Quand je pense de les chemins de fer du Les Etats Unis, I quit trying to write in pidgin French so that most of the small audience these posts may generate can follow me without having to move to Quebec or New France, as once it was known.  I have been reading two histories of the Illinois Central: Corliss, Main Line of MID-AMERICA, Creative Age Press, New York, 1950 (Corliss, hereafter) and Gates, The Illinois Central Railroad and Its Colonization Work (Harvard Economic Studies, Vol. XLII), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1934 (Gates, hereafter).  I read these because I grew up in Illinois, across the river from St. Louis, and because the ICG stock I owned became CN stock about a decade ago, and many of my family and friends have ties to the IC.  Note that former IC man Hunter Harris(?) is now CEO of CN.

I was about to abandon the Corliss history because it contained no detail about the engineering and mechanics of tracklaying, even though line built in 1851-54 had to cross the Illinois River Valley, which remains a challenge to this day because of its half-mile (say about a kilometre) or greater width and about six hundred foot (~200 metre) height.  Yet I thought I should read on, and immediately the author recaptured me with a story about a young telegrapher from Chicago named Billy.

It seems that Billy was extraordinarily good at his job, so good that he had some idle time to rig a battery, iron plate and switch so that he could give the occasional jolt to workers as they passed his window.  This gave Billy great joy, and workers much consternation, till the day Superintendent Hayes was the victim.  Hayes took an otherwise than delighted view of this use of idle time; his demand for the culprit led Billy to confess.  His reward was a departure from the office with a few choice railroad phrases mixed in.  We know Billy as Sir W. Cornelius Van Horne, builder of the CP (Hold on Craigellachie (yes, I am a Yank, but my books come from the library, so I cannot check sources at home readily, and this is just an e-bay blog, anywho).

Both books do an excellent job noting the economic development of the Illinois Prairies and lands remote from the rivers.  The IC was the first Federal Land Grant to Railroads, giving it six square mile sections alternating with retained sections, a sort of checkerboard pattern.  The stipulation was that the IC could not sell its lands till all of the federal squared along the right of way were sold.  Fortunately, this land, which had few buyers at $1.25 an acre before the then longest single line in the world (700 miles, 1,100 km) was built, soon sold out at the post construction price of $2.50/acre.  The success of this land sale prompted the later, more generous grants to the UP, CP, CB&Q, and others (GN?)

So now the CN enters Chicago on the old Michigan Central, just as always did the GT, but it has gained the IC Chicago Yard (look North off I-80) whose name escapes me now, as well as the semi-circle route of the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern.  Have the Canadians, who still have multiple forts upon the St. Lawrence Seaway, with guns pointed south against the eventual Manifest Destiny invasion, silently taken back the renegade republic?  Recall, Canada's separation from the mother country was also done without violence.

Odd how the world turns upside down.  Note the Canadian National, which began its life as the Grand Trunk Railroad, an English line with track in Canada.  It once proposed that it might reach Winnipeg by  Sarnia-Port Hudson, then Chicago and Duluth.  That American financiers were at the back of this plot, and had purchased certain voices in government, did not help get it through the parliament.  Rather, it was well remembered that the terrible alternative of routing through the United States was avoided.

How is it then that the CN extends from Halifax to Prince Rupert, Vancouver and Mobile?  And the CP sees Duluth, Chicago and both Sault Ste. Maries.  I recommend the study of the building of the Canadian lines as there are many lessons in there for the cousins of the lower 48 provinces.

