Barrie Sanford Interview
February 17, 2011
Only detail for colour in these notes
1. It was possible to build a trestle in 48 hours. A junior engineer would design every trestle member, they were then cut to size and drilled with bolt holes. They were put together like meccano set pieces
2. An engineer would go through an apprenticeship. He might stgart as a telegraph boy, someone as young as 13 who would be unpaid but would get tips. The station agent was important, a status person in the community. He got to know all the news first. If the community size warranted it there would be 24 hour a day telegraphs.
3. There would be “call boys” hired to bike around and give the train crews notice when they had to be ready for work.
4. The telegraph messages would be of three types
a. Paid commercial messages
b. Dispatches
c. Wire service (news to the newspapers)
5. The code on the telegraph for Merritt was MR. The operators had a code for joke messages not to be taken seriously. One example: What did the fish say when he swam into the concrete? Answer “Damn”
6. On the CPR line to Merritt for the first 5 years the4re were 3 round trips per week.
7. *The women in the community would here the train whistle for the Coutlee stop, and would take their laundry off the line (because of sooty smoke), and then head for the post office. It took only a few minutes (how many) to get the mail to people’s boxes.
8. The agent would receive telegraphed orders for the trains and the crew members. The trains needed to know the whereabouts of other trains about to share the track with them. There was a “semaphore” signals for the trains it would either be an upright flag, inclined (19Y) or horizontal (31order). The upright flag meant “no order” for the train crew. The 19Y signal would mean non-essential messages. The 31 signal had to be signed for (by the engineer??)
9. One of the 31 orders might be “wait for the train ahead of you to clear the next station. Or it might be pull aside at Spences Bridge to let another train pass.
10. Freight trains waited for passenger trains on sidings.
11. Before the semaphore there were balls hung at three heights. Hung high it mean “you are clear to go. “ Hung in the middle it meant “non essential message”. Hung low it would mean stop for an order. That is where the expression “highballing” it came from.
12 The maintenance crews would work in teams to replace rails or force ties under the tracks. They were known as gandy dancers.
13 Another begging job was the roundhouse “wiper” who would wipe down and clean the trains .
14 One step up from the wiper was the hostler. The hostler would run the engine around the ard, go to the ash pit, go get water.
15 There was a story that when the train was in overnight, they would run people into Merrit from Lower Nicola for the dances
16 The colliery blew a particular whistle blast when they needed a doctor, who might travel there in a train engine.
17 A freight train crew might have 5 men, 3 in the locomotive (breakman, fireman, switcher) and two in the caboose (switcher and ?).
18 The switcher would be let out of the train to run ahead and switch the train over to the siding if it needed to wait for an oncoming train. The breakman on the back would walk down the track far enough to stop any train that might be catching up from the rear. The engineer would blow a whistle to bring back the breakman, who would stick a “fusee” (flare) in the tie that would burn for 20 minutes and stop any train from catching up from behind.
19 On a passenger trhain there woudo be 2 in the engine and 3 in the caboose because their would be no need to switch over to a siding, the passenger trains were given right-of-way.
20 The train required 25 tons of coal every 16 hours. If the engineer was a decent guy he would share the work and the three men (engineer and two firemen) would go 2 minutes on and 2 off with 50 pound shovels. Sometimes a hobo would be caught on the train and ordered to shovel coal for the ride.
21 Engineers were known as “hoggers,” the iron machines they road were their “hogs.”
