4th Anti-Aircraft Battery Loading at Kingston

Found in a shoebox by Kingston sign painter Bob Fray, I received en electronic version of the above photo from Laura Murray of the Swamp Ward and Inner Harbour History Project. Laura was questioning the time period in which the photo was taken! What a photo! It looks as if the photo was stuck to something - some lettering appears just above the locomotive, which is under steam.

Some inferences from the photo:

• CNR 3342 was part of a class of locomotives built in 1918-1919
• the Kingston coal gasification operation wound down by the 1950's

So that puts the photo between 1918 and the 1950's.

A closer look at the vehicles and clothing of the onlookers puts me in mind of the 1940's - wartime. In fact, these look like military vehicles. I'm in fer a more inferences:

• an artillery unit? But those aren't tractors, they're road vehicles. The trailers are fendered and tarped. Searchlights!
• there are no reporting marks on the flatcars. 
• there is no visible logo on the tender of the obviously-CN steam locomotive. 
• both were probably removed as a form of censorship OR for the use of the photo in a government publication that would not give publicity to a particularly railway
• the boxcar is clearly lettered for CN with no censorship or other removal of reporting marks
• the K&P coaches and a caboose are visible in the background - or they're CN rider cars and caboose accompanying this special movement.
• what is going on in the photo? Is the searchlight unit's train is being assembled after loading or disassembled before unloading? Questions....hmmm. Headed to/from Barriefield base up on the hill?
• some local men and boys are looking on - one dandy is pointing out the valve gear. White shoes! A member, or possibly two, of the crew stands nearby.

The location is the GTR/CNR freight shed team tracks between Wellington Street and Place d'Armes:

• City Hall's dome is visible in background
• gasification operation already noted with lettering, "Gas - The Modern Fuel"
• others with a better knowledge of downtown architecture would recognize some of the other buildings

Such an interesting photo. One other thing - that boxcar is fouling a switch!

March 2019 Update **Excellent research done by Andrew Jeanes has found that the 4th Anti-Aircraft  Battery, RCA was stationed in Kingston at the outbreak of the war. Departing Kingston on August 26, 1939, the battery was sent to Halifax to bolster coastal defenses there. Andrew also found a photo of a 3-inch, 20 cwt. AA gun - the trailer design, with deployable side decks, matches what seems to be under those tarps! Andrew also noted that since the Richardson elevator is still standing in the photo, the photo had to be pre-December 1941 - the month that the USA entered the war.