Dr. W.R. Pellow, former railroader, on 'reverting to yesterday' and bringing back passenger train travel

By Dr. William R. Pellow
Dr. William R. Pellow once CPR employee no 64865 Twenty year veteran of the rails. Dr. Pellow was born and raised in Chapleau, Ontario, a member of one of the community's pioneer families. Dr. Pellow is the editor and publisher of Chapleau Trails.


Once not so long ago there were fifteen to twenty trains using the CPR transcontinental route from Montreal and Toronto to Vancouver. Many competitive travel modes were introduced to pick away at the border line profit margins of train travel and the airlines won the battle for passenger busines and supremacy.

However there is something that the airlines can not produce for the traveller. Flying five miles in the air the traveller misses the beauty of the most beautiful landscapes in creation, the wonderful detail of nature and its inhabitants is lost to the viewer. The flights bring you from one urban centre to the next in a fraction of the time and the costs are several times those once afforded for train tickets. Travellers are missing Canada and all its beauty lying far below, unseen, unappreciated and unfortunate.

Trains must generate a profit to sustain. Passenger travel could not and did not provide a pleasant bottom line in the annual financial statements for the Canadian Pacific Railroad. The major profit margins were found in piggy back full carloads in freight service. When the government permitted, the administration withdrew the non profit lines as quickly as possible. Left in the aftermath of restructuring were the several small towns and villages again isolated from the outside world and deprived of convenience and their respective economies suffered.. The convenience of stepping on a train and arriving at your destination fresh and ready for a full day of productivity vanished.

Roads were pushed through to prevent total isolationism but something still is missing. The choices for travel have dwindled appreciatively. Canada will remain a large country with only a 100 miles of population density adjacent to the US border. The rest of Canada will remain under developed and unsettled. Some of our remaining thirty million population will find homes in the sparse far north but expansion will not be realized in the future. It's a catch 22. Ninety percent of our country will never see development without interconnection that could be assisted in the development of excellent passenger and freight train service. We have forgotten how vital train travel was to our economic growth.

Is there a solution? The alternative is to fly high arrive in a flash and miss it all, or drive on the dirt roads and lose a large portion of your life under stress and tension. Not great choices. So let's revert to yesterday and train travel before all the RR coaches have been torched and cut up for scrap metal. Maybe it is too late. No longer can we live in a dream world, although many of us over 60 can still foster dreams and we can still wish!

Rail executives should be tasked to reinvent passenger travel. Tax their minds with improving safety, speed on the rails and efficiency for improved profit margins. Anything is possible with thought and planning. Bombardier can build faster trains and all we have to do is improve our track bed to accommodate. There is still a place for trains to tie in both loose ends of our country and unite our Canada..