The following is a re-print of a past column by former Advertiser columnist Stephen Thorning, who passed away on Feb. 23, 2015.
Some text has been updated to reflect changes since the original publication and any images used may not be the same as those that accompanied the original publication.
Regular readers of this column who are railway buffs told me they enjoyed the column a few months ago about the 1906 Grand Trunk wreck north of Fergus.
The subject of this column is the CPR derailments in Elora and Belwood in 1916, 1969 and 1974.
The spring of 1916 brought wet weather and two derailments to Centre Wellington. Rains poured down steadily for weeks. There was rain on every one of the first 20 days of June. Obviously, this created difficulties for farmers, but there was also an impact on the railways.
The ground became saturated with water and the railway roadbeds no longer drained properly. This produced soft spots under the track, and in serious situations, washouts. Railway section crews monitored the situation closely, but problems were not always obvious. On the Grand Trunk, section men delayed trains on several occasions so that the roadbed could be beefed up with some gravel or water diverted from the track.
The Canadian Pacific branch line from Elora to Cataract Junction did not encounter any major problems until the third week of June. Then, on the 15th, a special excursion train jumped the track near Belwood. Each spring the CPR ran a special train from Elora to Toronto and Niagara Falls, with return. This was a midweek holiday trip, and usually left Elora about 6:30am, returning sometime after midnight with the exhausted excursionists. The 1916 trip began uneventfully, but ended after only nine miles.
On the approach to the Grand River bridge at Belwood, the train either spread or broke a rail, and three of the passenger cars left the tracks. They came to rest tilted precariously at the edge of an embankment, but did not topple down. Most of the passengers, consisting of about 90 people from Elora and Fergus, were in the rear coaches, which remained on the tracks. There were no serious injuries.
The regular eastbound train from Elora could not pass the wreck two hours later. It picked up those who wanted to return home, and backed up to Fergus and Elora – all except Elora’s former reeve, 67-year-old Henry Clarke, who walked home.
The railway, quick to respond to the situation, sent a special train from Toronto to pick up those who still wanted to take in an excursion. The trip was abbreviated to Toronto only. By the time they returned from their eventful day at 2am, the track had been reopened.
A similar accident occurred two days later, on Saturday, June 17, with far more tragic results.
The afternoon eastbound train leaving Elora (there were two regularly-scheduled trains each way at the time) had proceeded less than a mile when the passenger car jumped the track and rolled down an embankment and onto its back. The location was just east of the siding to the Elora quarry, near the rear of what is now the Rona lumber yard.
The wreck was witnessed by a motorist, Elora liveryman and car dealer Henry Hastings, who was driving to Fergus with some of his friends. They ran across the field to help. There were about 15 passengers in the coach, and three were injured seriously. Rev. C.E. Stafford suffered multiple injuries and died three days later. Fred Hunt, the plant manager at T.E. Bissell Co. in Elora, suffered head injuries and required surgery. He passed in and out of a coma for more than a week. Hunt’s mother-in-law broke her hip in the accident.
A crowd was soon on hand to assist, along with Doctors Paget, Robertson and Kerr. The most miraculous escape was that of Father Sullivan of St. Mary’s Church. Rescuers found him standing on his head, wedged into a corner of the car by wreckage and unable to move. When freed, he walked to an Elora livery stable, hired a carriage, and proceeded on to Fergus for an important appointment.
The section men were on the scene within an hour to begin the cleanup, and by early evening the railway had a work train with a crane at work. The men had difficulty lifting the passenger car due to the soft roadbed, and worked cautiously all Saturday night and all day Sunday. It was late Monday before the line was made passable.
Several railway officials visited the wreck site immediately. Wrecks such as this were costly to the railway. As well, the railways were particularly sensitive at this time to charges that they neglected public safety. As a result of the wrecks of June 1916, the CPR did some grading and culvert work, and added more ballast on troublesome stretches of track.
Both wrecks were caused either by a rail breaking, or by the rails spreading apart, which would then cause a break in a rail. With soft spots in the ballast due to water, the track would sink under the weight of a train. These soft spots would often be on one side of the track or the other, and the train would rock from side to side, putting excess pressure and stress on the rails. The force could pull a rail loose, or break it in two. It was not unusual in these situations for the locomotive and part of the train to pass safely. This was the case with the Elora wreck, where only the passenger car at the end of the train derailed.
The Elora wreck could have been much worse had the train been moving at a faster speed. It had stopped for several minutes while the locomotive picked up loaded cars from the quarry. It is probable that it was moving at less than five miles per hour.
Stafford, who died of his injuries, had many friends and relatives in Elora. He was a son of William Stafford, the builder and musician who established the family in Elora in the 1850s. He was ordained a minister in the Methodist Church in 1869, and served in more than a dozen locations in southern Ontario before retiring to Elora.
In retirement he continued to conduct services at Belwood, Parker and Palmerston when the regular minister was unavailable. He was on such a trip on his last train ride: he was to perform a wedding at Belwood, and conduct the church service there the following day.
In spite of the tragedy, the Belwood wedding came off as scheduled. The couple, Lyman Smith and Hazel Eveleigh, had become friends with Rev. C.E. Stafford when he was the minister at their church, and they invited him back to perform the ceremony.
The regular minister performed the ceremony, and the Smiths enjoyed a long and happy marriage. Their son, Rev. Eveleigh Smith, was a well-known Belwood-area resident (he died on July 11, 2016, in Victoria, BC. in his 99th year).
CPR suffered another a derailment on June 16, 1969. Interestingly, the cause was identical to the two 1916 derailments – a softened roadbed due to heavy rains – and the date was the same almost to the day.
In the late 1960s the CPR ran trains on the Elora branch only on an as-needed basis. Most trains ran only to Fergus to serve the railway’s industrial customers there: Beatty’s and Noranda.
Due to the low volume of business, the railway allowed track maintenance to slip, reducing the margin of safety in extremely wet weather.
In the early hours of June 16, 1969, a train consisting of two locomotives and three freight cars was proceeding westward. About a mile east of the Belwood station, the track curved sharply, and proceeded across an earth-fill embankment. It appears that soft spots in the roadbed caused the train to rock and spread the rails. The first locomotive remained on the track, but the second and the three freight cars hit the gravel, and ploughed up a couple of hundred feet of the roadbed before coming to rest.
The first two cars contained copper consigned to the Noranda plant in Fergus. These were heavy loads, and it is likely that their weight (with a relatively high centre of gravity), the curve and the soft roadbed all combined to cause the accident.
When the boxcars spread the rails, they pulled the track out from under the second locomotive. The third car was filled with cattle, and although it came to rest at a precarious angle, the cattle were not injured.
Cleanup crews were on the site later Monday morning. The line was not back in service until Wednesday, June 18. The men used timbers and jacks to set the freight cars upright and get them back on the rails. The task was made more difficult by the heavy weight of their contents.
The last derailment on the Elora branch line occurred on March 16, 1974, almost at the same spot as the 1969 derailment.
This time, spring runoff and a heavy rain caused a washout under the tracks that was big enough to accommodate a dump truck. The next train through, of course, suffered the misfortune of a derailment. The train included a carload of cattle consisting of stockers for several area farmers, which were to be unloaded at Fergus.
Instead, the cattle were taken to Alvin Smith’s barn, and the new owners picked them up there.
*This column was originally published in the Elora Sentinel on Aug. 16/23, 1994.
