The practice of business enterprises to reduce staff levels as an economy measure are a fact of the present-day economy.
There is nothing new in that practice. Railways, in particular, experienced periodic pruning of staff and services. Sometimes the cuts greatly annoyed customers, and on occasion they resulted in safety issues. The latter was the case in 1909, when the Canadian Pacific Railway narrowly avoided a major disaster near Orangeville after instituting such a cost-cutting measure.
Melville Junction was a rural station about four kilometres south of the Orangeville Canadian Pacific station. Originally, it was the place where the Credit Valley Railway, built in 1879, crossed the line of the Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway, constructed a decade earlier. From there, the two lines ran parallel to their respective stations in Orangeville.
The TG&B line followed a route from Toronto via Bolton and Caledon to Orangeville. The CVR line was a branch, leaving the mainline at Streetsville and running via Brampton to Orangeville. In 1884, the Canadian Pacific company, which had been formed only three years earlier, determined to follow an aggressive expansion policy in Ontario. The CPR acquired both the lines to Orangeville. That made one of the tracks between Melville Junction and Orangeville redundant.
The CPR move all its trains to the original TG&B line, and consolidated its Orangeville operations at the former Toronto, Grey and Bruce station and yard.
The result was a busy stretch of line between Orangeville and Melville Junction. Operators manned the Melville Junction station around the clock, co-ordinating traffic with the station at Orangeville to avoid collisions and keep traffic moving smoothly.
In the summer of 1909, as an economy move, CPR management decided to eliminate the staff at Melville Junction. The conductors of all northbound trains were required to stop, check in with the operator at Orangeville by phone, and sign the register book, giving the time and number of their train.
The procedure was somewhat confusing, and left plenty of room for misunderstanding and error. An incident was probably inevitable, and it was not long in coming. On the evening of Oct. 26, 1909, two passenger trains collided head-on not far from the Melville Junction station.
That day, Train 19, the evening run from Teeswater, through Harriston, Mount Forest and Arthur to Orangeville and on to Toronto, became delayed and was more than an hour late leaving Orangeville. Another train, Number 24, the evening run from Toronto via Bolton, arrived at Melville Junction a couple of minutes after the southbound train had left Orangeville.
As was the usual practice the conductor of Train 24, Bill Wilson, entered the Melville Junction station and called Orangeville on the telephone. He misunderstood or misinterpreted what the Orangeville operator told him. Wilson probably expected the track to be clear. Number 19 should have passed more than an hour earlier.
Wilson gave a hand signal to his engineer, George Johnston, to proceed. Less than a minute after he put his locomotive into motion Johnston noticed a light ahead. He assumed it was another train waiting in the siding. A moment later he realized that the other train was moving.
On the other train, engineer Bill Stewart was proceeding at full speed, trying to make up time, and believing that he had a clear right-of-way. He saw the headlight of Number 24, but believed it was in the siding.
Stewart realized about the same time as Johnston that the other train was moving. Both engineers threw their trains into emergency braking. Stewart told his fireman to jump. He did, followed by Stewart.
Both trains slowed, but the locomotives came together with a crash that could be heard two miles away. Stewart’s locomotive, Number 85, was an old one. Built in 1882, it was by far the lighter of the two, and suffered the most damage. Wilson’s locomotive, Number 826, was a modern one, built in 1903. His train was also heavier, and included loaded express cars, a mail car, and several coaches. Locomotive 85 had its front badly smashed and crumpled, and the cab became dislodged, coming to rest on top of the locomotive, with the tender upright against the locomotive. Had Stewart and his fireman remained on board they would have suffered major if not fatal injuries, and scalding from escaping steam.
Passengers on both trains received a bad shaking but there were no injuries to passengers other than some minor bumps and bruises.
Officials in Orangeville soon had an emergency crew assembled. The men worked through the night to get the track back in service. Only engine 85 was off the tracks. It went to the repair shops in Toronto, and served the CPR for another six years. Damage to Number 826 was minor; it survived until 1941.
As was the practice in such cases, the division superintendent called an inquiry a couple of days later. At the hearing conductor Bill Wilson spoke up, accepting full blame for the crash, and exonerating everyone else involved. Surprisingly, the superintendent was sympathetic to Wilson, probably due to his readiness in accepting responsibility. He noted that Wilson’s record was without a blemish, and that he had a reputation for caution and sobriety.
The superintendent laid the confusion that had resulted in the accident on the register book at the Melville Junction Station. Rather than one, there were three of them on the desk there, and Wilson had looked at the wrong one. There was no explanation as to why there should be three register books on the desk in the station.
The crash prompted Canadian Pacific officials to re-examine their decision to eliminate staffing at the Melville Junction station. Two weeks after the hearing they re-established the operator’s position. Roy Wansborough, a Fergus native, received the appointment. He was to be on duty during the daytime, when the line was at its busiest and when passenger trains were travelling on the portion between Melville Junction and Orangeville. At that time there were 10 passenger trains each day on that stretch of track, all traversing it between 9:30am and 8pm, and, at most times of the year, at least as many freight trains, many also passing during the daytime hours. A single man could cover that shift in an era when the 12-hour day was standard. There were no more crashes on that section of track after the operator’s position was restored.
As well as handling traffic of the busy line to Orangeville, the agent at Melville Junction also had local business to handle. The station was a regular station stop for eight of the 10 passenger trains on the line, and there was also express business to handle. The restoration of the agent may well have been partially due to complaints from CPR customers.
Melville Junction ceased to be important in 1932, when Canadian Pacific discontinued the line between there and Bolton. That line was an expensive one to maintain, and traffic fell off drastically due to the depression in the early 1930s.
Melville remained a flag stop for CPR trains passenger trains until 1965. All passenger service on the line ended in the fall of 1970. Today, it is possible once again to ride past the location of the former Melville Junction on the Credit Valley Explorer train of the Orangeville Brampton Railway, the short line that maintains rail service on the scenic route to Orangeville.