12.1, MOVE TO NEW GLASGOW
      From experience and learning already described there came an opportunity for me to transfer from the mainly technical Transportation Engineering to the area of  supervising line operations. Harvey Smith, who was Regional Rules supervisor had earlier encouraged me to study and to write the "A" book of  the Uniform Code of Operating Rules. I jumped at the chance as I recognised that qualifying in them was a necessity if I were to go into line operations which I was anxious to do. Perhaps Sherman Firlotte as well as Harvey Smith had mentioned my name as a possible Operations  Trainee, which was a normal training step before assignment to a territory. The next step was an interview in Montreal with Ernie House, who was then Asst. Vice-President of Personnel in Montreal. He asked me a few questions to determine my general knowledge of  railroad operations and my sense of judgment in arriving at decisions. I was fortunate in that the company at that time was interested in promoting some officers with university backgrounds to supplement the main run of candidates who usually were selected from the ranks of Conductors, Yardmasters, Enginemen or Train Dispatchers. In any case, I was o.k.'d by House and not long after was sent to the New Glasgow Division as Assistant Superintendent of lines other than those in Cape Breton which had an Assistant Superintendent based in Sydney. It was approved by our Vice-President Reg Hayes who complimented me on my performance as Regional Transportation Engineer saying I had travelled all over the region on car 69 and done my part of dieselisation "without upsetting the local officers and staffs concerned". He was smart enough however to detect a possible weakness in my makeup as a person whose experience was mainly technical and to give me some advice about the human side of  having to deal with the men and their historically strong unions. He said, " be careful in dealing with them and respect their contracts, else they will get your tits in a wringer and they will twist it until you holler".  With that advice ringing in my memory it was off to New Glasgow in April of 1957 where I  initially took up residence in a hotel room near the station. It was a bit of an ironic throwback to my boyhood railway yearnings that the freight train I rode from Truro to New Glasgow was headed up by steam engine 3598, one of the "big mikes" which frequented Rivers in the 1930's!

12.2, NEW GLASGOW DIVISION AND INITIAL TASKS
     I was welcomed to my new job by meeting the Division Superintendent, Lloyd Stirling and my friend David Shaw from dynamometer testing who had recently been appointed Master Mechanic of the Division. We will hear more on these key men later, but on with the tasks for now.
     I was only in the job for a about a week when we learned that the north-east winds had blown  North Sydney harbor full of ice so that the ships in the service across the Cabot Strait to Newfoundland could not be loaded at their regular terminal. This led to a decision to open a temporary service at the ice free port of Mulgrave on the Strait of Canso to handle the traffic to
the "Big Island". There were about 30 cars of freight a day moving which was no small amount to be handled with stevedores and ship's own derricks so I was despatched to Mulgrave as overall supervisor. You many have observed in the buildup above of how I got appointed that I had been allowed to skip the usual months of  hands on experience as an Operations Trainee. I subsequently realized that my time at Mulgrave served very well as my trainee course!
     Anyway, there we were with ships coming and going and a large gang of freight handlers and stevedores under a local foreman, our own yard engine and trains bringing in freight from the main line at Lynwood Junction. We had the regular station agent and extra clerical staff to handle the waybilling and payroll, etc. and on some occasions had to talk the yard engine foreman into repacking the few hotboxes reported on cars. We did not have to handle passengers as they could travel on the large new ferry William Carson which could still make it through the ice to North Sydney; the freight moved in smaller vessels owned by CN Marine and some chartered from the far-reaching interests of  New Brunswick industrialist K.C. Irving. There was no regularity to the freight vessels; we would simply get a phone call from the Sand Point lighthouse that a ship was on the way in and that would give us time to get the freight handlers and stevedores ordered out.
     On the personal side I was able to get room and board with the stevedore foreman and learned to enjoy a good feed of salt cod boiled in the same pot as the potatoes. For amusement I went to one or two local concerts on Saturday night which were quite good fun and the rest of the time it was work or sleep. Anne and the children were of course still in Moncton. Things went on fairly well though I did get a call from the yard engine foreman, Fred Blenkhorn at 3a.m. one day saying the yard was plugged and what did I intend to do about it. He was an experienced man and knew damn well how to keep the small yard straight but thought he should have a full time yard clerk giving him lists of what to do. Fortunately, I had enough sense to know that he just enjoyed calling me at night for something he knew more about than I did so I gave him hell and it didn't happen again. However, I did have to act to fire someone when the unloading foreman and the CN policeman brought the recommendation to me against one of the temporary employees who had been stealing chocolate bars and other small things from ship's cargo. I didn't like to take the action but as the foreman said, "you can't have people broaching cargo". The ice remained in N. Sydney until May 15, so after about six weeks we were able to close down and I returned to base at New Glasgow. I looked around the housing available for the family and as I did not know how long the posting might be I rented an older home at 258 James St., (see photo), which was within walking distance of the station. We rented the house in Moncton and drove the family over about the end of  May.

