RAILROADS CONNECT PEOPLE.

A few years ago, Union Pacific sent Big Boy 4014 on a tour of its metals, and ferroequinologist and casual observer alike came to trackside.  To call attention to a unification that no political power could dream of, Canadian Pacific is sending a passenger Hudson, 2816, on what it calls the Final Spike Tour, with the train and assorted exhibits making calls in British, French, and Spanish North America, er, Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

The train called at Davenport, Iowa, Friday last week.

The Final Spike Tour is on its way to Kansas City, where on Friday the combined railroad's new livery will be revealed.  Other calls will be May 28 at Laredo, June 7 at Mexico City, and June 30 at Winnipeg.  No protracted stops have been announced for that June jump back to Winnipeg.

Trains contributor Kevin P. Keefe provides the ferroequinologist perspective.

I was struck again by the enduring appeal of Canadian steam. The locomotives of Canadian Pacific and rival Canadian National weren’t all that different from American engines, and the two major Canadian builders — MLW and Canadian Locomotive — had primary relationships with, in order, U.S. companies Alco and Baldwin. But Canadian steam has distinctive traits, all of them visible on the 2816, from its classic vestibule cab to its tasteful lack of exterior piping to the prominent Elesco feedwater heater forming its brow.

Don’t underestimate the appeal of that Elesco. In fact, none other than David P. Morgan posited it as the essential detail of not only the 2816 but of much Canadian steam in general. “Seemingly, if not quite in fact, every new CN or CP locomotive constructed after 1925 bore an Elesco,” wrote Morgan, “either unashamedly hung out over the headlight for all to see or sunk almost out of sight in the upper front end of the smokebox. … It was this bundle-type auxiliary more than any other external characteristic which lent the Canadian locomotive an air of authority and size quite out of proportion to its statistics.”

Look closely at that feedwater heater.  It's placed with the clearance diagram in mind, as is the bell on the side of the boiler and lower than the cab roof.  The vestibule cab comes in handy when there's forty degrees of frost on the prairies.  The graceful curve ahead of the steps, though?  That's British influence, which you might also see in the safety valve bonnet.  But Canadian Pacific's engineering staff weren't given to flamboyance, thus you won't see a brass bonnet, a copper flange on the smoke stack, or a dart handle on the smoke box.

Such whimsey did appear elsewhere in North America, particularly after Britain's Great Western Railway sent 6000 King George V to the Baltimore and Ohio centennial event in 1927.

These Hudsons, though?  Canadian Pacific Chief of Motive Power H. B. Bowen (it is he for which one of the cars in the train is named), a Briton trained at Manchester, came up with a versatile passenger steamer that for a few years in the 1930s gave Great Western a run for the speed records, with the Royal York's 68.9 mph timing, Smiths Falls to Montreal West, edging out Great Western's 66.3 mph timing on the Cheltenham Flyer, Swindon to London Paddington.  (My source is that August 1969 Trains article Mr Keefe refers to.)  Yes, Great Western subsequently tightened the schedule on the Flyer, and then came the Hiawathas, and yet, a Hudson with 75 inch drivers could roll with the fastest.

From time to time, Canadian transportation types make plans to restore that Canadian Pacific line, which is torn up in places, to provide a faster corridor service between Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto.  Yes, they have all the electrically operated bullet train aspirations, if, perhaps, not the money.  But will they be able to match those Royal York timings of ... nearly a century ago?