It had taken 21-year-old Angus Wolfe half an hour with a 1957 Canadian National Railways time table, and Google Earth, to determine where he’d been standing at Port Credit. But what were the chances Old Eddie’s time-travelling Ford Mainline would grant him another visit?
Pretty good, it now appeared. Angus finds himself standing—according to a sign and the sun—on the west side of Stavebank Road in Port Credit. He’s peering over a fence, the white paint on its boards peeling away. Coming toward him is a grey-and-maroon Canadian Pacific diesel with a five-car passenger train. That’s train 792, slowing for the station. That makes the time around ten minutes to six Daily Savings Time—or an hour earlier by Railway Time.
Okay, this is the same CPR train he’d seen earlier, already stopped at the Port Credit station. Only then, he'd been standing on the other side of the tracks. Bless Eddie and his time-travelling Ford. But that coal smoke in his earlier view had been coming from a steam locomotive. Hopefully, he'll stay around long enough now to find out which one.
There’s a green New York Central baggage car in this train. Neat. Angus will remember that point for when he’s talking to his prototype railway modelling buddies. He won’t tell them how he knows, though.
And speaking of neat—get a load of that groomed embankment. The one upon which telegraph poles hold dipping strands of wire—communication lines that make the railways of 1957 work.
Were Angus standing here in his regular life, in the rapidly-becoming-drab second decade of the 21st century, the scene would be a mixture of nature’s overgrowth and cluttered development. Neither fish nor fowl. He finds the harmony—and the 1957 reds, blues, greens and greys—to be more to his liking.
Travelling back to 1957, visiting familiar locales. Angus is rapidly becoming fond of this.
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These Vignettes are only brief glimpses of the steam era for Angus, Amanda and Old Eddie's time-travelling 1956 Ford Mainline. For the whole story, resplendent in glossy paper for your reading enjoyment, please check out the limited-edition volumes of King's Highways & Steam Trains.
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