The Engine That Nearly Became Scrap
\nEvery locomotive carries a number. This one also carries a shoebox of letters, a photograph of a nine-year-old standing on the footplate, and a fireman who still turns up on Tuesdays to check the water glass. Its history runs along the Gatineau River, and it belongs as much to the people who saved it as to the ones who built it.
\nWorking years
\nThis was a workhorse, never a showpiece. Short hauls, mixed freight, timber cars stacked above the cab roof, a timetable that did not care about weather. It learned the river line the way a farmer learns a field: every grade, every curve, every stretch where the rails went soft in spring.
\nThe long quiet, then the slow return
\nWhen the last scheduled run ended, the engine sat in a siding for years under a tarpaulin that did more harm than good. What brought it back was not money but arithmetic — a handful of volunteers who counted hours instead of dollars. A boiler survey. Fresh lagging. A tender rebuilt from photographs. The first fire in decades took three attempts before it held.
\nThe people under the coal dust
\nAsk anyone involved and they will name someone else first: the machinist who cut a bearing from raw stock, the driver who could hear a loose stay bolt from the platform, the teenager who has been oiling linkages every summer since she was twelve.
\nCome and hear it under steam
\nA family day here is deliberately unhurried — walk the platform, watch the fire being built, follow the river as far as the line allows. Plan your visit whenever suits you, or write to us with whatever you want to know before you come.
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