12.3, A CLASSIC OLD-TIME RAILWAY DIVISION
     I was very happy with my posting to a division. Railroading was still basically on the same pattern that prevailed over the 39 Divisions that CN then had and although the diesel locomotive was starting to show up it had not reached the point where it changed the organization forever. So we still had our own train dispatching office, yards and yard engines at Sydney and Stellarton, local industries shipped by rail, two fast freights and three passenger trains in each direction, roundhouses and car repair depts. at Sydney and Stellarton, branch lines to Pictou, Oxford Junction, Sunny Brae, Thorburn, Mulgrave, St. Peter's and  Inverness, connections to the Halifax - Moncton main line at Truro and Oxford Jct., and interchange connections with the Sydney and Louisburg at Sydney. All of this added up to several hundred miles of trackage and about 1100 empoyees at peak time in summer when extra gangs worked on track. Freight traffic averaged about 250 carloads per day, most of it steel and coal products from Dominion Steel and Coal at Sydney.
     As Assistant Superintendent at New Glasgow I had an office next to the Chief Dispatcher, Ernie Aikens and a secretary, Faye Cavanagh. Adjacent offices contained the Master Mechanic, the Roadmasters, the Bridge and Building Master, the Express Agent and with Superintendent Stirling down the hall. Locomotive and Car Foremen had their offices in their respective shops. My job was mainly to look after train and yard crews and this required riding trains a good deal of the time. I was expected to put in at least 1500 miles a month of  on-line supervision and make out a monthly report on it. Investigation of train delays and any kind of accident with written statements to be taken from those concerned in the more serious cases was a frequent task. Also I was required to attend serious derailments until the line was clear and trains could move again. The worst of these was a 13 car spill between Stellarton and Truro where we had the "big hooks from Sydney and Truro" and were on duty for 24 hours without sleep. Normally, I would not sleep on a train, but I put my head down on the cot in the crew's caboose which took us back to Stellarton. The derailment was caused by a defective coupler on an empty tank car. Some crews had regular runs, but extra board crews could be called at any hour to take a train and it could safely be said that many homes, including my own were operated mainly for the convenience of the railroad!
     Of course there was some time for fun and through the efforts of  Dave Shaw and others a  club house was built at Pictou Landing. Here there were frequent parties with dancing and fiddling by Roadmaster Charley Barrie and others. I very much enjoyed learning how to "step - dance there". Commonly, parties for retiring railway veterans were held there. Sadie Lavers, who ran the corner store near the station would come over to the office on the day before Christmas dressed as Santa and hand out gifts (see photo). She was a great joker and a barrel of fun! But the biggest party we ever had was when the Division won the prize for the best safety record on the whole CN system. This was I  think in 1958. Regional Vice-President D.V. Gonder was very proud of us and came down in the business car to present us with the award. Lloyd Stirling pulled out all the stops and organised a parade through the streets and set up a big dinner and dance at the local hotel. He paid out of his own pocket to get Charlie Chamberlain of the Happy Gang to come and sing, together with Charlie and Allen, a couple of comics from Cape Breton. Lloyd sent the division's business car to Sydney to bring down the entertainers and Asst. Superintendent, Wallace Langley and other supervisors from Cape Breton on the daytime passenger train. There was concern that some of the rank and file of Cape Bretoners might get to drinking, and as Mr. Gonder was death on drinking I had to organanize a pretext to have his business car pick him up at New Glasgow station with the yard engine to take him up to Stellarton Yard to catch the fast freight to Truro at 10 p.m.. In all of my life since I've never been involved in a party like it. It was the epitome of the family spirit which pervaded division level operations in those far away halcyon days when trains were still used by most people and railroads were king!

12.4, SPECIAL JOBS IN THE PROCESS OF CHANGE
     At this point it is worth mentioning some of the events brought about by dieselization during the period I was on the Division. The first was to substitute self-propelled Rail Diesel Cars (which CN called Railiners) for our daytime passenger operations. Dave Shaw and I organised a test run and showed that we could go from Sydney to Truro in about an hour less than our loco hauled steam trains so we re-organised the schedules to reflect this. The overnight trains still had sleeping cars, diners and express and mail cars so in that case the action was to substitute two-unit diesels for steam. Dave and I rode the last steam run down from Antigonish on passenger engine 6007. He let me handle the throttle going up the Marshy Hope 1.8 % grade. I didn't have much to do except watch the valve pilot gauge and adjust the reverse (valve travel) lever to give the most efficient use of the available steam, but it was a special personal thrill to be there for the end of steam on our division's passenger trains!
