"Railroading gets in your blood."  Boy, isn't that the truth!  I never thought that I would be viewing old videos on YouTube about railroading, now that I am no longer able to work.

I rode on my dad's train in the caboose back in the late 40s and early 50s. He was a Soo Line freight brakeman, and I can remember him telling me that you could smell a hot box sometimes before you would see it smoking. A lot of memories come up watching something like this.

My grandfather retired from the CNR . As did a few of my uncles. They had some great stories. In the 20's, 30's, and 40's you packed a hell of a lunchbox. You never knew how long you could be gone. Especially in winter.
Thanks for posting this gem of a video.

Now there’s no romance in those big box diesels

6,000 tons? Aw, how quaint ... a LITTLE train!

Whoa, Fairbanks-Morse C-Liners at 23:25! Now THAT is rare footage!

It's fascinating to see how railroads, like airlines, have evolved over half a century. It takes a crew of 5 to cover Train 406 like an old DC8 required a crew of 4 (sometimes 5). Now the biggest jumbo jets are run by 2 people - and I think that's all we'll find on the trains now too: The Engineer and the Conductor. Even the caboose is gone Great old film. Thanks for posting this, NFB.

Fascinating view of the era during transition from steam to diesel electric.

Thank you NFB for capturing this piece of history,.

Then there’s atomic power that will almost be certain to figure one day, ahh the optimism about new fuels back then. I wonder what they would think if the knew those old Smokey diesels would be virtually unchanged in the 21st century? One of my favourite things of my time living in BC was the sonorous sound of the horns sounding in the dead of night echoing in the mountains. We don’t get that here in Austria!

My dad ran the station in Essex Ont in the 1950s,I was six,I would sit in front of station and watch trains go by,great memories

15:18 "And then there's Atomic power which is almost certain to figure in our operations some day" Ahh the good old fifties, where atomic energy would drive everything from trains to toasters! 😆 Great documentary!

Thought he ran through that switch at 10:55, then I saw the SS Spring Switch sign.

THOSE are the freight trains of my youth!  Endless strings of 40-foot boxcars, all painted oxide brown.  Model railroaders of the transition era take note.  Today, those boxcars have been replaced by intermodal containers.

Once again, NFB used GM Diesel sounds for Montreal-built locomotives, which sound completely different.

I was born in 74', but I'm a railfan who grew up in Lachine, close to where the Turcott yard was. A lot of scenes here are familiar to me... 4:48 is near Beaconsfield, QC, in the next cut, you can just make out the top of a granite stone culvert in the bottom of the frame at 4:59, its still there today (UPDATE 2024: the stone culvert has been updated to a corrugated tube steel pipe) this is along Hwy 20.... 5:57 is the intersection at 1st ave Lachine, QC.  The restaurant next to the SKF truck is still there (now closed). If you look in the background, there is a FINA gas station that is also still there (its just a service garage now). That train line used to run all the way through Lachine but most of it was pulled up a few years after this film was made.  7:05 <--- pretty sure that is heading East though Dorion, Quebec near Mile 24 on the Kingston Subdivision. There was a devastating accident at that exact crossing in 1966 (google Dorion Train Accident 1966).  At 11:53... you can the Lachine Canal drawbridge in the background that is still in use in Ville St Pierre (built in 1913)...  Pretty sure the station at 5:43 is Cornwall Ontario... trying to figure out where some of the other scenes were filmed...

Watch "Why Risk Your Life?" -- a 1940s Railroad Safety Film, they actually risked their lives making it.

I love the wink he gives at 21:15 such an awesome gesture

i bet the engrs in the vid were HAPPY to be running diesels rather than steam

What a delight these old documentaries are.
A lifetime long gone.

My dad was the last telegraph operator to work out of Toronto. He said there was lots of action back in the 20s and 30s with all the branch lines that CNR did away with.

Thank you so much for posting this. I like see the old Canadian National. I’m a crazy American that loves trains. Again thank you so much for posting this.