Chronicle-Herald 1989-03-03 - DAR Steam Engineers

Chronicle-Herald 1989-03-03 - DAR Steam Engineers

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DAR steam engineers called everything from hoggers to ‘darned fools’

Halifax Chronicle Herald newspaper article from March 3, 1989.

Photo caption: Seventy-eight-year-old Cyril White Sr. displays the original Dominion Atlantic Railway crest that was emblazoned on steam locomotives before the railway was taken over by Canadian Pacific in 1911. Mr. White is one of only a handfull of one-time DAR steam engineers.

By GORDON DELANEY
Valley Bureau
KENTVILLE — They were called hoggers, hog-heads, engineers, conductors and “sometimes just darned fools.”

He laughs when he says it, because he's had a love for the railway all his life, but Cyril White Sr. acknowledges that running trains on the once-busy Dominion Atlantic Railway (DAR) was sometimes a rough way to make a living.

Mr. White is one of a handful of DAR steam engineers still around. As president for the past 17 years of the Humphrey Club, an old railroader's club based in Kentville, he says “there are very few of us left, you know.” The club is named after the late president of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Mr. White, born at Young's Cove, Annapolis County, joined the railway as a locomotive fireman in 1944 when railway activity in the province was picking up after a brief slump.

“In those days every fella wanted to work on the railway,” he says, adding the main attraction for him was the sleek but ponderous steam engines.

After serving as a locomotive fireman and having become familiar, inside and out, with the large steam engines, Mr. White was promoted to locomotive engineer.

He remembers the first day he fired up and ran a steam locomotive. “It was quite a thrill, you know, because they really are something to handle.”

After his promotion to engineer, he began a hectic schedule of running mail express and passenger trains from Kentville — the centre of the DAR in the Valley — to Yarmouth, Annapolis, Truro, Halifax, the North Mountain and Kingsport.

The railway in those days was busy, he says, noting often eight or more trains a day would be running on the old Midland railway from Kentville to Truro.

“There was no five-day week and no regular hours. When they called, you went.” Mr. White states.

The trains he ran were often large, with as many as 40 cars. But most often the regular trip included three passenger cars, one mail car, two baggage cars, one diner, a van for the crew to live in and pulled by the huge, sleek, black locomotives.

Some of his most memorable experiences on the railway, he says, included firing up the old and well-known No. 999 steam engine, engineering the first CPR dayliner on its trial run in 1958, and being the first to cross the Windsor causeway by rail.

He regrets the day the railway began replacing the steam locomotives with diesel engines. “Going from steam to diesel was like getting off a Cadillac and hopping onto a tractor,” he says.

He is also saddened by the decline of the railway, and says he's been on a train only three times since he retired in 1973.

But he has fond memories and says the best part of an engineer's job was listening to the passengers talk about their ride.

“When people came up to us and said they'd had a lovely ride, well that was just as good to us as having $15 (a large sum in those days) in our pockets.”

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