I've had a BofLF&E enginemen's time book in my collection for over 30 years. Originally belonging to George S. McCullough, the book was given to me by his daughter, Joyce Grant. Being in the same grade in school as Joyce's son, Ross, she knew I was a train enthusiast from an early age. Even before I started recording my observations, I would go over to the family home on Hyland Court in Amherstview after school. There, Ross had a 4x8 table layout that we would work on together. I gave a good home to the train-set consist that Ross gave me some years later. Once, Ross had a box of Airfix civilians that I was asked to paint, and the painted figures I returned made Ross and his Mom really happy. Ross also had an impressive GI Joe collection. Ross' Dad Roy was quite handy as well as being a hunter, had made Ross several custom pieces for the collection.
Joyce died in 1996, and I'm not sure in what year prior to that she gave me her Dad's time book from 1944, suffice it to say it reposed in the ol' dusty archives and just languished there. Recently, a rather unexpected turn of events finally sprung it free, enabling and expediting its exigent exposure here on Trackside Treasure.
At the Napanee train show in mid-June I picked up five issues other than CRHA's Canadian Rail for light reading, perhaps when trackside, from taciturn Quebec dealer Michel Bellehumeur. On a sunny sunroom Sunday I flipped through one issue, shown above, that included an excellent article by well-known author the late Lorne Perry, CN public affairs official and leader of the design team at CN in 1961 when their new logo was debuted:
Describing the career progression of CN Enginemen at Montreal's Turcot Yard, the article made reference to a photocopied time book the author had in his possession, recording the trips of student fireman George S. McCullough. The George S. McCullough??, I asked myself? I remembered that name! Hastening through the rapidly-dissipating humidity in the aforementioned subterranean archives, I found my original copy of the time book Joyce had given me decades ago. Indeed, it was that George S. McCullough! Here's author Perry's description of the time book from Canadian Rail No 585 , the July-August 2018 issue:
I can only wonder how author Perry came by the photocopy of this original that he quoted from in his article. Was there a family connection between him and the Grants? Was it through a friend of the family? I guess I'll never know. It seemed to be to be a rather amazing coincidence. For some time I'd had idle thoughts of reproducing the contents of McCullough's time book in some sort of spreadsheet, then realizing the challenge of interpreting and possibly incorrectly transcribing the data contained therein, I'd decided against it. And it languished some more. Until I read and revelled in Perry's article. It was time to free it from its languishment location. Below, I have 'redneck-scanned' the pages of the time book that contain entries, in McCullough's handwriting, made over 80 years ago.
I'll refrain from trying to draw allusions or conclusions from McCullough's entries in the time book - I'll let them speak for themselves. It does seem, however, from an entry on the second last pages that he actually began his service on the Montreal spare board in September, 1943 and that this was a new book begun with the new year, 1944.
Joyce died in 1996. Roy never remarried and died in 2015. Ross and his wife, whom he first met during his time at Queen's University Engineering, retired at the age of 43! I always knew Ross would go far. At Amherst View Public School, gym teacher Mr. Carson one day instructed the class to line up tallest to shortest AND in alphabetical order. Ross and I stood by and watched the ensuing nonsensical frenzied lining-up attempts - we both seemed to know it just couldn't be done! Ross' brother Bruce rose through the ranks of the Ontario Provincial Police. The McCullough family legacy lives on in the name of his great-granddaughter, Bruce's daughter McCulla.
Imagine how easy it would have been for this small but sententious snapshot of one man's service to have been consigned to oblivion over the intervening years. That it did not is nothing short of a marvellous McCullough miracle.
A history of the proximal major yards of CN and CP - Turcot and Glen, respectively - is beyond the scope of this post. For your reading pleasure, my brother Dave, on his Rolly Martin Country blog, has helpfully published a plethoric panoply of posts concerning Turcot and nearby Glen Yards and their former importance in days of yore...
- 1942 CNR Turcot Yard and Lachine - photos by LC Gagnon, published in 2019.
- 1961 CNR Turcot Yard, CPR Westmount & Glen Yard, published in 2019.
- First Visit to Turcot Yard, Montreal, 17 July 1961, published in 2023.
- CPR Glen Yard in Archived Journals 1906-1967, published in 2026.
CP's Glen Yard is now the site of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC - which is not to be confused with MUMC, Hamilton's McMaster University Medical Centre). The MUHC is the result of a voluntary merger in 1997 of the Montreal General Hospital (1821), the Royal Victoria Hospital (1893), the Montreal Chest Institute (1909), the Montreal Children's Hospital (1904), and the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital (1934). In 2008, the Lachine Hospital (1913) and the CHSLD Camille-Lefebvre (1992) became a part of the MUHC. The Glen site project was originally budgeted at around $700 million but cost around $1.3 billion; it was meant to take only three years but took much longer - announced in 2006 and completed in 2015.
So few tracks remaining! The MUHC is at top right (H) and McCullough's home on Desnoyers Street is at bottom right (red pin). The snake-like spaghetti-bowl of highways dominates the former CN Turcot Yard site, with four CN tracks passing underneath (from centre-bottom to top-left). Turcot is now the third busiest highway interchange in Quebec, handling more than 600,000 vehicles per day.
Running extra...
SoundHoundAI has launched 'Julia', their automated voice order-taker technology at over 40 White Castle outlets in California. We knew human drive-thru order-taking was a-changin' when two-lane drive-thrus began being staffed by one person, not two as intended. (Drive-thru lines seem shorter with two lanes, more passengers naïvely pull in.) This technology 'frees up' staff to do other jobs, no, no, it's not intended to reduce employment. Sounds like you've heard that before somewhere? Would you like facts with that? Drive-thru use has increased 43% since 2020!
Speaking of self-checkouts, can Shoppers Drug Mart train their self-checkout to apply the seniors' discount? Instead of admitting to a machine I'm incredibly old, I have to prostitute and prostrate myself (that sounded weird!) to a human to indicate my advanced age - very publicly and often loudly. The only good news is that on Thursdays, I'm surrounded by other penny-pinching, cheap, pension-spendin' seniors and the oldies are playing on the sound system! So good, so good, so good!
Actually, what all these retail 'advancements' are really doing is just freeing up people to endlessly debate them on social media. With profanity. For hours. Unpaid hours. Really? First-world problems about who has the right-of-way in which lane, and did you know it's really all about vehicle-stacking! Hey, No Frills! While we're at it, why don't you reinstall your second cart-return shelter that you removed when you increased your store size? Not to mention destroying those excellent railman-friendly spots nearest the tracks when you added a pharmacy two decades ago.
First past the post...
It was a pleasure to meet Dave the Carpenter, fellow pensioner from my former hospital, on the weekend. Dave and Lucy, kids and grandkids are all hard workers with family roots in Portugal. Dave won the hospital staff award and not just for his carpentry skills - also for his people skills and his integrity. If he said he was going to do something, he would do it. We reminisced about his humorous 'Jump For My Love' Pointer Sisters song reference, suggested to Kit the pathologist assistant as a friendly answer to her question, "How am I going to get through there now?" after he'd professionally constructed a new bench top and which she did NOT find funny. Well, we did. He knew your name and would not shy away from flashing a toothy grin under his handlebar moustache, which I'm sure he has done many times in the presence of his EIGHT grandchildren, all by age 59! A family man and a user of a piece of fibreboard to neatly catch plaster dust when drilling a hole, Dave is also a wicked crow impersonator and helped me with my technique - I'm ravin' about it now - as we would greet each other while walking on our way to work many mornings across the Queen's University campus. (KHSC photo, 2019 - above)
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