co. in Kingston Ontario in June of that same year. We were on duty at 0430 and cleared Calgary’s west switch at 0615 and didn’t arrive at Field until 1445 that afternoon. That run would make it just over 11 hrs on duty. The next morning on Sept. 19th, the run east was on the same locomotive, the 5428, and we started at 0615 and we arrived on the outskirts of Calgary shortly after noon and off duty at 1330 (8 hrs. 45 min. on duty).
You would think that Dad and I were assigned to work together because the very next day we were both called for the second of our four trips to-gather. It was another drag west and was for 10 am. We had the same class of 2-8-2 Mikado locomotive both ways (the 5427) that we had worked on the previous trip, which was good because I was getting used to firing that class of engine. We were 11 hrs. On duty going to Field and only 8 ½ hours on the east bound run.
At the time of this story there was no “Centralized Traffic Control” (C.T.C.) on the single track “Laggan Sub.” so all trains were dispatched by “Train Order” and “Time Table Schedule”. This was only one of the reasons that it took so long to get over the road. The other was because the prevailing grade was up to one percent up hill and stops for water had to be made every forty miles and the tender had to refilled filled with coal at Canmore. Between Calgary and Lake Louise there were water tanks at Cochrane, Morley Canmore, Banff, Castle Mountain and Lake Louise. East of the Lake (Lake Louise) the track was laid with 100-pound steel. This plus the fact that the ballast under the ties was not the best so all freight trains were limited to a top speed of 35 mph. and there were many slow orders on this 120 miles of railroad which also slowed westbound freights at places where it was difficult to regain the momentum on the uphill grades.
Also all freights, in both directions, were only allowed to run forty miles between train inspection stops. After stopping, eastbound freights would have no trouble regaining their speed whereas the adverse grades prevented westbound from doing the same. This also applied when trains heading for British Columbia had to stop to meet or be passed by other trains. When the tender of an east bound freight locomotive was filled at Lake Louise no more water would be needed for the 120 mile run to Calgary unless there had been an unusual delay. The sixteen tons of coal in the tender when leaving Field would be sufficient to get the train to Calgary because east of Stephen was nearly all down grade.
As I recall, and there was a 30 mph slow order between mileages, 16.6 and 16.9, which didn’t bother westbound freights because of the grade, as freights with full tonnage would be lucky to be doing 20 mph. at that point. Next there was a 20 mph restriction, again on a heavy grade, at mileage 21.4 through a rock cut, again on an uphill grade. Then, just west of Cochrane, the grade levels off and then the track actually goes down hill for a short distance to go over a through truss bridge which carries the track from the north to the south side of the Bow River.
The track almost levels out for a short distance to a siding named Mitford and just west of there a 20-mph. slow order starts just where the grade increases to a full 1% and continues to climb at that rate for most of the 12 miles to Morley at mile 41. The engineer couldn’t take advantage of that slight down grade and the stretch of nearly level track to let the train speed increase at the start of a heavier one percent grade because there is a permanent 20 mph. slow order around a reverse curve, on the side of a very unstable embankment just west of Mitford siding. The cold, fast flowing, Bow River is now on the north (the engineers) side of the track and that tends to gave the Hoghead even more incentive to live up to the speed restriction.
The grade, west of Morley, is not too severe but, invariably a strong wind blows daily out from the mountain pass to the west which can severely slow any long, heavy freight train. The grade doesn’t change until it drops down slightly then levels off while crossing over the Kananaskis River and passing the siding of Seebe. Then another bridge carries the track to the north side of the Bow River where it stays until reaching Lake Louise. The train’s speed can be increased for the next ten miles over through Exshaw but just west of there was another permanent 20 mph. slow order around the sharp “Gap curve”, mileage 61.3 to 61.7 but this time the cold Bow River is on the fireman’s side so all the engineers tend to go a bit faster around that curve but are much slower when their train is eastbound.
The next place where the grade is a steady 1% is for about six miles between mileages 71 and 77, just east of Banff. From there to Lake Louise at mileage 117 the grade is between one half and three quarters percent but even then it was impossible to get the speed up above twenty five mph. At Lake Louise a helper locomotive is always added to all heavy freight and passenger trains to assist up the nearly two percent climb up to the Continental Divide at Stephen. More time is consumed adding and removing the “pusher” locomotive at these two stations. The next fifteen miles down the very steep Field Hill the speed must be held at between eight and twelve mph and no more! That is so that the train wouldn’t get out of control.
The next trip with Dad (No. three of the four in a row) was for the 5428 Mikado locomotive on a drag west called for 1715 on Sept. 23rd and we were off duty, the next morning, at 0525 after being on duty for nearly 13 hours. Our call for an eastbound drag of loads of lumber and empty grain cars was for about 10 pm. (2155) but our locomotive was a “Selkirk” No. 5910. Lucky me, another oil burner. That meant no cinders blowing in our faces like as happens on coal burners. We were on duty for less then 10 hours on the eastbound leg of that trip.
The locomotive number 5428 was again to be our motive power on the morning of Sept.26th and we were required to show up by 0445 am in the early dawn. It was to be a daylight run and the sun was setting when the engine was placed on the Field shop track at a quarter to six that evening after being on duty for 13 hours.
