The Rural Voice, 1999-10, Page 42Book Review
Recalling the railway days
Reviewed by Keith Roulston
Perhaps there's something about
growing up where you hear the train
whistle blowing every day that
infects the blood. Certainly it infect-
ed John R. Hardy, a
Hanover photo-
grapher and writer
who has published
Rusty Rails: A photo-
graphic record of
branchline railways
in Midwestern
Ontario 1961-1996.
Hardy combines his love of
photography with his fascination
with trains. He grew up on a
Colborne Township farm east of
Goderich that had its own rail siding,
leading to a gravel pit used by the
builders of the Guelph-to-Goderich
Canadian Pacific Railway in 1907.
The beginnings of the book can be
traced to a gift of a Kodak camera for
a grade 8 graduation present in 1961.
With his love of trains it was only
natural Hardy should want to photo-
graph them. It led to a 35 -year
R E t
odyssey.that saw him photograph
most of the railway stations from
Guelph, Stratford and Goderich north.
to Owen Sound.
A hobby for Hardy, it has become
a valuable record of a piece of history
for the region. A map at the beginn-
ing of the book shows the areas of
north Perth, Huron and Wellington
and all of Grey and Bruce counties
that now don't have a single railway
track, though they were once
crisscrossed by the ribbons of steel.
Better roads and faster cars, first
killed off passenger train service
while changing manu-facturing and
agricultural practices starved many
lines for business and led to them
finally being abandoned.
The role agriculture played in both
the good times and the decline of the
branchlines is outlined in the brief
histories of the different stations that
accompany the dozens of photo-
graphs. Freight records show that
grain, cattle and farm machinery
made up the bulk of activity at many
of the town and village stations. Most
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38 THE RURAL VOICE
towns had grain elevators and stock
pens. When cattle were no longer
shipped by train and when rail grain
shipments dwindled, the railways lost
money and pressured the federal
government to let them abandon the
routes.
Hardy's dedication to capturing
history is evident from the first
chapter as he relates the tale of trying
to photograph the last train to travel
the Guelph-Goderich CP Rail line —
the line that ran through his family's
farm (and ironically through his wife
Johanna's family's farm a few miles
east at Blyth). On December 15,
1988 he booked off work early so he
could photograph the last train
heading to Goderich as it passed
through his in-laws' farm. The train
was delayed and after waiting to
hours until daylight faded, he finally
gave up and headed for his parents'
home in Goderich. He made two trips
to photograph the Goderich station
and had given up for the night when
the phone rang at 11 p.m. It was his
father-in-law (former Rural Voice
columnist Adrian Vos) telling him
the train had finally passed through
his farm. He went back down to the
station, got some photographs of the
train arriving, then got up the next
day to capture the train's last
eastbound trip carrying graders from
Champion Road Machinery.
Though the emphasis in the book
is heavier on Goderich-area railways
where he grew up (both the Guelph-
Goderich CP Rail and the Goderich-
Stratford CN — now the only one of
the lines still running, operated by
short -line specialist Goderich-Exeter
Railway Company), there's some-
thing here for nearly everyone who
grew up in the train era in midwest-
ern Ontario. For me, as someone who
grew up with the train from Kincard-
ine to Lucknow running through my
Kinloss Township farm, that was the
photo of the Lucknow rail yard.
Hardy's obsession has become a
gift to everyone in the area: a record
of a vanished era.0
Rusty Rails, John R. Hardy, 167 pgs.,
$39.95, self -published (John Hardy,
535 Fourth St., Hanover N4N 3E8).