Monday 18 March 2024

Swing Bridge across Anglin Bay

In January, 1857, under the Committee on Railways (alternatively referred to as the Railroads & Improvements Committee or simply the Railroad Committee) [Sir] John A. Macdonald arranged with the Crown for access for a railway across the marsh at Anglin Bay, described in the press of the time as a 'loop line'. An estimate of costs to construct a swing bridge (?drawbridge) would be required, to be positioned at the middle of the embankment across the small bay's mouth (top photo - blue circle in close-up of Brosius map of 1875).

In February of that year, Messrs. McFarlane, McCutchen and Anglin had concerns and tried to prevent the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) embankment to the swing bridge. It was felt that the embankment would block Anglin Bay, thereby causing waste water in the area to stagnate. Already shallow and murky, the water in the semi-circular bay was thought to cause ague (malaria) and lake fever (cholera) outbreaks annually.

Published in the Kingston Whig-Standard May 7, 1859, a case was heard involving the difficulty of accessing the Anglin wharf due to the position of the Grand Trunk Railway swing bridge. North winds made passage into Anglin Bay especially challenging. The track made the wharf nearly valueless, the openings being only 28 feet in width. Water depth at the wharf was only nine feet. The verdict went in favour of the plaintiff.
Between 1875 and 1890, the GTR branchline was relocated to the west of the Kingston & Pembroke (K&P) line, perhaps as early as 1878. The swing bridge was removed, resulting in an opening left in the embankment across the mouth of the bay. By 1890, the K&P built 'spile' docks out into the bay, some accounts saying almost halfway across, allowing transshipment of ore from flat cars into barges or ships in the shallow harbour. The spile docks were demolished by 1929, with 85 year-old W.J. Gates supervising the work. 

On June 12, 1896 - the swing bridge was still in place:
A 1919 map showing the now-GTR alignment (hatched) and the opening in the CP trackage where the swing bridge had been located (blue circle) and the spile docks extending out into the Cataraqui River (red box):


Wednesday 6 March 2024

Woolen Mill Salvage Yard

From 1970 to 1990, the Cataraqui Street Woolen Mill was surrounded on at least two sides by the Harold's Demolition salvage yard. A 1984 Snapshot Kingston aerial view (top photo) shows the Woolen Mill, Harold's Demolition yard, and the former location of the CP spur (yellow line) to the mill's former loading dock.

Operated by company president Harold Westendorp who was born in Holland in 1952, the yard at 5 (or 6) Cataraqui Street was routinely advertised in the Whig as a site to find salvage items too good for scrap. Westendorp, who began his business on Church Street in Brockville before moving it to Kingston, claimed he was the youngest salvage company owner in Ontario at the time. 

Harold's Demolition at the burned out Fort Henry Hotel on Princess Street, February 4, 1969 - Whig clipping:
This notice was from a June 23, 1970 Whig:

 A January 30, 1976 Whig classified ad describes salvage coming from the former Canadian Tire store:
In July, 1980 there were big savings to be had:
An August, 1989 classified ad:
A 1985 flap about high-density housing zoning change proposed for the area brought the company president to a public meeting, with the possibility of having to find another location for the salvage yard, away from the Inner Harbour location. Such a move was estimated to cost Harold's $2.5 million! Harold's, Rosen Fuels and S. Anglin Co. all objected to the city's proposed zoning of 60 acres from River Street down to Place d'Armes. Though only valued at $3,000 per unit (Rosen) and $10,000 per unit (Harold's), the proposed change would increase land values up to $18,000 per unit.

An undated photo of the yard kindly shared by Marc Shaw, looking up Cataraqui Street with the Bailey broom factory at extreme right:
In 1986, the property was described as being bounded by a corrugated metal fence between 10 and 12 feet high, topped with mountings for barbed wire. The operation was then sometimes referred to as Harold's Recycling Centre, much more in line with emerging environmental enlightenment.

Used by Harold and Hilda Westendorp as a warehouse for nearby Harold's Demolition, the National Grocers building was the site of an auction held to sell off various stored materials in late-October, 1987 resulting in $30,000 in sales. Even the kitchen sink(s) were for sale! At the time, the proposed Wellington Street extension was planned for the site of the salvage yard.

A June, 1992 Whig clipping (below) shows a Sheriff's Sale of a Westendorp grader. When Hank Doornekamp bought the Woolen mill and adjacent 3.2-acre Harold's Demolition salvage yard in mid-1993, Harold's Demolition was already a defunct company. The proposed use of the yard for residential use never materialized, and the Woolen Mill (formerly Whig) parking lot now occupies some of that real estate.