     Another change which was made possible in part by dieselisation was the establishment of crew run-throughs on the fast freights from Sydney to Stellarton and Stellarton to Moncton, thus eliminating Havre Boucher and Truro as crew change points on those trains. This replaced the
short turnarounds  between Stellarton and Truro and the short run from Havre Boucher to Stellarton where crews had been paid for a full day of 100 miles even though the length of those runs was 80 and 75 miles respectively. This scheme was pushed by Davie Shaw who could see its advantages and also utilized facilities at Stellarton rather than Havre Boucher. There was some opposition from crews based in Sydney and as so often happened in the Maritimes someone complained to the Member of  Parliament who got onto our General Manager, John Demcoe in Moncton. He phoned Lloyd Stirling,  who to his eternal credit said "no, he didn't see why we should change the plans we had worked so hard on just because of one man". Demcoe, who was generally in favor of change said o.k., let's do it and that was it. The scheme worked fine and made us the first on the whole system to initiate a "run-through"! You will be hearing more about run-throughs over the ensuing years on other terrritories. They are now (1999) in effect on the System from coast to coast with one or two exceptions.
     One interesting footnote on the territory was the "Thinkers' Conference" organised at Pictou by Cyrus Eaton, a U.S. financier who owned  a farm near Pictou. He was interested in promoting more understanding between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the western world at a time when the Cold War was at its height. To accomplish this he invited leading names in the general field of  philosophy to come to Pictou and enter into discussion on means of generally improving the world. Our Division did not get asked to supply any philosophers but we got heavily involved in the arrangements because Cyrus controlled the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and he brought three C.& O. business cars with him. These were for himself and his personal staff to live in so we had to fix up the siding and arrange for various services required for the business cars during the conference. This also meant sprucing up the somewhat neglected station and its grounds and providing an extra telegraph operator so Cyrus could keep up to date on his various businesses at home. At about the same time I bought a summer hat with wide flaps to protect my ears, and because it looked funny, Davey dubbed it as my "thinker's hat". In the years since I have gotten many laughs out of it and still use a similar model to play tennis!
 
12.5, LEAVING A LOVELY TOWN AND PROMOTED BACK TO MONCTON
     In those days on the railway, if you were any good you got promoted, and at the level I was at you would last about 2 or 3 years in any one spot, so it was not too big a surprise when they asked me to return to Moncton as Regional Superintendent of  Transportation for what was then the Maritime District comprising all of the Atlantic Region except Newfoundland and the Marine operations. However, before talking further on this new career item it is important to catch up on more about family doings while we lived in Moncton.
     New Glasgow is a very interesting and rather delightful place to live. You can wander down the main street on a Saturday night and greet and chat with people you know. It gave a certain homey feel to the life there when you knew the Salvation Army band would be playing on the main street corner and the lead trumpet player was our passenger train Conductor Diamond. When you included the surounding towns of  Stellarton, Pictou, Westville and Trenton it made an interesting complex with quite a bit of manufacturing; Maritime Steel, Trenton Steel, Hawker-Siddely freight car factory, several coal mines and about four mattress factories. This latter activity always produced a chuckle which you can understand when a survey just released to-day, (Jan.2, 1999) says that Maritimers are among the Canadians who are best satisfied with their sex lives! There was also much history to be thought about; Pictou was where the first group of Scottish settlers came to what is now Nova Scotia, they arrived on the ship Hector in 1773. There is some sadness in the history of the coal mines in that though the coal seams are huge, they are also very gassy and there have been many disasters over the years attested to by the Miners' Monument in Stellarton plus the Westville disaster of our own times (1996).
     For vacation during our first summer we rented a cottage by the sandy beach at Brown Point. Jim was still a baby but he could sleep on the verandah while Robin and Maria played in the sand and enjoyed sliding down a sandy cliff existing there. During the fall we made more than one drive up toward Cape Breton to admire the tremendous beauty of the leaves which still exceeds that of anywhere else I've known! Anne just loved to sketch and paint this beautiful country. In our second summer (1958) we took the train all the way to Manitoba. It was a long, tough trip for Anne with baby Jim but we enjoyed the visit with my parents in Rivers and Anne's parents, her brother George and Auntie Beth at Laclu. We could use the train to get off at Minaki where George senior would meet us with the car. Robin had a bout of flu one winter and we had to put him in the hospital for a couple of  weeks. He was so lonesome there it really got him down, but he finally rallied at the thought of riding his new tricycle which he had gotten for Christmas.
     A final tribute to New Glasgow would be my happiness with the job of traditional railroading and I truly loved it. I can rember to this day the times I would be riding in the caboose or the cab of the way freight where you could see the country, associate with the crew and not be reached by radio phone which came along later. I would say to myself on those occasions that I would not change places with Donald Gordon, who was then President of C.N.. The irony of it all is that much of my own subsequent life was responding to tremendous changes in transportation in Canada so that to-day the former New Glasgow Division is operated as a typical "short line" in private hands. It      has no passenger trains, has no branch lines, serves a greatly reduced steel and coal industry and likely gets less than 100 carloads per day. It carries no mail, no express and no less than carload freight and the large old divisional headquarters station in New Glasgow has burned down. The private company does not use union employees and carries on its regular operations with about 55 people! When our generation has died off  no-one will even be able to imagine, let alone recall what an all-encompassing transportation entity existed up until about 1960 when the last steam locomotive disappeared!
