The Dominion Atlantic Railway in 1953 and 1985

Recreating a foray by David P. Morgan and Philip R. Hastings 32 years later

David P. Morgan, Wednesday, November 4, 1953

Saint John? — wasn’t that the jumping off pier for Nova Scotia? We were just a morning’s steamer ride away from the Dominion Atlantic Railway, and at last report the DAR had not a diesel to its name. We could ride across the Bay of Fundy to Digby, travel a few miles out on DAR…

So I found myself at Saint John, New Brunswick on Friday, July 19, 1985

Sure enough, there was a ferryboat to Digby, still. Only now it carried automobiles; all the better. Operated by the Canadian National, and certainly not a steamer.

Nonetheless, I drove my 1984 Mazda GLC aboard the modern ship and parked it in the hold, then climbed to the deck and enjoyed a calm ride across the the Bay of Fundy. All the while, I held the above image in my mind, of the steamer’s wharf at this fabled place called Digby.

Alas, this is what awaited me

The Canadian National car ferry docked somewhere far removed from the old steamer wharf. But I sought out this derelict timber structure, positioned myself about where Philip Hastings had pointed his camera shutter some 32 years previous, and framed the scene.

Back to DPM

A spur from the Dominion Atlantic depot uptown ran right down to—indeed, out on—the pier.

Again, to Hastings, for that image:

And what did I see on Saturday, July 20, 1985, from the same vantage point?

Well, yes, I could envision the pathway for the G2 Pacific and her head-end cars to climb, uptown to the DAR station

And, by golly, there were still tracks up there, as I discerned from Birch Street.

So, I proceeded upgrade, on foot, tracing the old spur. Reaching the mainline, I saw the station was indeed still there, although boarded up. And there was a suggestion of a former yard, enough to keep a Ten Wheeler busy in 1953:

What to do now? Board the train from Yarmouth, when it arrived.

It wouldn’t be a string of Tuscan red cars pulled by a CPR G2-class Pacific as it was in 1953. But it wasn’t even the case by 1961, either, as DPM had pointed out: Dayliner Air-Conditioned Rail Diesel Car; checked baggage not handled; no meals or new service.

Never mind, I was happy there were still tracks there, and I would even settle for an RDC train. Wait a minute, there it came!

I boarded the train, sought out the conductor to buy a ticket to Halifax

And I was on my way to recreating that memorable trip so aptly described by David P. Morgan.

The old Pacific that was leading us along was the 2617, class G2u. The air was crisp, the shoreline view superb, the feel of wheels upon rails splendid—the whole of it enhanced by the sight and sound of the white-tired lady of a 4-6-2 up front as she puffed across the high steel bridges which keep the DAR’s feet out of the fabled Bay of Fundy tides.

I kept an eye out for the bridge and view Hastings had framed, and I saw it coming

Oh yes, I guess I could imagine 1953 from that seat aboard a rattling Dayliner. The conductor appeared to me to be around 60 years of age, and he was a jovial man. I heard him kibitzing with some passengers about Cape Breton Island. When he came along the aisle, I asked him when he’d started on the railway. His answer: 1946.

Ah, here was a genuine connection with the past!

Maybe this trainman was the same guy DPM described thus: We looked up the conductor, purchased a couple of seats in the observation car through to Halifax.

“What locomotives did the Dominion Atlantic use on this run back then?” I asked him in 1985

“Well, we used D6s [Ten Wheelers] at first. Then later we switched to G2s.”

He said this so matter-of-factly that I fairly tingled in my seat. He was speaking to me as a railroad man, knowing instinctively I’d recognize the locomotive class designations. And he was a direct connection to the journey Morgan and Hastings had taken. I was then lost for words.

Steam era or otherwise, I was 24 years old, and travelling alone…

… and when I’d moved across the aisle to take a picture at Annapolis Royal from the same vantage point as Philip Hastings, well… I’d put myself in the proximity of a pretty blonde woman, also travelling alone, who was my age or a little younger. I asked her if she’d like to help me on a crossword puzzle (I’d saved a pile of those from the daily newspaper, and doing them on my boring engineering position with the Department of National Defense had saved my sanity) and she willingly agreed.

As we happily engaged in reading the clues and filling in letters…

… I missed duplicating the scene Hastings framed at Annapolis Royal in 1953! But I made up for that transgression by photographing it the next day, when I retraced the route with my car.

As for that next day, Sunday, July 21, 1985, I was following the right-of-way of a dying Dominion Atlantic Railway

I absorbed historic echoes of what once had been, as DPM had related of his journey with Hastings.

We were lucky in 1953 to find such a locomotive [G2u-class 2617] swinging her Walschaerts through the apple orchards of the Annapolis Valley…

Well, the apple orchards were still there in 1985

As were many abandoned fruit warehouses on weed-grown sidings. But the railway carloadings had long since disappeared, in a decline that had begun immediately after the Second World War. Something in those buildings appealed to the railway modeller in me, for I had a fascination for ice-cooled refrigerator and express cars hustling perishable shipments in the steam era.

The same went for derelict freight sheds on the DAR (as at Palmerston on the CNR) and imagining the role they played in days gone by.

And then to the nerve centre for the Dominion Atlantic

Kentville, DAR’s headquarters, where there was time to unload and stretch our legs while the engines were changed…

On Sunday, July 21, 1985, there was nothing but time on my hands at the station and operating offices of the old Land of Evangeline Route. I poked around the depot and roundhouse and turntable and coaling plant.

Time had indeed stood still, amid all these ghosts left over from the steam era.

Dear reader, I’ve dallied long enough in 1985, at which time I wished it was 1953

In our next post, we’ll pick up the story of the Canadian Pacific’s G2 class 4-6-2 locomotives, which so enchanted DPM. Here’s the teaser, the overview, then Part 01, Part 02 and Part 03.

The DAR’s 2617 would have been worth all the miles we came to see her. A G2 is a tall, high-mounted engine, perfectly balanced by a vestibule cab at one end and, if you’re lucky, an Elesco feedwater heater hung ahead of the stack at the other.

We’ll delve into the 2617’s assignment to the CPR’s Dominion Atlantic, along with of her sisters who also found themselves there over the decade of the 1950s.