The Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore. Ron Brown
on the downgrade difficult to stop. Furthermore, steam engines required a grade of a half-mile of level track to every foot of grade to allow for acceleration. A grade steeper than fifteen feet per mile was considered unsafe for an approach to a station. Curves were avoided to give approaching engineers ample opportunity to view any unexpected traffic sitting at a station.
Another basic requirement was water. The quantities of water needed to power the huge black boilers were so enormous that a steam engine could exhaust its reserve of water in just thirty-five kilometres.
But perhaps the most important consideration was the location of present or future paying customers. Railways were in the business of making money. And to make that money, especially when railways began to compete with each other, customers had to be pampered. Proximity was the key.
When railways passed through existing towns and cities, stations were located as close as possible to factories and stores. Passengers didn’t generate as much revenue as freight and were accordingly relegated to secondary status. It was easier and cheaper to make the passengers come to the train than to take the railway to them.
Quebec’s country villages were often close together, located on the many twisting wagon roads that wound across the countryside. To best access these customers, the railways had to locate their stations much closer together than railway operations actually required.
Woodpiles dominate the grounds around Port Perry’s first station. Such piles were an eyesore at stations before coal replaced wood as a fuel. Photo from author’s collection.
On the unpopulated prairies, the stations preceded the towns. Locations there were determined not by the existing clients but by the anticipated ones. Elevators and stations were therefore located at ten to twelve kilometre intervals, the farthest that a farmer could urge his horses over rutted prairie trails in a single day to bring his wheat to a railside grain elevator.
Another player in station location was the Board of Railway Commissioners. Created in 1903 under the new Railway Act, the board could dictate not only a station’s location, but also its design.
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