At four o-clock on the morning of Sept. 27th the callboy surprised us when he woke us to say that “we were to be on a work train that day” Our locomotive was the 5326, a much older Mikado. (The same one on which Dad and I had made our first trip together on back in May). This engine was assigned to pusher service at that time because there was a shortage of the usual oil burning “S”2 “Santa Fe Type” 2-10-2’s usually employed as pushers at Field and Revelstoke. It would be much better to use a coal burning locomotive while working in either of the two spiral tunnels because the fumes in the oil smoke could be very gassy and make breathing difficult for us and all the other workmen in the tunnels. Our train consisted of only a caboose as far as Yoho siding where we headed in and nosed on to a half dozen flat cars that had heavy planks on edge, along each side that were attached to strong posts that were pounded into the side pockets. With the conductor’s caboose coupled to the rear of the east-facing locomotive our job was to back down the grade and enter the lower Spiral Tunnel.
Once inside that cool dark and we hoped not too smoky cavern we positioned the flats, as directed by the Road Master, so that the twenty or thirty shovelers could load the dirty sand and fine gravel which had contaminated the crushed ballast that made up the roadbed between and below the ties. The sand had accumulated from all the locomotive engineers having to use the air-operated sanders to increase the traction and keep their engines from slipping on the wet slippery rails in the tunnels. Our work train left Field at six forty am and didn’t return to our starting point until eight o-clock that night. Those laborers worked very hard shoveling that muck up onto those cars and then, when the flat cars were full, the whole train, with the shovelers aboard, was backed out to a point just outside of the lower tunnel entrance, above the Kicking Horse River. There the work gang, after removing the side planks, shoveled the stuff off to both sides of the track where it could slide down to embankments. The men did get several chances to rest during the working day when our train had to get into the clear in the sidings at either Cathedral or Yoho to clear other trains coming in either direction. Around noon, while in the Yoho siding we all went into a cook car that was stationed in the back track there, and enjoyed a substantial hot meal.
Neither Dad nor I needed to eat nearly as much as did the men doing the shoveling because all we had to do was to sit in the locomotive cab and watch for signals when the flat cars needed to be moved to where there was more dirty sand to be loaded. I kept the locomotive firebox door open and didn’t use the stoker but shoveled small amounts of coal in by hand so that there would be hardly any smoke filling the tunnel. The only disadvantage to having that engine in there was the fact that the heat of the boiler and smoke stack tended to dry and loosen some of the accumulated soot that had built up, over time, from all the black coal and oil smoke that blasted up against the tunnel ceiling from each locomotive working hard uphill on that 2 ½ % grade. When that soot got dry and warmer it tended to fall down in chunks onto the boiler and onto the roof of the cab and onto our heads too if we were foolish enough to stick them too far out of the side cab windows. Some of the soot also dropped onto the men doing the shoveling and others who were standing beside the track. Before the day was over the only member of the crew that the soot didn’t hit was the conductor because he didn’t venture out of the caboose while it was in the tunnel. We were on duty for 15 and ½ hours that day and didn’t have any trouble sleeping that night.
At 0335 the next morning the callboy cheerfully informed us that we had lucked out again! “Work Train east” for 0535 was the call that dark Sept. morning. Same locomotive, same train crew, same dirty flats same cool dark tunnel, same lunch in the work gang’s cook car and the same long hours until we put the locomotive back on the Field shop track at 1815 that evening. However Dad and I did enjoy each others company because there was little else to occupy our time while the workers were employed loading and unloading those flat cars. Dad talked about some of his earlier experiences while employed on the railroad both in England and here in Canada. Even though I was still living at home the two of us didn’t see very much of each other because either one of us would be working, out on the road, while the other was at home resting up for his next trip.
It was a pleasant surprise the next morning at 0700 when the callboy informed us that we were to go east on an extra freight using engine number 5926. The cream of the crop, an oil-burning semi streamlined “Selkirk”. Just as good as having a day off! My old records indicate that we left Field at 1015 and arrived at Lake Louise, four hours later, at 1420. No doubt our train was delayed on the hill by the same work train that we had worked on the two previous days and also by meeting the westbound passenger train No.3 as well as second-class freight No. 951 and No. 83 west. We would have had to take the siding for all three trains because ours was only an “Extra” freight. A few other trains were met that Sept. 29th because our arrival at Sunalta (west Calgary) wasn’t until 2135 that evening and the time off duty was 2245 (a quarter to eleven that night). Another long day but an enjoyable one with my father as the engineer.
My father and I didn’t get the chance to work together again until we got called to make a run on Dec. 9th 1943 on Pacific class locomotive No. 2369 on a section of passenger train No. four from Calgary to Medicine Hat. We returned the next day, on freight, with the same engine. Then, seven months later, the next July 2nd 1944 we used locomotive No. 2375 to take a freight train to Medicine Hat. We lay over there for 26 hours before being called for a section train passenger No. 3 with a 4-6-2 “Pacific” locomotive No, 2383 for an enjoyable and fast run back to Calgary.
I had joined the “Royal Canadian Engineers” and the following Sept. they called me up to active service. I was to go into the “Railway Operating Corps when we got overseas. I don’t recall ever making another trip “Firing For Dad” after my return to the CPR, in 1945 and my “Father” retired in the fall of 1947. My brother Floyd got to be the fireman on “Dad’s last trip” and that was west from Med. Hat to Calgary with a 4-6-4 “Royal Hudson” on passenger express train No. 1 then it was twenty two years later (in 1979) that brother Floyd and I worked together on his last trip as the first and second engineers on trains No. 1 and 2 “The Canadian” between Calgary and Field. Five years later (1984) I made my last run on also as the first engineer on the “Canadian” from Field to Calgary. I was the last member of the Yeats family to work for the C.P.R.
