Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1987-12-02, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1987. PAGE 5. The decline of old Butter and Eggs It was a railway with a personality but there are few reminders left The old Bly th station house, now converted into a unique residence by Paul and Jean Yanchus, is one of the few signs left of the old Butter and Eggs presence in north Huron. BY KEITH ROULSTON With a hearing taking place this week into the possible closure of the Listowel to Wingham branch of the Canadian National Railway line many of the arguments sound similar to ones used nearly 50 years ago whenanotherlocalline.the “Butter and Eggs Special’’ was closed despite local protests. The Butter and Eggs was the nickname for the old London-Huron-Bruce Railway and it went from London in the south to Wingham in the north. Since 1941, the line, absorbed many years ago by Canadian National, has operated only as far north as Clinton. The railway had been losing money, Canadian National had said, and the steel in the rails was needed for the war effort. The arguments raged back and forth. The Railway said that the whole line from London to Wingham had lost $9,000 in 1939 as a result of the growing competition of trucks. The loss on the Clinton-Wingham section which was to be closed amounted to $966. Afterthe wordof the plans to close the railway leaked out, George McNall, Reeve of Blyth, called a meeting of all the municipali­ ties affected. Wingham’s Mayor Crawford was chairman for the meeting and the municipalities represented unanimously agreedthatclosureofthelinewould be a great detriment to their communities. R.S. Hetherington of Wingham pointed out that with the war on Canada’s population might increase then the railways would be needed. Others argued that the railway had no right to pull out since local tax dollars had subsidized the railway to come to the area in the first place, 65 years earlier. J.H. Coultes of Belgrave suggested the price of gas might soon go up to 40 cents a gallon and take the advantage away from trucks. But L.E. Cardiff M.P. said the people had had their chance to show the line was needed by increasing their patronage on it. A meeting of the Board of Transport Commissioners was held in Goderich on Feb. lOand il, 1941. F.H. Finglandwas the lawyer representing Hullett township and he argued that the loss amounted to only $30 a day and could easily be made up with more business if people were given the chance to meet the threat of closure. “I maintain,’’ he said, referring to the money put forward by the municipality to lure the railway to come to the area) “we should not be cut off from our rights under this contract’’. Mr. Hetherington argued that if Canadian National had met truck competition head on, it wouldn’t be in the mess it was in. Albert Taylor, a Blyth manufacturer, claimed there was $5,000 extra business in his village alone if the railway was more aggressive. Someone else pointed out that $ 17,000 worth of freight charges were racked up by the railway in shipping flour from Lucknow to the Port of Goderich but none of the credit was given to the Wingham-Clinton line although the flour had to travel over it. Whether it was the railway’s argument that it was losing money or the argument that the rails were needed for the war effort that was the clincher, the commissioners agreed the line could close. Hardest hit were the smaller communities like Belgrave and Londesboro which were left without any rail service at all. C.R. Coultes, the Belgrave drover, had shipped 120 carloads of cattle out of Belgrave the year before. The word finally came that the last train would go down the line on Saturday, April 26,1941. Few people, Editor Ken Whitmore reported in the Blyth Standard, were on hand to say goodbye when the last northernbound trainenteredthe Blyth station. As it had been so often in its colourful life, the Butter and Eggs was a half-hour late arriving. Train officials and local officials were on hand for one last handshake. Some of the passengers were on board for sentimental reasons. Among them was Mrs. Ben Mason of Blyth who remembered the arrival of the first train in Londesboro when she was a girl. Another was James Lockie of Blyth, for 36 years a section foreman on the line. Most people however, just took it as another sign of the times. The railway had promised to replace the railway by an express service by truck but by November it had dropped it. Today there are still a few visible signs of the old railway here and there. The most visible reminder is the pretty railway station in Blyth which has recently been renovated by Paul and Jean Yanchus, adding brickwork to the outside. The station was featured in the book “Meet Me at the Station’’, a collection of photographs of railway stations from across Canada by Elizabeth Wilmot. Behind Hamm’s garage “the arch’ ’ thattook the CNR line over the CPR line is still a local landmark. Here and there you can still see a tree-lined avenue in a farm field that marks where the old track ran. Butforthe most part, the reminders of the dream of Patrick Kelly, the first reeve of Blyth, are lost. Kelly was the driving force who brought the railway north to Blyth. He was the kind of dynamic pioneer who seized the opportunities offered in a rough and tumble days establishing a flour and grist mill, a saw mill and a sash and door factory in Blyth, all before the village was officially incorporated. In a letter published in the Blyth Standard in 1951 Robert Newcombe, who was 11 years old when the railway came to Blyth, remembered Kelly. He was nicknamed Buffalo Pad. Mr. Newcombe