Untitled Document
The Canadian Pacific's Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway
The CPR Steam Years, 1905 - 1949
By Robert D. Turner and Donald F. MacLachlan.
Softcover with flaps, 304 pages, 11x9, 475+ photos incl. 8 pages of color, maps, timetables. 2012.
"The Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway had a special character and charm like few others. Skirting the eastern coastline of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, it was separated from the rest of the national and continental rail network by the Georgia and Juan de Fuca Straits. During the days of steam power on the railway, it was a distant and often rustic outpost of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s vast system, but it was a profitable one. It hauled logs and coal, fish and paper, strawberries and raspberries, beer and wine, automobiles and oil, and tons and tons of wood. The E&N carried soldiers off to two world wars, toured royalty on Vancouver Island and carried hundreds of passengers in stately parlour cars or rickety day coaches. The mail was sorted on the trains and could be delivered “Up Island” in a matter of hours. The E&N's well-maintained steam locomotives were the pride of the railway.
"Engineers, conductors and other crewmen were known up and down Vancouver Island. The railway was like a family to many who worked on it; many stayed with it for their entire careers. It did much to shape the character of Vancouver Island and provided the key links between people, places and the goods and services they needed and produced. It was essential and irreplaceable.
"Carefully researched, sensitively written and beautifully illustrated, this book captures the E&N in its many moods. Hundreds of never-before-published rare photos, including some exceptional colour images from the 1940s, and an extensive and insightful text document the railway, the people who worked on it and all those whose lives it shaped."
