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.