Slamming over the Milton diamond at 50 m.p.h., Nos. 2236
and 5214 are getting a good roll on their tonnage for the seven mile
long slog up the Milton Hill to Guelph Junction, on September 3, 1954
at 2:15 p.m. This is a London Extra, headed by No. 5214, and assisted
to Orr's Lake by No. 2236 from the Lambton assist pool.
The assist pool, or "Cockney Pool" as it was known, helped
trains in three directions out of Toronto. The longest was the west
end to Orr's Lake, some 60 miles. The northbound assist to Bolton was
21 miles long, and on the east end, assists to Agincourt and Leaside
were thirteen and five miles respectively. A busy holiday weekend evening
could see as many as four or five assist engines standing behind old
Leaside Station after boosting the varnish up from the floor of the
Don Valley. These were normally Lambton based power which would couple
together and run back to Lambton via the North Toronto cutoff. Generally,
D10's, G1's, G2's and N2's were used. One night in April 1947, a tiny
D4, No. 452, was utilized to doublehead No. 2460 on the second section
of Train No. 22, the night train to Montreal. I was firing that night
and as we sat in Union Station the thought crossed my mind that we must
have looked a humorous sight to passengers boarding their sleepers.
The engineer, Jim Haddow, told me not to worry too much about the steam
pressure, (I was having trouble keeping her hot), just see that she
had enough water, and let the other guy do some pushing!
No. 2236 was a G1v 4-6-2 "Pacific", built by the CPR
in July 1914 and rebuilt in March 1924. One of a group of eleven 2200's
rebuilt with 250 lbs./square inch boilers, she saw much passenger service
through the years, but by the 1950's was in assist and freight service.
By June 1958, she was out of service, waiting repairs at Angus, where
she was scrapped on March 18, 1959.
No. 5214 was a P1 n with an interesting rebuild history. She was originally
built by MLW in October 1912 as No. 3937, a N3b "Consolidation"
2-8-0. In January 1929, she was rebuilt at Angus, with redesigned cylinders
and valve gear together with an increased boiler pressure. She became
No. 3737, allocated to the N2b class. Extensively rebuilt at Angus in
1947, on July 31 of that year, she emerged as No. 5214, a 2-8-2. A London
engine during most of the 1950's, she saw service on the Galt Subdivision
with some service on the Hamilton to Guelph run. In use into 1959, she
was scrapped on October 12, 1961.
The Milton diamond dates back to the 1870's, when the Credit Valley
was building its line through Milton. The Hamilton and Northwestern
Railway (later the Milton Subdivision of the CNR) was already well established
and a skirmish between the "roads" took place here. The H&NW
blocked the CVR with a train, but the CV men managed to move the offending
train long enough to spike down their crossing claim. The CNR line was
abandoned in the 1970's. W.H.N.Rossiter
