Grainswest - Winter 2023

Winter 2023 Grains West 50 AGAINST GRAIN THE A t its Stettler station, as many as 24,000 passengers per year board Alberta Prairie Railway train excursions powered by its vintage diesel and steam locomotives. Winter and summer, trips include a stop at Big Valley or the line’s Country Hideaway, an old-time amusement park and meal facility. Not so long ago, the line trans- ported grain as the Central Western Railway. Until the mid-1980s, CN and CP op- erated mainlines and grain-dependent branch lines. As grain industry consol- idation saw aging wooden elevators decommissioned, the rail companies shed lines they believed uneconomical. This included the Stettler Subdivision line from Ferlow Junction south of Camrose to Dinosaur Junction at mile 108 near Munson. The line serviced elevators from Edberg to Morrin. An avowed shortline railroader for almost 40 years, Shawn Smith is an executive of three rail companies and an Alberta Prairie Railway board member. He recalled Tom Payne, an Edmonton locomotive engineer who had always wanted to run a railroad, was determined to operate the branch as a shortline rather than seeing it abandoned. “His vision and tenacity, sitting in the offices of the Canada’s transportation minister until he agreed to talk to him, ultimately resulted in the formation of Central Western, the first modern-era shortline,” said Smith. Starting in 1986, Smith worked for the new railway in operational and management positions. Canada’s first modern-era shortline railway In 1992, Central Western bought a CP line that ran to the Saskatchewan border. At its height, the company served about 20 communities along 400 kilometres of rail. In 1996, the Alberta Wheat Pool, the line’s biggest client, built its first high-throughput elevator east of Camrose. “Overnight, they closed the wooden elevators north of Stettler we had served,” said Smith. “We diversified and moved on,” said Smith, who was then general manager. In the meantime, Stettler grocer Don Gillespie and local share- holders had successfully operated a tourist railway on the line. Alberta Prairie Railway launched in 1990 and by 2006 had taken over remaining freight service. Between the first round of wooden elevator closures in the mid-1980s and the dawn of the high-thoughput elevator era in the mid-1990s, Central Western Railway moved grain along the Stettler Subdivision line. Here, a Central Western train departs fromMorrin in 1993. Photo:CourtesyofBillHooper