I moved my scrap yard to make way for an Anglin expansion recently. I moved some scrap behind an emplaced chain-link fence in front of the Woolen Mill, drawing inspiration from Harold's salvage yard:

Layout Video Update 2018 vs. 2024

I recently posted a video to Youtube. Six minutes of the very latest 2024 look and feel of my Kingston's Hanley Spur HO-scale layout. By comparison, this two minutes taken in 2018 are tough to watch. Granted, it was extremely early on in the new Kingston iteration (changing over from Vermont).  Here are some screenshots to show the progress:
Hurricane trees (!) and structure stand-ins with a passing freight (2018 - above). By 2024, structures, billboards and backdrops are in place with a different CP freight in town:
Two more before-and-afters:
A cornucopia of CN work equipment has arrived in the still Vermont-y yard, with more uprooted scenery and the red-brick station kit that would become CN's Outer Station (2018 - above). By 2024, the yard was properly populated, backdrops and scenery in place,  and the passenger station busy:

Monday 4 March 2024

Aerial View of the Other Side of Kingston

Oh, there's another side to Kingston besides the industrial waterfront trackage and industry I enjoy researching and modelling? Let's turn our back on the Hanley Spur part of town for a moment and look west. There's a university, prison, residential blocks, historic buildings and hospitals out there. Who knew?? 

Well, we all did, and we've all spent some time there (some of us years and years working), so when I received an electronic copy of this Wallace R. Berry original 16x20-inch image that was recently unframed and scanned in high-resolution, I had a lot to look at. I've looked at Kingston 'from both sides now'! Click on image for much larger view:
There are several interesting things in this fine photo. Some help to suggest its date:
  • red arrow - vessel at PUC water plant (now Gord Downie Pier)
  • green arrow - salvage vessel in Portsmouth Harbour - prior to 1976 Sailing Olympics repurposing
  • blue arrow - Cataraqui Bay grain elevator
  • yellow arrow - McArthur Hall/College (built between 1969 and 1971)
  • orange arrow - County gaol and wall (demolished 1974)
And thanks to Stu's comment below, the new Richardson Stadium not being built yet. So I think we can confidently date this photo as taken in 1969 or 1970.

Friday 1 March 2024

Collins Bay's Causeway Construction


Another post from Collins Bay, this one describing the realignment of Bath Road, Hillview Road and the Grand Trunk/Canadian National mainline tracks. (Whig clipping dated November 9, 1922 - top). This area has been a perennially dangerous crossing point, with many vehicle and pedestrian collisions, injuries and fatalities profiled in the Whig's pages. The Hillview Road level crossing was closed in 1995 after Hillview Road was restricted to one-way northbound traffic. Between Collins Bay and the present Gardiners Road there were at least three private level crossings that have been closed in recent years, also following crossing incidents.

The May, 2011 issue of the Limelight newsletter published by the Kingston Historical Society (KHS - Vol 13 No 5) contained this excellent article by Collins Bay historian Stewart Renfrew. I found this comprehensive account using the KHS's useful Topic Index compiled by Paul Van Nest:

For future reference, the James Reid advertising supplement was actually titled "aswesawit", not "aswewait". Because who wants to be known as waiting for the undertaker?
Aerial views: 1953 (above) and 2004 (below) from Snapshot Kingston
An 1878 atlas image that seems to show the Grand Trunk crossing Bath Road (twice, once out of view to the right), the bay, and Collins Bay Road at left:

Wednesday 28 February 2024

CN Property Plan of Hanley Spur

It took me awhile, but I finally got around to getting these CN property plan images from March, 1945 printed. Book customer Jeffrey Smith kindly emailed me pdf images of the CN property plan back in December, 2022. They marinated in my email inbox, perhaps getting better with age, until I finally hustled them over to Staples on a USB a couple of weeks ago, then expectantly picking them up today!  Look what we hath wrought:
How the images looked in the pdf viewer (above) - awesome! I had a tough time picturing just how big they were. I knew they were detailed and sizeable. When I rolled in to Staples an the copy centre clerk told me they would print out 120 inches in length, quick math told me that's 10 feet long! And that's printing them at the maximum paper width of 36 inches! We compromised at 5 feet long on 18-inch paper. There are three images, but I found one of them to be largely superfluous, so here are the two largest printed images on my family-room floor, with a one-foot ruler in the image, and my two feet edited out:

