Friday, January 09, 2009

Big Snow in The Old Days


Hi everyone

This is just a short entry to share a photo that I found of a train stuck in the snow near Murray Harbour, P.E.I.

This is what the website had to say.

"Then as now there were heavy winters with lots of snow. Trains got stuck, especially in “cuttings” where tracks were lower than surrounding land. Train crews were away from home for days or weeks and work trains with 40 or 50 snow shovelers were dispatched to dig them out. The early wooden plows were relative light and had difficult time. These were the days before Employment Insurance and the railway paid well. The years 1905, 1909, and 1923 were particularly bad, predating the use of rotary plows which became available after 1930 when the branch was converted to standard gauge track (56 ½ “ between the rails).
Despite long waits for normally late trains, people in Murray Harbour depended upon the services they delivered. The train was an important daily event that was eagerly anticipated at the end of the line."

Click Here to go to the Murray Harbour website.

So if you are ever feeling down with snow in your driveway think of the train crews of days gone by when they had to shovel (sometimes for days) to get the train unstuck so it could bring needed supplies, mail and passengers to it's destination.

If you have great snow pictures of big snow on P.E.I. during days gone by please let me know. Just leave me a comment or shoot me an email...thanks!

Thanks for reading and till next post.

Smiles :o)

Gary

PS Something new here is my sign up form for my Net Friends List. (on the Right Margin under my profile) Don't be shy I plan to give away free stuff as well as personal updates and tips that work for me.

GG

1 comment:

Laura-Jane said...

Wow, totally humbled! It's so hard to imagine what it must have been like back then. It was a true case of survival. As you said, snow removal was done by hand in order to bring in necessary goods!! Oh lord, people are strong. And Gary you lived through a lot of it! Thank you so much for sharing this post and bringing my attention to it. It was some much needed perspective!