Cold Weather Slow Order

February is a cold month on the prairies.  It is a month that tends to drag people down with winter still maintaining a firm grip over the land.  In our family, one event that would help break the monotony of February was my Grandfather’s annual birthday

Edmund Peters and daughter Marion Bailey

party in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.  He loved his birthdays and he had a lot of them, 104 to be exact.  Each year, his offspring and friends would gather to celebrate the occasion and he would relish every moment.

Peter's Farm - Hanley, Saskatchewan

As background, Edmund Peters emigrated from Wisconsin and in 1917 homesteaded near Hanley, Saskatchewan.  Together with his wife, they successfully farmed and raised a family through the ravages of the depression.  He continued to work on the farm well into his 80’s.

Back in February 1989, Grandpa Peters turned 100.  I was living in Montreal at the time, my fiancé in Thunder Bay, and my brother in Denver, but we all made plans to attend his birthday party in Saskatoon as this was an event not to be missed.  We decided we would all fly to Winnipeg and from there take the Super Continental to Saskatoon, just as we had done so many times before while growing up in Winnipeg.  This turned out to be my last trip on the “Super”, and unfortunately it wasn’t the train’s finest hour.

After meeting at the Station in Winnipeg, we boarded the train late in the evening of February 16th for what was to be an on time departure.  If I recall correctly, the Super Continental originated

Gary Morris Photo (Railpixs.com)

in Winnipeg at the time, so it no longer truly lived up to its "Continental" name.  It was a bitterly cold night and a huge arctic air mass had settled over the prairies.  Despite the cold, the steam heat had the sleeping cars comfortably warm and we settled into our berths shortly after entraining.  I remember having trouble getting to sleep that night and several hours passed before we departed Winnipeg.  While trying to get to sleep, I could hear the activity of carman working on the train in the bitter cold.  Then came a late night power change.  These were all ominous signs of a bad trip to come.  Once en route, I woke up at several points through the night and lifted the blind to check our progress.  It was slow going and you could just tell it was one of those nights when the railway wasn’t running well.  We had a long delay in Rivers, Manitoba, and then again in St. Lazare.  When we got up in the morning we hadn’t even arrived in Melville yet.  Saskatoon is 191 miles from Melville, and with the 40 mph blanket cold weather slow order that was in place across the entire prairies, a quick calculation indicated that we weren’t going to make Saskatoon in time for the afternoon party.  We mulled over our options, but there was really little we could do.

I had spent a good deal of time working on CN’s Prairie Region and still knew many of the Track Supervisors across the Prairies.  When we finally arrived in Melville, I headed straight to the Track Supervisor’s office.  Fortunately my old friend Tony Chartier was there.  He was surprised to see me and wondered what I was doing in town.  I explained that I was heading to my Grandfather’s 100th birthday party in Saskatoon, and that we were worried we weren’t going to make the party.  I said “Tony, you’ve got to do something about that cold weather slow.  We’ll never make Saskatoon at this pace.”  He looked at me and said, “It’s policy, I can’t lift that slow order, it’s 38 below”.  I couldn’t argue much, being CN’s Planning Engineer at the time, but I could tell by the look in Tony’s eyes that he was thinking about it.

When we got back on the train, the “Super” pulled out of Melville and was travelling at a snail’s pace on this former Grand Trunk Pacific mainline that was designed for speed.  After about 10 minutes, we settled back into our seats relegated to the fact that we weren’t going to make my Grandfather’s 100th birthday party when all of a sudden we heard the sound of the F-40PH’s notching up.  With a puff of black exhaust we were at 80 mph in no time.  Just afterwards we overheard the conductor talking on the radio expressing his surprise that the cold weather slow had been lifted.  It seems to me there was a cynical comment, something to the effect of “CN management finally waking up”.  Little did he know!!

Anyway, thanks to the removal of the slow order, we ended up making the final hour of my grandfather’s party.  As it turns out it wasn’t his last birthday, but it was my last trip on the Super Continental.  When it came time to take the train home, VIA had to put us all on a bus to Winnipeg because the “Super” was trapped behind a derailment in the Rockies!  The following winter, on January 14th, 1990, the Super Continental left in each direction from Winnipeg and Vancouver for the last time.