    But I will not leave New Glasgow without a final salute to David Shaw, the Master Mechanic whose name I have already mentioned several times. With his large experience in practical railroading, leavened with a bit of  Scottish wit he took me under his arm and in the two years I was there he taught me a great deal. He had served an apprenticeship as a Marine Engineer but came to the railway first as a fireman, then a locomotive engineer. I think he took up the railway in part, like me because his dad was a dedicated railroader: having worked as Yardmaster in Stellarton.What I learned from Dave was as valuable to me in understanding the operation of the railway as the more technical side of it learned previously. When David retired from the railway he sailed a boat he had built from scratch, going down the Atlantic Caoast of the U.S.. Then he went back to sea as a Marine Engineer on Great Lakes ships and finally as Chief Engineer on a potash ship sailing between Hantsport, N.S. and Baltimore. I kept in touch with him and visited him and his wife, Marion, in their retirement house in Scotsburn until Dave passed away in 1991. He was a great working and travelling companion and the fact that he is dead deprives me of a contact I wish I still had!
 
12.6, INTERESTING WORK IN REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION
     My return to Moncton was partly due to the illness of Ed McInerney who was Supt. of Transportation for the Maritime District. He had come up through train dispatching and was a very intelligent, knowledgable and competent person. I  was appointed Acting Superintendent, serving between April and October 1959 in this position. The next move was triggered by the retirement of Frank Ward, who was General Superintendent of Transportation for the whole Atlantic Region. I would have been happy to continue as Supt. for the Maritime District, so I was greatly surprised when the Asst. Vice-Pres. for the Region came into my office and tapped an envelope indicating it to be a recommendation for me to succeed Frank Ward. While I would like to feel that it was due to my being selected purely on merit, life has taught me that politics plays a part in decisions in any organisation. This part was played here because the regional personnel officer, who had long experience in transportation would have liked  the job. When he found out he would not be considered he recommended me, because for past reasons unknown to me he did not want McInerney (who had returned from his bout of ill health) to get it. So, with some trepidation, at the age of 38, after just 6 years of  active service with the railway, I got the position. Here I was, situated in a large office in the old Intercolonial Railway building, with an immediate staff of 40 and indirect sway over the work of about 3000 transportation employees! Perks included use of the shared Private Business Cars, which I could order out on any train for business travel, an "A" level pass useful on all trains across the country. It  is impossible for me and would be boring for you reading this account to detail all the individual pieces of work for which I was now responsible, reporting to the Regional Vice-President. Some of the more important ones were sizing and assigning the regional  locomotive fleet (which comprised about 250 engines, mainly steam) overseeing the work of  freight car distribution, seeing that we had proper instruction in operating rules for train and yard service employees, chairing the semi-annual meetings with Divisional Superintendents and others (including post office and express representatives) for the setting of passenger and time freight schedules, responding to the seasonal changes in traffic and many more. The latter item required going to the annual ports day meetings, going to Sydney to sit with the Dosco traffic managers to set car and other targets for steel and coal movement, dealing with the provincial potato traffic man in P.E.I. on cars and service for the annual potato crop (about 12000 carloads in a season), dealing by phone or telex with the perishable receivers in Newfoundland, dealing with the marine Supt. in Newfoundland re having enough ships to move the traffic, taking responsibility for preparation of the annual transportation budget fot the region, keeping daily liason with my peers such as the General Supt. of  Motive Power and Cars, the Regional Chief  Engineer re track and structures, the the Regional Freight and Passenger and Sales Managers and of course my boss in Montreal Headquarters heaven,  the System Chief of  Transportation. The incumbent was Jack Stevenson and he did not need to bother me very much as the Atlantic Region was really a separate kingdom east of Montreal so we did not need too much co-ordination with other regions except for passenger train schedules and equipment. Anyway, all of this created great amounts of interesting work and I entered into it with a will and did a great deal to try to accomodate change without unnecessarily upsetting the on-going  tasks which could be very well handled by the experienced supervisors who reported to me and knew far more about the details of what they had to do than I did.

12.7, NEW  HOUSING  AND APARTMENT PROBLEMS BACK IN MONCTON
     In moving this time I was able to bring the family with me. We stayed in the Boreview Inn motel, so named because of its location on the bank of the Peticodiac River and its famed tidal bore. We stayed there for about a week before moving into the ground floor of a newly built duplex. This proved to be a bit of a disaster as the young man occupying the upper floor stayed out late and got up late. He wanted to sleep 'till 10 a.m. and complained in writing to the landlord about the children's noise when we all got up before 8. The landlord, without checking, sent us an eviction notice and that was that. The real problem was that the building was very flimsily built  with no sound insulation between walls or floors; if you turned off a light switch in one apartment you could hear it in the next. About a month after we left the upstairs tenant gave his notice to the landlord so he ended up losing both tenants. I think he must have felt badly about us because he paid for our cost of moving to a basement suite across the river in a suburb called Gunningsville.
