Heritage: Personalizing Railroad History

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Today, I participated in what will likely be the last work session of the Toronto Railway Historical Association (TRHA) that I will attend this year. It wasn't much of a session, as a group of eight people moved something approaching ten tons of rail to a more secure location in the John Street Roundhouse, located in Toronto near the CN Tower and Rogers Centre.

Four weeks ago today, a major task of the work session was the painting of a Fairmont speeder that is under restoration at the future museum. The speeder is a model M14 that once belonged to the Canadian Pacific Railway, and it really needed a fresh coat of yellow and black.


The Fairmont speeder as it appeared at Toronto's John Street Roundhouse on 15-November-2008 after painting

Just one week later, after additional work by TRHA members, that same Fairmont speeder was on display at the huge Christmas Train Show in the Malton neighborhood of Mississauga, Ontario. Positioned with the equipment from the Golden Horseshoe Live Steamers, the presence of the speeder gave those of us from the work session a sense of contribution to the show.

Yet another week later, I was showing various pictures, including some shots from the roundhouse, to my grandfather, Floyd Gleich, while visiting him in Kennewick, Washington. A longtime telegrapher and station agent for the Northern Pacific and Burlington Northern railroads, he took a special interest in the speeder. To him, it looked like the speeder that his father had purchased during the Great Depression. His father had been a road foreman for the Northern Pacific on what is today the BNSF Lakeside Subdivision near Connell, Washington. While the track crews had previously used hand-carts to move down the tracks, about this time motorized speeders were being mandated. The foremen had to buy their own, and my great-grandfather bought one second-hand. My grandfather thought it looked like the one the TRHA was restoring.

So could they possibly be the same model? With the caveat that all speeders look relatively similar, especially those made by Fairmont, a little research revealed that it could indeed be possible. The M14 was introduced in 1922, manufacturing continued through about World War II, and while nobody seems to know for certain, there were likely more than five thousand built. So, it is entirely possible that a used M14 was available in the 1930's.


The TRHA's Fairmont M14 speeder on display at the Christmas Train Show in Mississauga, Ontario on 22-November-2008

A piece of somewhat generic railroad history had just become quite personal--the speeder we were working on in Toronto, set for restoration to operating status, might well have been just like the one used by my great-grandfather in eastern Washington state, three-quarters of a century ago.