DECEMBER 1999

    There are a wealth of fascinating aspects of the railways of Southern Ontario in the 1946-59 era, and this month we will address a seasonal topic, namely the annual Christmas tree traffic.  This subject has been mentioned in Steam at Allandale and in an earlier Topic of the Month (see Team Tracks, June 1999), but this time we will give it more extensive treatment.  Thanks go to Doug Hately, Peter Bowers, Don Scott and Charles Bury for stirring up interest in Christmas tree shipments on the Canadian 1950s list (to subscribe, send a blank e-mail to 50s-cdn-subscribe@yahoogroups.com).

    The growing of Christmas trees as a specialty crop in Ontario began in the 1930s.  Before that, the trees were only to be found growing in abandoned fields or forests.  Unlike the widespread cultivation present today in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Christmas tree farming in the late 1940s and 1950s was restricted to areas not suitable for growing anything else, namely poor and marginal soils, usually dry and sandy in nature.  On the Canadian 1950s list, Don Scott has described the Christmas tree traffic originating in New Brunswick passing through McAdam, and the Nova Scotia carloadings being routed through Moncton, New Brunswick on the CNR.  In Ontario, the primary growing region was in the vicinity of Penetang, with the Pontypool area in the Oak Ridges Moraine coming second.   We will zero in on the intricacies of the operations at Penetang.

    Coniferous trees last a long time after cutting, and consequently Christmas trees were harvested from neighbouring farms beginning in August.  Scotch pine, white pine, balsam fir and white spruce were (and are) the popular Christmas tree species.  Export trees, consigned exclusively to the United States, were brought by truck to the team track in Penetang.  On page 123 of Steam at Allandale, you will note the stub-ended siding which served this purpose immediately above the freight shed, with stop blocks at Penetanguishene Road.  The trees were piled on the lake side of this track.  A trussing machine was employed to bundle the trees, and they were stacked at right angles to the track, man-high.  We must remember that in the 1950s, mechanized loading was not used to a great extent, and such commodities as Christmas trees took days to load with manual labour.  From August through October, the piles along the siding grew in length and breadth until, with the sheer size of the stockpile and number of trucks invading the area, it was difficult to get anywhere near the team track or freight shed unless one had business connected with the Christmas trees.

    The shipping of the trees began in early October.  American brokers (the largest was from Detroit) drummed up sales in the States, and contracted out the loading to the plantation owners.  The trees were loaded by hand into 40-foot steel boxcars at approximately 1000 trees to the car.  During the first half of   November, shipping was at a peak, with as many as ten to fifteen cars a day heading out on the mixed train or, in latter days, the way freight.  Destinations of the trees spanned the breadth of the United States, from California and Texas to Florida, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and New York.  Virtually every boxcar loaded was for export.  As with most other commodities loaded in the 1950s, shipments to large centres such as Toronto and cities within two hundred miles were handled by trucks.

    In terms of volume, there were well in excess of one hundred carloadings in the 1952 Christmas season, with the largest exporter shipping 100 boxcars of trees from Penetang alone.  Perkinsfield, Wyevale and Elmvale loaded Christmas trees on team tracks to a lesser extent.  In 1956, the last boxcar of a total of 57 carloadings to the United States was sealed and lifted on December 10.  A similar volume was shipped the previous year.  As late as 1965 on the Penetang Subdivision, the Penetang and Perkinsfield stations were clogged with Christmas tree traffic.   Today, there are approximately one million Christmas trees harvested annually in all of Ontario.  It is a measure of the scale of the operation in Penetang in the late 1940s and 1950s to note that between 60,000 and 100,000 trees were shipped out over a few weeks each year from one team track.

    For modellers wishing to incorporate this interesting carloading into their scheme of things, the first consideration would be to discover if Christmas trees were indeed grown in the general area being modelled.  A perusal of the yellow pages of the telephone directory, available at the local libraries on microfilm, would reveal the extent of the activity.  With the considerations of the second paragraph in mind, we cannot assume that today's growing areas imply that the situation in the 1940s and 1950s was similar.

    To model the team track activity, we would need several period trucks bringing trees from the neighbouring farms. If we were modelling any month from late August through December, the trees would be seen piled along the siding.  As the Christmas trees were for export (and therefore interchange), older 36-foot boxcars (most having K-brakes and used in grain traffic) would not be seen in this service.  Many CNR and foreign road steel 40-foot boxcars (being routed toward home rails) would accept the trees.  The main difficulty as I see it would be to come up with a way to represent thousands of trussed trees in miniature!

    With this seasonal topic, my wife Mary-Jo and I wish you and your families the Merriest of Christmases, and we thank you for your patronage and best wishes over the course of 1999.

Ian Wilson
November 19, 1999

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