     With our growing family of  three we really needed a real house and we had sold our original one on West Lane to the tenant. We were unable to find what we wanted as housing was a bit tight so we decided to bite the bullet and build. We bought a lot in Gunningsville near where we were renting and engaged a couple of local contractors (one for the main structure and one for the inside finish) to do the job. Anne had been studying plans in the newspaper and after we had selected the design we liked we sent away for the detailed plans and specifications which proved to be quite good. The main contractor got his part done before winter came and the two interior workmen spent most of the winter finishing indoors. The kids got lots of odds and ends of construction blocks which they played with for years afterwards! We got a splendid house at 111 Ranch Road, overlooking the city and the river from the top of the hill. (see photo). Unfortunately, it snowed heavily the day before we moved, but with help from our CN friend, Owen Lockhart, who owned a half- ton truck, we managed. The house served us very well for the balance of the 5 years we were to live in Moncton. The only complaint was that we were not able to sit on the sweet little upstairs verandah to have our coffee because the two varieties of Moncton  mosquitoes, i.e. freshwater and saltwater were really fierce!

12.8, FAMILY FUN AND VACATIONS
     We enjoyed our time in Moncton, a great city for raising a family and generally friendly people both at work and at play. Anne was able to join the local arts club and made many friends there. She eventually became the club's president. During fine weather the group would go out Wednesday afternoons to do sketching and then during the winter did paintings from their sketches. The club had a very nice exhibition of their work each summer and Anne could be proud of the results.
     When we socialized we tended to do it at home or visiting friends such as the Coulters, the LeBlancs and the Lockharts. Our favorite eating spot was Cy's restaurant where you could get lovely lobster rolls and other seafood. Holding of a progressive dinner New Year's eve with our group of  friends also proved to be great fun!
     On holidays we could easily drive to Cavendish beach in P.E.I. or Ingonish (Black Brook) in Cape Breton. We had a trailer to carry our tent and other camping gear, (see photo), and managed very well wherever we went. The kids enjoyed it thoroughly and became quite good swimmers and body surfers. When it rained at Cavendish there was indoor entertainment at the clubhouse. On summer weekends we could also take the family to Parlee Beach which had great sand and warm waters and was only about half an hour's drive away. Conversely, in winter we could go tobogganing on Lutz' Mountain or even on the golf course close to home.
     Robin was growing fast and had a circle of friends who were most active and ingenious in exploring all the interesting things of classical boyhood. This included treks to Mill Creek to fish or find frogs (see photo). Maria and Jim also joined in on the creek trips. Robin was at this time always repairing his bike, making go-carts out of apple boxes, making kites and having trash fires in the incinerator barrel. It was a pleasure to Anne and I to see the children pursuing all these activities along with their neighborhood pals!
     It was during this stay in Moncton that another member joined our family, in the persona of  "Randy", a small Boston Bulldog or "boxer"  pup, (see photo). The way it happened was that Maria wanted us to get a dog and one of her friends told her there was a dog kennel on the way to Fundy Park, so nothing would have it but we would look for this place on our next trip. Sure enough on our way to the park for a picnic we saw the sign by the road, but Anne and I  weren't too sure we wanted a dog, so we passed by, hoping Maria would forget. No way! On our return journey she insisted we go in to see what they had. She especially liked the Boston Bulls and one little fellow who was the runt of the litter really took a shine to her. There must be something special in the mysteries of dogdom that tells a pup when he's found his master or mistress. The other two children did not take long to add their clamor to the cry for us to buy the dog; Anne and I also thought he was cute, so after the usual strictures about who was to feed and look after the pup, we gave in. He proved to be a wonderful pup and loved to run and jump and catch balls and retrieve and swim.  He made a special contribution to our lives for the next 15 years, including finding all kinds of  golf balls in Gunningsville and all kinds of tennis balls in Toronto. I'll swear he could smell a lost ball from at least 10 feet away!
     During this period of stay in Moncton we had summer visits  from my parents and from Anne's dad. We took my parents to Peggy's Cove and Cape George in Nova Scotia as well as to Parlee Beach and Fundy Park. I took a week off when George visited and we drove all the way around south-western Nova Scotia. It is one of the most interesting and beautiful of all our Canadian provinces and has a character of its own in its music and its people! We will have much more to say about it in further chapters of this chronicle.
     One thing I was able to take up again more steadily than since we lived in Winnipeg was the great Canadian game of curling. I joined the Moncton Curlers' Association and participated in regular league games. That this was to become an enduring sport for me will become apparent through subsequent chapters in this chronicle.

12.9,  DEATH OF ANNE'S MOTHER, ELLA (AITKEN) WALKER
     Not long after we had moved into our new house in 1960, we received sad news in the notice of the death of Anne's mother. She had not been well for some time and since we had left Winnipeg had even, sad to say had to spend a session in mental hospital from which she had returned home somewhat improved. Her death was therefore a shock as she was only only in her 60's! Anne left for home by air as soon as we had received the notice and was able to be of much help to her dad in dealing with the arrangements for the funeral as well as doing a thorough general cleanup of the family home. She brought back some of her mother's paintings, a tribute to their shared talent. We have kept some of them ever since and given others to our children. Anne cried a bit at the loss of someone dear and murmered the tribute, before leaving for Winnipeg, "she was a good mother"! She is buried in Greenwood Cemetery just off  Portage Avenue in Winnipeg.