recalled, because he was a friend of Sir John A. MacDonald and once while visiting Ottawa had been presented with a buffalo coat by the Prime Minister. Kelly had worked to build up a substantial export business but trying to haul goods to the nearest railway station in Clinton, 11 miles away, by horse-drawn wagon over backwood roads drove up costs so he couldn’t compete. He had to have a railway. He approached the Grand Trunk but was turned down. He set off to Hamilton to walk to the Great Western Company which had recently built a railway through London to Sarnia. He went armed with all the facts to backup his argument: the value of goods shipped out of the county from firewood to tan bark to sheep and cattle bound for the Buffalo market to flour. His arguments must have impressed the officials because they toldhimtogobacktoHuron and arrange subsidies with the various municipalities. It was the way railways were built in those days. Usually communities were so certain of the growth the railway would bring that they were happy to pay the subsidy. The going rate for municipalities along the northern part of the line was $25,000. Not everybody wasco-operative, how­ ever. In the south, the officials of the township of Biddulph and the village of Lucan figured their municipalities were the only logical place for the railway to run through so they thought they could save money on the subsidy and still get the railway. The railways fooled them, however, surveyed a new line to the west and bypassed them, thus creating the new villages of Denfield and Ilderton. Kelly had initially planned that the railway would end at Blyth but East Wawanosh, Morris and the village of Wingham agreed to the subsidy so the line could extend to Wingham. The building of the railway boosted the local economy. Beginning in the spring of 1875 crews went to work at various points along the line. The Blyth correspondent in the Clinton News-Record reported the village had turned into a beehive of activity with all the hotels filled with railway workers. The work went quickly with relatively flat terrain and few rivers to be crossed and by November the excitement was building wondering when the first train would roll north. On Nov. 11, 1875 the first train rolled as far north as Clinton and on Dec. 11, with great fanfare, the first train rolled north to Wingham. On the train were the reeves and councillors of the municipali­ ties along the line. They were guests at a dinnerfor 600 atthe Tecumseh House in London, hosted by London mayor Benjamin This old wood-burning locomotive was one of the ones that brought the excitement of train travel to the area. Cronyn. For the local inhabitants, used to horse travel on slow roads, the new railway was a marvel. The wood-burning engines hit speeds of 12-15 miles an hour. The Butter and Eggs was as a special railway, however: a train with personality. There was a posted schedule but the train was hardly ever on it. If a farmer wanted to go to London he could just walk through the fields to where the train passed, flag it down and get on. It picked up its name because of the number of farmers and farm wives who carried those commodities to market in London. Until the building of the Canadian Pacific line from Guelph to Goderich in 1907, the Butter and Eggs, by then run by the Grand Trunk Railway, was the only train in town. Southbound trains arrived (or were suppose to arrive) at 7 a.m. and 4 p.in. Northbound trains arrived at 12 noon and 7 p.m. A return trip to Wingham cost 50 cents. When most commercial travel was by train, local hotels prospered. Luella Mc­ Gowan of Blyth served from 1914 to 1916 in the dining room of the Commercial Hotel, now the Blyth Inn. There were several sample rooms at the back of the hotel, facing Dinsley street where travelling salesmen could display their wares for Blyth mer­ chants. Dinners were served until the late evening for those arriving on the 7 p. m. train and those leaving on the 7 a.m. train could have breakfast before they left. Passengers were carried back and forth to the trains by Bill Johnston in a horse-drawn bus. Dick Sellers had a one-horse dray that carried baggage including the large trunks that held the salesmen’s samples. The railway played an essential part in the education of many area young people. In the 1920’s, recalls Melda McElroy, the train left at7:20a.m. goingsouth and returned at 7:20 p.m. going north and students climbed on to go to Clinton Collegiate if they were seeking their Upper School Diploma (the equivalent of Grade 13) or to attend Clinton Business College, situated next door to the Clinton station. In a time when winter road travel was often nearly impossible, the train played a big part in local transportation and one Blyth resident, John Young, credits the Butter and Eggs with helping save his life in 1936. His arm was badly injured in an accident at the Young farm. It took Dr. Kilpatrick three hours to travel three miles to the Young home. He conferred with Dr. Oakes of Clinton on what should be done. They decided to take him to hospital in Clinton by train. He was taken flat on his back, by sleigh to Blyth, had to wait lying on the station benches because the train was delayed by bad weather, but finally was put on the train, taken to Clinton and transferred to the hospital where his arm was amputated. There was question whether he would survive but he did and 50 years later is still a familiar part of Blyth. The Butter and Eggs wasn’t so fortunate. Five years later, it was gone, and with it, an integral part of life in the community. With thanks to Melda McElroy, Luella McGowan and John Young for their help.