JULY 2000

    This month we will hone in on another seasonal shipment from Ontario's branchline rail network in the 1940s and 50s, namely the annual apple harvest. We will take a look at Grey County, the largest apple producing area in the province, and go trackside to Thornbury, on the CNR Meaford Subdivision. For railway modellers of Ontario branchlines, many of the principals will apply to your situation if you are depicting territory in apple growing regions.

    Apple trees were introduced to Canadian soil by European settlers, with the apple packing industry beginning here in the 1840s. A temperate climate is needed for apple trees, and only a few regions in Ontario fit the bill. Production is concentrated along the northern shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario, and the southern shore of Georgian Bay where protection by large, deep bodies of water reduces the chances of late Spring and early Autumn frosts. Furthermore, the towering Niagara Escarpment acts to confine warm lake air to small areas, creating micro-climates ideally suited to apple growing.

    The apple packing industry began in Thornbury in the 1880s. The Georgian Bay Fruit Growers Association was formed in 1905 by John Mitchell (of apple juice fame), and incorporated in 1911. While its first storage facility constructed burned down, a large concrete cold storage building was built in 1932 on the station team track, and still stands today. In 1939, a brick and cement block apple processing plant (now destroyed) was erected by the same company across Highway 26 to the north. Here, cider vinegar, juice, sauce and cider was produced from lower grade apples. Georgian Bay Fruit Growers was the largest local shipper of apples and related products. Also on the Thornbury team track (see Steam at Allandale, page 90) were a freight shed, coal sheds, cattle ramp and Beaver Valley Co-op apple storage house.

    Hundreds of pickers went to work in the orchards beginning in early September, and truckloads of fruit were whisked to markets or cold storage facilities. Back in time, apples were originally packed in barrels (about four feet high by two feet in diameter), then bushel baskets. For our postwar era, large and small wooden boxes are the order of the day.

    Imagine, for a moment, the atmosphere on a model railway siding, depicting something of the nature of Thornbury in September, during the postwar years. Vacant space in the large cold storage plant has been used since Spring for the storage of eggs by Canada Packers and the Swift Canadian Company. With the impending apple harvest, a frenzied grading and packing of eggs has commenced in mid-August. Iced refrigerator export carloads of eggs are being shipped out daily, to make room for half a million bushels of apples. Then, beginning in mid-September, there is a hive of activity around the cold storage docks as truckload after truckload of apples are brought in. Now the refrigerator cars appearing on the siding are hustling the fruit away to distant markets, at the rate of two or three carloads a day.

    Toward the end of the month, the juice plant nearby begins receiving hundreds of truckloads of "grounders" and seconds for processing. The facility works two shifts to consume the volume of incoming fruit. Fork lift trucks are continually scurrying across the road to load boxcars on the team track, and carloads of juice are being consigned to large distributors. Meanwhile, the freight shed dock and canopied station platform are piled high with boxes of apples awaiting shipment by less-than-carload lot (l.c.l.) or express. Apple shipping crates and boxes, made right here, are piling up in every vacant space. The harried station agent and his assistants are lighting charcoal heaters to protect the shipments in the reefers.

    On our model railways, the existence of such interesting seasonal shipments underscores the need to be specific about not only an era, but a time of year. For me, late September in the postwar years, with the hardwood trees still predominantly green but showing some colour, the smell of fresh apples permeating the crooks and crannies "down by the tracks", and Ten Wheelers calling daily to lift a couple of colourful reefer carloads is a setting filled with atmosphere, and begging to be captured in miniature.

Ian Wilson
June 30, 2000

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