While one might reasonably anticipate a logical monologue, or perhaps even a dialogue, upon the benefits of maintenance of aristrocracy in a civilized progression of ideas, one would be incorrect in supposing that the author of this piece had much more in mind than a rambling discourse upon a series of poorly connected thoughts.  So, with an effective hook to draw in the resistant reader, the Canadian worried about US hegemony among others, we venture forth on ruminations about Cowboy George (aka, George III - strange how history reflects back upon itself without divine intervention) and the odd construction of the North American political system where the second smallest country by land mass professes world dominance for its brief time upon the stage.  As I have read the history of the Canadian National Railway system, juxtaposed with histories of the lines de les Etats Unis, je pense de l' inadequacies of my education dans l'idiome Francais.  What most captured my mind was the incredible successes of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy (a line first begun as a commuter line from Batavia, Illinois to Aurora, Illinois, about eight miles of track) and its Boston, Massachusetts investors (It is now the first part of the mighty BNSF that Mr. Buffett has lately found worthy for Berkshire Hathaway to own) compared to the continuous bail-outs and difficulties of the now-mighty Canadien National, so strong that it has purchased the Illinois Central, Wisconsin Central and Duluth Missabe and Iron Range, here in the States.  Manifest Destiny in REVERSE!  Eh?

Railroading is a matter of some affinity for me, although my family seems to have been teachers, soldiers or farmers.  A few political aspirants pepper the field, but that is of little worth to those of you still with me.  What we find in the development of nations and the prosperity of people (my wife so reports from her reading of The Birth of Plenty) is that with transportation, law (particularly that of the slowly mutable variety) and education, societies prosper.  If one looks at Canada, one cannot help but realize that governmental subsidies of rail development helped ease the fears that the southern neighbor would soon populate the Western Provinces.  Just as Federal Land Grants to the CB&Q, UP, SP, C&NW and NP (and others) helped populate the "American" west by giving the railroads incentive to build as they could then sell the land to settlers who would buy it given the prospect of markets for their products, the ability to reach Montreal and Portland, Maine with the grains of Alberta and Sasketchewan led immigrants to brave the fierce winters and persistent loneliness of the vast plains of our cousin to the north.

The Burlington Route, once given the federal grants, then had to plead with various state and local political entities, whereas the Canadian National seems to have had mostly dominion worries after confederation.  The early days, particularly in the Maritimes, were more provincial, but that was before the government formed the consolidated lines inherited from the British Grand Trunk (British funding, Canadian and US location), Grand Trunk Pacific, Canadian Northern and Intercolonial Rails. Sir Henry Thornton, then Mr. Gordon, make interesting reading compared to Carl Perkins of the CB&Q.  One wonders if there is a story based on the Gandy Dancer or the Switchman?  Why is it we study the generals, when the lance corporals do most of the dying?  About a decade ago, CN became a public corporation, like its long-private sister, the CP.  Yes, sister is the wrong word if you are a CP fan, but then this is all incomplete anyway.  So here is to Jasper and Kicking Horse Pass, the Algoma Central,  the long distant Central Michigan,  the long-forgotten Lake Shore and Eastern Michigan, and many other lines  that rose, fell, swallowed or were eaten, six man crews, cabooses, track laid through mountains, muskeg and permafrost, and the triumph of China in building rails to Nepal.

When this "american" visits Canada I wonder about our wisdom in abandoning the King.  We should really say the Queen, because as we look at the English monarchy, Elizabeth, Victoria and Elizabeth II reign supreme in wisdom and dignity.  Many of the men leave a bit to be desired, but what have we, a man, to say of that?  It is so, and so it is.

Mr. Buffett tells us that the railroads have reached a peak efficiency in the Northern reaches of the Americas: they are built up to a full extent, well-serving the major centers of population and production (all of the writers that I have read do not bemoan the passing of passenger lines as they are labor intensive compared to freight transportation -- no romancers, these business writers), their labor costs are reasonable for both sides, and they are tending to cooperation rather than the cut-throat competition of the post Commodore Vanderbilt days (the Barringer transportation library of the St. Louis Mercantile Library, UMSL, has a wonderful book on the shelves, the 1903 and 1904 Annual Report of the LS&EM: in ought 3 the company reports revenues & expenses in explicit detail; in ought four the New York Central cabal forced a wholesale change in the directorship of the company and the annual report is based on a need to know.  The Commodore's son, William, and some other prominent names are listed as directors.  Imagine that.)

I only wish that my French were strong enough to tell Canadians what a great country they have.  I do not know if Tim Horton's can gain a foothold dans les Etats Unis, mais c'est tres magnifique.  Au revoir.