Prince Rupert Engine Service Facility

Prince Rupert. April 4, 1958. Three new massive diesel oil tanks dominate the Prince Rupert Engine Facility. Ball on the old wood stave octagon water tower shows almost full! Fuel, sand, water, and a stand-by steam generator car for the passenger trains. This is Canada’s “wild west.” The next major facility is hundreds of miles to the east.

Two Geeps are power for tonight’s time freight, which lifts off just after the passenger train 196. Prince Rupert was designated, with Canada’s consent, a Seattle Sub-Port of Embarkation in March of 1942. Thousands of US Army support personnel swelled the town, and the massive transit pier in background, was built, which we called the Ocean Dock, along with large freight and storage facilities. It burned down years ago. And there was a "disappearing" gun emplacement and a submarine net to guard the entrance to the third best deep-water port in Canada.

This photo was taken from about the same spot months earlier, in Onctober of 1957. Change is obviously in the air. We see CNR 5152, a 4-6-0, having just been watered. She'll be taking the passenger train up the Skeena River on the evening run eastward toward Jasper. Her days on this run were numbered.