12.10,  STAFF COLLEGE
     The railway at this time was improving on many fronts, and several of these were personnel related. As part of the process to improve management training they initiated the practice of  running a staff college every year which was attended by selected junior or middle management people who might be material for future promotion. In June 1958 it was held at Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec and I was selected to attend. For 8 weeks we were subjected to various subjects under the direction of staff from the Western Ontario business school of London, Ont. and  others from Harvard business school in the U.S.. By use of texts and case studies we were given broad exposure to such things as Business Administration, Labor Relations, Cost studies and the like. Subjects were not specifically related to the railway, but were applicable in principle to any business. Some cases were even taken from literature, such as "the Caine Mutiny" or popular movies such  as "Tunes of Glory" and "12 Angry Men". I found it fascinating to learn what lessons we could about the art of management through studying characters and events from these sources! We generally worked in groups of four and vetted the conclusions of our homework against other groups in the general sessions.
     We had a great deal of reading and studying to do but they recognized our need for recreation by giving us time off  each afternoon for golf, tennis or horseshoes. I played a few games of the latter, but generally took up tennis for the first time in many years. I bought new shoes and a new racket  and enjoyed it thoroughly as I have done ever since. During the odd evening we escaped to a night club caled the Flamingo in nearby Sherbrooke and enjoyed a few drinks and the popular "torch song" singers usually found in such establishments. There was sometimes a certain amount of  rowdy barrack room type of singing as we made our way back to campus and to bed.
     On the final day we had an outdoor celebration and a formal dinner including  the President, Donald Gordon and other senior officers. We all got a chance to gather around the great man and exchange quips with him about various things, our courage supported by havnig had a few drinks. As he liked  his own tipple of Bell's Scotch whiskey he was able to get into the informal mood and give back as good repartee as he got!  All in all, I though the straff college was a great idea and I  looked on it as an extension of  both my university training and my learning experiences under Fairweather.

12.11, OF PIGGY-BACKS AND PASSENGERS
     In the 1960's the railway was progressing on various fronts. With the final substitution of diesel-electric for steam motive power it was possible to effect changes in various other areas in order to keep up with the times and utilize other new tools. Every year there would be emphasis on at least one major area and programs would be set up across the system to implement it. The railway may have been considered an industry that was behind the times, but during my own career it was full of changes, many of which I participated in and which will appear at various times and at various places as these memoirs of the working part of my life will show!
     On the freight side of the business one of the main changes was the shift of some of the higher rated freight from boxcars to "piggy-back". This was our response to fight off highway trucking which was eating us alive; with it we hoped to combine the service and other advantages of both the highway and the railway modes by having freight collected by truck trailer loaded onto railway flat cars for the longer part of the journey. For this purpose we built loading ramps at most key places on the Region. Thus our trains gradually took on trailers and containers as well as more traditional types of cars until to-day we even have solid trains of  intermodal types of equipment. We also established  trackage at the wharves in Halifax so that containers to and from overseas could be transferred directly from rail to ship and vice-versa.
     Passenger service was suffering too from the twin onslaught of air for long distance and private automobile for short, but in the 1960's we still continued to fight for market share. We had purchased over 300 new passenger cars in the 1950's (as mentioned earlier) and with diesel power we could offer faster schedules and a smoother, cleaner ride. To effectively utilize what we had there came a charismatic new man as system Vice-President of passenger services; his name was Pierre Delegrave. He introduced many changes and improvements which will show up at various periods in our story. The one which most affected me at this point was the introduction of demand pricing which was designed to charge what the traffic would bear on normally busy days and fill empty seats and berths on normally slow days. It was called the "Red, White and Blue" system of fares with the whole year's calendar laid out to show by the color the level of demand and tie in with the fare that suited demand on those particular days. The Atlantic Region was selected to try this out, (partly I suspect because none of the other regions were prepared to take it on) and so I enjoyed a great deal of contact with Delegrave and other passenger officers to respond to the transportation changes which this new set of  ideas called for. Needless to say it was very successful and we did increase passenger loadings and revenues quite a bit so it was soon implemented across the system. We had to operate trains of up to 24 cars to handle all the traffic! It was a tribute to Delegrave and to our own Vice-President, D.V. Gonder who was always gung-ho for something which represented progress!

12.12,  SHIPS TO NEWFOUNDLAND
     Part of my Atlantic Region territory was the District of Newfoundland which comprised the 700 odd miles of  narrow gauge (42") railway plus a fleet of coastal vessels and larger ships connecting the island to the mainland. At this point in history this system was vital to the eastern end of our country as there were very few roads and the railway and its ships were necessary for both passenger and freight transportation. In addition to trips made there during the completion of dieselization I made several interesting visits during my time as General Superintendent of Transportation for the region. Cyril Merner was the "Superintendent of the Line" and I enjoyed my time spent with him and others of the railway staff on this more or less self-contained operation. This also applied to visits with Ned Healy who was in charge of the marine operations. I made more than one trip across the island by rail from St. John's to Port aux Basques and once by ship, the M.V. Bar Haven from Argentia to Port aux Basques.
