Port Coquitlam

Editors Note: We've added another high quality associate site in the right hand margin. "The Yard Limit." The author has focused on the ubiquitous yard goat - named for it's habit of butting cars around a yard. I highly recommend this site as an indispensable site for yard switcher locomotive recognition.



And now, for our "Feature Presentation."


Canadian Pacific Railway, Port Coquitlam, BC, July 4, 1961. My buddy El Purington and I have ventured north across the border to do some train chasing. Like Seattle, Vancouver was a cornicopia of diesel delights: Canadian National Railways, Canadian Pacific Railway, Pacific Great Eastern, Great Northern, and Pacific Coast Terminals.

Heading up the Fraser River, our next stop is Port Coquitlam. Port Coquitlam is located on the confluence of the Pitt with the Fraser River. At that time she boasted the largest Canadian Pacific Railway yard in BC.

The Canadian Pacific Railway moved its freight operations from Vancouver to Port Coquitlam in 1911. The city was incorporated in 1913. The name “Coquitlam” comes from the First Nation’s Salish word 'Kwayhquitlum', meaning red fish in the river, referring to the river’s annual salmon spawning run.

It's interesting to note the operational differences between the Canadian National and the Canadian Pacific. While the CNR ran their Geeps long nose forward, rigged up with home-brew ditch lights, the CPR, running in the same dangerous Fraser and Thompson Canyon countries, ran short nose forward without ditch lights.

I don't expect any "study" or "analysis" was undertaken to decern if one operating mode was any safer than the other. Probably more a state of mind ...

Railroad Stuff: CPR 8687, GMD GP-9, built London Ontario, 9/57, sn: A-1143, road class DRS-17d.

Apparently sent to Ogden Shops and rebuilt as a GP-9u, chopped nose and remote equipped in 1984, but I cannot verify. If you have information you care to share, please including that in the comments box below.