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Page last updated April 17, 2004

© Michael Kluckner

Old industrial and modern residential Nanaimo stand in sharp contrast from the edge of the railyards. Actually, I was just checking out the Robin's Gardens auto court nearby and looking at the beautiful mature trees there when I spotted this. It's a purposeful little shack, apparently occupied by the worker responsible for weighing the cars – the piece of track in front of it is a scale – presumably as they have to loaded onto the CPR's freight ferry to get to the mainland.

Note from Tammy Tait, Cranbrook: My first job on the railway began in 1994 at the E&N railyard you captured in your painting. The yard crew and a train clerk occupied the building. The scale that you spoke of was a thing of antiquity. When logs travelled the rail and pipes or any loads were transported off the island they were shoved onto the scale track. Once in place there was a rather large scale inside much like the ones in the doctor's office, only really BIG. Once you had the balance you would insert a ticket into one end and ssssqqqqueeeze real hard and it would give you the load weight for shipping. Nowadays they usually have more modern means for this, but as far as I know it is still a functioning scale...I had the pleasure of using it once or twice! We had to find a rather senior fellow to show us the ropes!


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Artwork and text ©Michael Kluckner, 2001, 2002