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| The Shellbrook and District Heritage Museum is fortunate to have as its largest artifact a railway station to house the bulk of its collection. In this photo, a passenger patiently waits at the Shellbrook station with steamer trunk and hat box. Sadly, the train will not arrive. The CNR passenger service ended in 1978. The CNR continued with regular freight service until 1993. The last train to run out of Shellbrook would have been a Carlton Trail Railway freight train on or about April 1, 2009. |
Like the voyageur canoes that transported furs east and trading goods west, trains were the arteries of the Prairies and railway stations were the pulsing heart of Prairie towns. Trains brought the settlers and manufactured goods west and then transported agricultural produce east.
Shellbrook developed into a service center for the surrounding agricultural communities because of the Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR). Shellbrook is a typical railway town with Railway Avenue running parallel to the tracks and Main Street perpendicular. It is possible that a portable flag stop station existed in late 1909 with rail service being introduced January 10, 1910. The existing Shellbrook Railway Station at the end of Main Street is listed as open in 1910. The $3000 station was built to standard CNoR Third Class station plans with living accommodations for the Station Agent. The three rooms along the track would have been from east to west: the waiting room, the office, and the freight room. On the non-rail side of the office and waiting room was the living room, kitchen, and a stairway to the four bedrooms on the second floor. As the baggage/freight room ran the full width of the station, it had two large doors; one door rail side and one door non-rail side.
Visitors familiar with the Museum will recognize that this plan description differs from their experience. In 1918, the station was expanded. The new larger freight room on the west side meant the old freight room could be converted to a waiting room and the waiting room to extra living space. The station was insulated and the exterior was stuccoed in 1939. Twenty years later, in 1959, it was upgraded with indoor plumbing.
The rail side office bay window allowed the Station Agent sightlines up and down the track as well as onto the platform. Station Agents wore various hats. They sold tickets to passengers and consigned freight. Express freight would travel in a passenger car and was the most expensive. Less than a carload, abbreviated to LCL, was more expensive than carload freight. Another hat worn by a Station Agent was sending and receiving telegraphs. If the work load warranted it, another employee, a Station Operator, was hired to receive "train orders" from a central Dispatcher by telegraph, then type them up and deliver them to the train crews. Interestingly, the railways did not trust radio communication until well into the second half of the twentieth century.
The Museum recently had a visit from Eileen McLaren Tymm, granddaughter of the long-term Station Agent Wilber McLaren. Remarkably, McLaren was employed at the Shellbrook station for over 40 years. McLaren Tymm remembers visiting her grandfather. She recognized much of the living area and noted that the wall where the ticket opening would have been, between the office and the waiting room, had disappeared.
As well as the Station Agent, the railway would have employed and provided housing for a Section Foreman. The distance between stations averaged 6 to 10 miles because 10 miles was the maximum return trip a farmer hauling grain or other produce by horse and wagon could manage in a single day. A Section Foreman then would be responsible for the condition of the tracks 3 to 5 miles on either side of his assigned station. Section Foremen would have originally used handcars and in later years used motor cars (also known as jiggers or speeders) to survey their sections and assign maintenance work to section gangs.
Fred Tatler, a board member of the Saskatchewan Railway Museum (SRM), is passionate about railways and the benefits of rail travel, "On a train, you are not cramped in a constrained seat. You can stroll from car to car, enjoy a meal in the dining car, or sit in the observatory car." He also explained that passenger trains were a service industry dependent on well trained staff. On a guided tour of a sleeper car at the SRM outside Saskatoon, Tatler described how the porter would have had to physically transform the cleverly designed seats into sleeping berths in the evening and reverse the transformation in the morning without inconveniencing passengers. The psychological demands of the job were very high as porters were expected to be available around the clock and provide service with a perpetual smile.
Pre-private automobiles and public roads, railways were the ribbons of steel that bound Canada together. Voters and, therefore, politicians paid great attention to railways. In 1918, the CNoR experienced financial difficulties and the federal government responded to public fears around the loss of this vital transportation system by becoming a major shareholder in the company. Soon the government formed the Canadian National Railways (CNR) to manage the CNoR and other troubled railways it had shares in. Domestic and wartime pressure quickly lead to the nationalization of the CNR. The Shellbrook Station was sold to the Town in 1978 and then became the Museum's largest artifact.
Do you have a story about the Shellbrook railway station? Did you travel to or from Shellbrook by rail? If you are willing to share your stories or memories, please contact committee member Alanna Carswell at 747-3769.
The Museum welcomes monetary donations for inventory show cases and other donations to help better display items to tell their stories. Please make donations to the Town of Shellbrook to receive a receipt.