     This latter was a very rough trip made in February with Howard Easton and I sharing a cabin. (Howard was the Transportation Economist for the Region and I still [1999] keep in touch with him.)  The first highlight was that we had managed to dine on moose meat on the business car "Avalon" on the train from St. John's to Argentia. This meat was plentiful in Newfoundland and though a bit stringier in texture, tasted very much like beef.
     The real highlight of the trip however was the stormy weather we faced as soon as the ship left Argentia. The Bar Haven was smaller than the Navy corvettes with which I had been familiar during the war and if it hadn't been for my navy experience I would have been alarmed at the towering size of the waves we were facing. In summary the trip to Port aux Basques took nearly a week whereas it was normally two days. It was so bad that we took more time in each coastal port including a day and a half  hiding out from the worst of it in St. Henry? I had been sea-sick prone in the Navy before motion sickness pills became available, but on this trip I made sure I took Gravol. Each day the crew were surprised to see me reappear on the bridge, but Howard did not take Gravol so was badly stricken by the "mal de mer".
     The trip along the coast was most enlighening concerning outport life, mainly small fishing villages scattered in the rocky bays. They were perched on the rocks in the typical square 2-storey houses and went out to fish for cod in very small boats. Every port was glad to sea the Bar Haven arrive with mail and passengers and supplies. Sometimes, where there was no jetty small boats came out to meet us; in those cases where there was a suitable dock the children came down to run through and explore the ship while we were unloading. On Ramea Island, we found there was a fish plant and one automobile belonging to the fish plant owner! At Grand Bank we met the owner of the hardware store in an office over the store. We noted pictures on the walls of  larger sailing ships which he told us were operated by his family when Grand Banks had trade with various places other than Canada. The sad part of this story is that as you will know the small fishing villages have been closed and amalgamated with larger centres into which highways have been built. This includes the construction of  a Trans-Canada portion across the Island with the resultant demise of the whole of the railway and most of its steamships. Howard Easton lived to become Manager of the Newfoundland operations with the job of presiding over their demise so that to-day (1999)  nothing remains except for containers moving by truck and a daily trans-island bus service. Traffic still moves from the mainland to Port-aux-Basques and Argentia and to Labrador by ship, but the huge freight transhipment operations at North Sydney and Port-aux-Basques under the genial supervision of Carl Connors have long disappeared! One final footnote which is interesting because of its relation to to-day's burgeoning growth of electronic mail: as telephone capacity was limited  between Moncton and Newfoundland we used the teletype every day to exchange messages with Cyril Merner, Ned Healy and Carl Connors in order to co-ordinate various facets of the mainland and Island operations! Yes, the Island was a most interesting place, populated by interesting people, and if I had the time and you, dear reader had the patience, I could write a small book about the place and the interesting things that happened there in those dear days, getting almost beyond recall! One more gem from memory; I still fondly recall the down to earth sing-songs we enjoyed in the saloon of the Bar Haven led by a lady passenger on the piano and the First Mate singing with support from a couple of other passengers. That all made the storm delay worthwhile!.

12.13, C.N.'S FIRST HUMP YARD AND A NEW ATLANTIC HEAD OFFICE BUILDING
     In 1960, the railway, in keeping with its continuing efforts to take advantage of modern technology to give better service and reduce costs, built a new hump classification yard just west of  Moncton where the line to Saint John, N.B. branched off. This type of yard had been built in the U.S. and although early humps such as C.P in Winnipeg had existed they depended on riders to brake the cars manually as they entered the classification tracks through swithces which were also manually operated. This new hump enabled the car speed in descending the hump to be controlled by automatic retarders which braked the cars by squeezing the wheels; moreover the switches directing the cars to their proper classification tracks were also motorised so that a computer reading the car destinations from the inbound list of the train could actuate them. The only manual operations left were the yard engine crew pushing the cut of  cars up the hump and the pin-puller who uncoupled the cars at the top of the hump so that each one would roll free to enter its correct destination track.
     The main organiser of this yard project was Eddie Ryerson from Headquarters Transportation Planning who toured existing facilities in the U.S. and studied our traffic origins, destinations and volumes so so as to design the number and lengths of  tracks required. A training model was set up in the yard office so as to instruct the staff in the new methods. A decision was made (without sufficient experience) to close the three existing flat yards and direct all traffic to the new one on the same day. This proved to be more than the learning curves of all concerned could accomodate and this quickly resulted in Moncton not being able to handle trains coming toward it so some had to be set out at remote crew points such as Napadogan. When this traffic began to include perishable freight I said "enough" and went to our Vice-Prsident, D.V. Gonder with the request that the flat yards be re-opened and traffic only routed to the hump yard as it developed the people knowledge and capacity to handle it. This was done, and after the herculean  efforts of Yard Superintendent Stewart Spencer and Earl Warman, the General Yardmaster (who knew in his head where most of the traffic was destined), over the next two weeks the hump was able to process all the cars. At the peak of its subsequent operations it was able to classify over 2000 cars per day  involving about 30 trains.
