L.B.Chapman at Stittville.

This shot is taken at beautiful downtown Stittville, mileage 13 on the Carleton Place Subdivision.

Bill Linley took this shot of me hooping up orders to regular freight train #90 which ran from Smiths Falls through Carleton Place to Ottawa West. This was on Dominion/Canada Day 1965, my first year of employment as an operator.

The train order signal at Stittville was only a 2-indication signal, red and green, meaning 'stop for orders' or 'proceed, no orders'. But if we only had train orders that did not restrict the train, a yellow flag by day or a yellow light by night had to be taken out with the train orders by the operator hooping the train, to let them know that they didn't have to stop. But holding 2 train order hoops and the flag sometimes got a little squeamish, so we'd often jam the yellow flag into the cracks in the wooden platform.

That motorcycle on the platform was my transportation for the first year of my employment as an operator on the Smiths Falls Division. The town's real name is Stittsville, but a typo in an old employee's timetable meant that the error was carried on for years and years, until a short time before the line was ripped up. Abandonment was on August 15, 1967.

Bruce Chapman