Close-ups. Telegraph lines, streets, railway (single, not double) lines, some buildings, and lots are shown:
"Ground zero" Cataraqui and Rideau Streets (above) and a little farther along Rideau, North Street:

CP's station across from City Hall (above) and CLC (below):
Under the River Street bridge:

Some floor-level iPhone images follow. Tete du Port (above), Montreal Street subway (below):

CN's Outer Station (above), CP's bridge over CN near Division Street (below):

Frontenac Floor & Wall Tile and Monarch Battery across the tracks from the Outer Station (above), Davis Tannery (below):
Now in the layout room: 

Tuesday 6 February 2024

My 'Montreal Street Subway'

Until now, I unofficially called this little bridgespace the Continuous-Run Option (CRO). Though my HO-scale layout is officially point-to-point, with CN and CP lines beginning and ending in a schematic straight line, sometimes I want the trains to just run a bit. This CRO crosses the aisle leading into the layout, and it is removable. I snapped a photo of CN crews finishing up my project tonight. Read on to find what's new and what's the same after this build is in place:
One new thing is a new name. I'm going to call it the Montreal Street Subway, the namesake underpass that carried the prototype Montreal Street under the CN mainlines just east of the Outer Station. It actually leads directly to my HO scale Outer Station which was located on...Montreal Street. So the symbolism and the siting signalled spot-on synchronicity! Another unofficial name for this CRO, in its previous form, would be the Bridge of Death due to the danger of rolling stock plunging four feet to the unforgiving hard floor below. Things that are temporary often become permanent, and this little plank was no different. Held in place with four splice plates, its position was flexible and could be lifted out after the CRO piece of flex-track was removed first. Such lift-outs usually take place in the modelling off-season, when I'm enjoying the nice weather and not operating. But now, during modelling season, I'm operating and working on the layout nightly, so it stays in.
Before (above) and after (below). Surprisingly, I had very few casualties take the plunge with this benchwork in place ever since I ceded part of the layout room to my wife's craft space and reducing the layout footprint from 23x10 feet down to 11x10 feet, four layout iterations ago. I can remember maybe two unfortunate incidents. The unwritten layout rules were never park the Rapido locomotive nor the True Line Trains cabooses on the CRO!

High-level views Before (above) and After (below). Casting about for suitable material for the new crossing, I discounted several random boards found in the garage leftover lumber lounge as either too short, too narrow or too flimsy. The Goldilocks Principle comes to the layout room! Dispirited and disappointed, I sat down and spied a previous front-porch layout, the Lyttle-Redd Caboose Co. propped up in a remote corner of the layout room! Would it fit?
As I note in the above-linked post, this layout base was also a last remaining vestige of my childhood home in Amherstview. Hence the turquoise Formica laminate that had de-laminated over the years. But this thing was SOLID and fit the space, so out came the Sharpie. I marked some cut-lines, then out came the hand-saw. I severed both ends on the angle naturally leading from the corner of the layout across the aisle. That's the horizontal. Now the vertical. I needed the track to continue straight across, and had to find the correct level and height. I added together the thicknesses of the Formica piece and a square support piece I had sawed in two, then measured down from track height to attach the support pieces to the fascia.
I had seen some other modellers' experiences building CROs (also known as duck-unders or nod-under, layout height-dependent). Everyone wants a fancy hinge, a dependable drop-down, or some other over-engineered gizmo. The design challenge here is to build something strong enough to support a train, but flexible enough to move and not stenose my spine if I 'come up to soon' while negotiating the subway. I planned supports with pins allowing the 'floating' CRO to drop into place secured by the pins. While getting to that stage, I placed the support piece underneath the middle of the Formica piece, holding it in place with Scotch tape then driving a single Robertson (is there any other kind?) temporarily in the middle.
Did I mention temporary things becoming permanent already? I think I did. Once I removed the tape, I liked the free-floating, self-levelling, somewhat-adjustable bit of engineering I had unwittingly created. The view while entering the layout:
Just a bit of track work needed doing. I trimmed the CRO piece of track a bit for a better fit, screwing it to the CRO and ensuring track joiners could slip into place once the Montreal Street Subway was put in place. The height was good, and support on both sides was good, with a bit of flex horizontally because I WILL come up too soon or otherwise klutzily collide with the new Subway at some point. The finish of the counter-top underside actually matched my 'barnboard' Dollarama fascia sticker finish. And that bit of turquoise reminds me of 'home' so I just might keep it for awhile. No Last Spike here, but the work has been done well in every way, if I do say so myself!