Sunday, January 24, 2016

The CP 1201 steam engine at Bayview - new video never seen before!

My grandfather (Ted Sauve) was a life-long railroader, as was his Dad and grandfather, all out of the old CPR Ottawa West station on Bayswater (now the location of "Bayview Station" for the O-train). In the mid-1980s the 1201 steam engine would run from Ottawa to Wakefield, a short run for the nostalgia of the steam engine. My grandfather loved to go down to Bayswater by the new Transitway, and watch the 1201 coming in off the Prince of Wales Bridge. In 1985, he borrowed a video camera from work, and naturally he wanted to videotape the 1201. He took video on three different days, all different shots (note video #2 is not great quality, he did not have the "focus" set properly).

My grandfather loved watching these video for years, I guess just as he missed being around the trains (he worked for the CPR until the 1950s, then moved to the NRC where he worked on lab testing of train engines until retiring in 1987). He'd put on the VCR, put the tape in, max out the TV's volume, and get great joy out of seeing the 1201 fly by.

I've never shared these videos before, no one outside of our family has ever seen them, so I'm really happy to share them now.

See video #1 at: https://youtu.be/sNRr0OcC2b0
See video #2 at: https://youtu.be/sr6Dfo5PJvg
See video #3 at: https://youtu.be/T57X_0ZO0jM

(Note: I am far from an expert at video transfer/editing/uploading, so I've done my best to get this from a VHS to my laptop, edited and then converted to mp4 for youtube!)

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