Shot by Fred McLeod between Montreal and Toronto, this film of the Canadian National Railroad in action dates to 1958. McLeod was something of a visionary, who recognized that the arrival of diesel locomotives meant that the days of steam were doomed. This film shows steam locomotives in operation pulling both freight and passenger trains in a variety of settings, and all in full color. Some of this material was later released by Blackhawk Films in b&w.
Mcleod was dogged in his pursuit, and was so obsessed with the feature known as Horseshoe Curve in Altoona that he filmed there on and off for three full years — until the last of the steam engines retired.
Although its difficult to see any of the numbers of the locomotives in the film, the one shown at 6:27 appears to be 6323, which is likely the Grand Trunk and Western Railroad’s 4-8-4 (Northern) type steam locomotive built in the 1940s by the American Locomotive Company, and sister to 6325. The locomotive handled heavy passenger and freight work for the Grand Trunk Western. Engine 5253 is shown at 7:16.
The Grand Trunk Railway (reporting mark GT) was a railway system that operated in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario and in the American states of Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The railway was operated from headquarters in Montreal, Quebec, with corporate headquarters in London, England (4 Warwick House Street). It cost an estimated $160 million to build. The Grand Trunk, its subsidiaries, and the Canadian Government Railways were precursors of today’s Canadian National Railways. Nearing bankruptcy in 1919, the entire system was nationalized: the government merged the Grand Trunk, the Grand Trunk Pacific, and the National Transcontinental lines into the new Canadian National Railways. The process was completed in 1923. The Grand Trunk lines in the United States, however, kept their distinctive name.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
