Village Squire, 1977-01, Page 6Old wood -burning engine, once used on London -Huron -Bruce Ry.
The Old Butter
and Eggs Special
is gone but its
memory lingers on.
4, Village Squire/January 1917
A beautiful little pointy -topped station house stands in the
east end of the village of Blyth, looking out of place in the
middle of a scruffy field. The tracks that once ran beside it
would, if they were still there, go through the middle of a
garage across the street. Behind the garage a high arched
bridge in a heavy earthen embankment still stands where the
tracks went northward over the east -west line of the C.P.R.
Still farther north the old roadbed of the railway forms a
picturesque avenue through the fields and woodlots of the -
area farms.
These are among the few traces left of a railway that was
once an important part of life in the sixty years the old trains
ran from Wingham to London through the Western Ontario
farmlands.
All railways were special in those days. Each had its own
per6onality. But none were quite like the little train that
puffed its way through the countryside, stopping here and
there to pick up passengers or freight, taking the calm,
leisurely personality of the region for its own. It was called the
Butter and Eggs Special to most people though its actual
name was the London -Huron -Bruce Railway Co. Ltd. and
later just the Canadian National Railway. It gained its
nickname because many of the passengers were farmers and
their wives with butter and eggs bound for market in London.
Others tried to change the name. such as Charles Forrester,
railways superintendent in London who wanted to call it the
Beef, Ham and Lard Line after he saw a large shipment of
beef, hams and lard, but the old name stuck until the days the
rails were pulled up.
Part of the line is still there, of course. When the northern
part of the line was abandoned the part from Clinton to
London was retained and still sees some freight use. But the
section from Clinton north is now just a faint memory.
It's probably fitting that the last really tangible signs of the
railway are at Blyth for that's where the whole story began. If
Ever a railway was brought about by the efforts of one man it
was this one.
Pat Kelley was the kind of dynamic builder who helped turn
'Canada from a bush wilderness into a prosperous country. He
!arrived in the little village of Blyth when it was just a bush
town but quickly carved out a place for himself. He soon
owned a flour and grist mill and a saw mill and sash and door
factory.