     The other key event which occurred a little later was the construction of a new modern 7-storey office building to house all of us who had up till then been housed in the old headquarters built in the 1880's for the Intercolonial Railway. It also enabled some departments (such as mechanical and accounting)  to be housed under the same roof. In Transportation we seized upon the opportunity to set up an improved computer based car tracing service with printouts of car movements every four hours being bound into books filed in a round turntable so the car tracers could supply up-to-date information on the phone with the customer without even having to call back. It is of interest to note that the system was designed under the tutelage of  Bill Corner who had done computer work on payrolls, etc. as Comptroller of Manitoba Power Commission while I worked there. We opened this new facility in the presence of  Donald Gordon and our new regional Vice-President, Howard Grayston. (see photo). Our staff mastered it well and we really had no glitches of any account in implementing it. This was my first experience with computerized traffic handling systems and as we shall see later it eventually led (along with other things) to my being in charge of computer systems for the whole of C.N. in what was probably the most significant contribution of  my career.

12.14, CENTRALIZED TRAFFIC CONTROL AND EDMUNSTON EXTENDED RUNS
     While I was Regional Transportation Engineer I mentioned a bit about re-designing subdivisions to reflect dieselization, faster running and longer trains with multiple units meaning longer sidings spaced further apart. The final piece to complete the picture was the implementation of  Centralized Traffic Control which meant the train despatcher could control the signals and power switches at each siding without issuing written train orders to the train crews through local telegraph operators.
This saved time in setting up meets and made it possible to change them quickly if one of the trains concerned happened to be delayed. Economic studies which I had done for the Edmunston Division showed that it was profitable to install CTC there so our signals and engineering people went ahead with it, thus making it possible to avoid heavy traffic congestion during winter operations when the St. Laurence River was frozen. On the day of the final cutover my old Rules Supervisor, Harvey Smith and I were in the field and Harvey was able to get on the phone to get some trains to move from a train order section to signal operation in the next section! Harvey loved that CTC, he had been enthusiastic about it ever since he played a part in the wartime installation between Monton and Halifax !
   These changes added up to our being able to consider extended crew runs between Moncton and Edmunston and between Edmunston and Joffre (opposite Quebec City). This would eliminate the need for crew changes and resulting terminal delay being paid at the intermediate terminals of  Napadogan and Monk. It was necessary to gain the approval of the crews as the runs were longer than those we had set up from New Glasgow, as we needed to be able to cover the 215 miles per run,  normally in 9 hours and never more than 12 hours at which time the crews were legally entitled to book rest and be relieved wherever they tied up. I personally made some test runs with the local chairmen of the enginemen and trainmen and found that it was quite feasible. In addition to this the fact that none of the men lived in Napadogan or Monk so they could have more time in their home terminals of Moncton, Edmunston and Joffre made it very attractive to them so the runs went ahead. We were successsful whereas the runs set up for Northern Ontario were not, because of crew opposition expressed through a wildcat strike. 

12.15, ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE AND A SHIFT FOR ME TO TORONTO
     As mentioned earlier, C.N. was involved in many changes during these years in the name of progress and you have now had many of them mentioned as they were implemented. A further one which came about around 1963 was a dramatic change in our traditional railway organization. Instead of 39 divisions, 12 Districts and 3 Regions the system was divided into 18 areas and 5 Regions. The areas were headed up by an Area Manager who was given strong co-ordinating power on his territory for both operations and marketing. This reduced the line authority some of us at Regional level had possessed, but in my case that was not too serious and the system was designed to get more decision making power closer to the customer. Area Manager was the new thing to be and I was in the running to be Area Manager for the new Moncton Area. However, the job went to Jack Davis who was an officer junior to me in rank but whose service had all been in the Maritimes. I felt a bit miffed as it would have been considered a further step in getting more line experience as compared with my GST position which was now considered to be a staff job. I sort of felt that my opportunity for further promotion on the Atlantic Region might be limited.
     However, I always felt that C.N. was a big enough organisation with more than one career path. Sure enough,  not long afterward,  Howard Grayston, our Vice-President received a request from Doug Gonder who was now Vice-President of the Great Lakes Region based in Toronto for me to succeed the retiring G.S.T. there. Grayston said I did not have to accept the move, but I felt from a purely experience point of view such as heavy industrial traffic, double track and heavy passenger operations that I would like to go. I talked it over with Anne who said she thought it would be o.k. so I accepted. I was further satisfied some time later when Grayston bid me farewell he gave me a good recommendation and said he thought I had done the right thing!
     So here we were going again as I will tell you in the next chapter. It was with a great deal of regret on many grounds that I left the Atlantic Region which had been very good to me in the nine years I had spent there. Looking back as I write to-day some 35  years later I still feel my time there was the best of all my life and from where I now live in B.C. I do not know whether most of my old associates are even alive or dead!