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Home
 
1977-1981
  
Public Relations and Advertising Department
Windsor Station Montreal Que. H3C 3E4
 

Volume 7   Number 13

Oct. 12, 1977


Veteran Machine Still Good as Ever

By Beth Raugust

CTC control console
CP Rail's Centralized Traffic Control console at Medicine Hat has chalked up as many years service as the age difference between two of its many dispatchers over the past half century. Twenty-one-year old Lynne Smith gets ready to flip a switch while Desmond J. O'Coffey, retired CTC operator, watches.
 
 
 Medicine Hat - Almost 50 years old and still operating as smoothly as it did in its heyday... that describes CP Rail's Centralized Traffic Control console in Medicine Hat which went into operation in 1928.
 
The machine controls three switches and associated signals on 7.1 miles of track on the Maple Creek Subdivision from Medicine Hat eastward where 12 scheduled freight and passenger trains pass through each day.
 
Until the inception of CTC, all train traffic had to be directed by train order authority and timetable. CTC resolved the complications of arranging train "meets" in high density areas and movements could be drastically increased.
 
Major Repair
 
According to Signal Maintainer Jim Hausauer, the console has had only one major repair in the past 10 years.
 
"This machine wasn't built for obsolescence", says Des O'Coffey, now retired dispatch operator. "I've known this machine since 1939. Dispatchers were always amazed at the capacity it could handle. It appeared to be a wonderfully designed, stable, and reliable machine... and it ramains the same today".
 
Until the advent of diesel locomotives, the console dealt with a far greater number of trains per day. The tonnage volume per train was less with steam power so more frequent, shorter trains were utilized. Before and during the war years, there were considerably more passenger trains as well as the freight movements. O'Coffey recalls as many as two dozen trains converging in the Medicine Hat CTC area within a three-hour time span.
 
Those days are long over. The CTC console at Medicine Hat is small and unassuming compared to the larger, computer-like models in other dispatch centres.
 
But CP Rail's signals people on the Alberta South Division are proud of their functional antique and its performance record.
 
"It's a most dignified machine", O'Coffey said.

This CP Rail News article is copyright 1977 by Canadian Pacific Railway and is reprinted here with their permission. All photographs, logos, and trademarks are the property of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company.

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