Two Plays at the York Street Train Station

I'm the Artistic Director of the NotaBle Acts TheatreCompany in Fredericton. You may or may not be aware that we have a play in our summer theatre festival, currently running through August 4, which takes place in the old (now restored) train station on York Street, and is in part about the history of the building from 1985 to the present day. If this is something that might interest you and any of your contacts, here is information on the show, which has two more performances (July 27 and August 1 both at 7 PM) and is running in conjunction with another show that takes place in the liquor store parking lot.  This information is also available on our website at www.nbacts.com

Street Scenes: Two Site-Specific Plays

Street Scenes annually stages new plays written for and about unique public locations in Fredericton. Join us for a truly original and unconventional theatrical experience.

Showing: Wednesday, July 24 & Thursday, August 1 at 6:30pm, Saturday July 27 at 7pm

Location: York St. Train Station (NB Liquor Building), 380 York St.

Tickets: $12 Regular, $10 Senior, $8 Student

Warning: coarse language.

The Station by Step Taylor, directed by Emily Bossé and Len Falkenstein

The changing face of the York St. Train Station provides backdrop for a man’s life, in this short play about lost love, questionable choices, and possible redemption. Performed in one of Fredericton’s most beautiful historic buildings.

Cast: Georgia Brown, Ian Goff, Jesse LaPointe

Alice Loves the Beach by Sarah Higgins, directed by Alex Donovan

On a stationary bus on a downtown street, two strangers share memories and discover a strange and moving connection with each other, one that prepares them for the journeys they must make in the future. A play on a bus that will take you to unexpected places.

Cast: James Corbett, Ida Orenbach

Fredericton Roundhouse Development?

The Daily Gleaner is reporting that the former Craig Electric property on the north side of the former train bridge in Fredericton may be redeveloped soon. The property contains the railway roundhouse built for the Northern and Western Railway in 1885.

These two photos of the roundhouse were taken in 2001, I believe by Art Clowes. If you want to look it up on Google Maps, it's at 912 Union Street in Fredericton, NB.


This little two-stall engine house was located beside the roundhouse. It is no longer there.


The excellent book "Devon Remembered" Volume 1 (by Carol Randall and Robert McNeil) has a map of the New Brunswick Railway's facilities on Union Street in Fredericton. The roundhouse is labeled "Engine House" on the left.


This map pre-dates any railway bridges over the Saint John River to the southern half of Fredericton. Of course, at this time Fredericton was only on the south side of the river and the north side was composed of several communities, such as Nashwaaksis, Devon, Marysville, and so forth.

PS - There's a good article in the Daily Gleaner about the Fredericton train station. Reporter Mike Staples talked with a local railway historian, Joe Murray, about the station. I never met Joe and honestly don't know much about him but he knows his facts.

Fredericton Train Station Update

I was in New Brunswick last week and I took the opportunity to photograph the progress on the Fredericton train station.

Doesn't it look better than it used to?


Since I was there in June, things have moved right along! The scaffolding is gone and the landscaping looks done to me. You can see the new trail in the photo below.

I remember there was quite a discussion about the trail prior to the station restoration. The owners, J.D. Irving, weren't too keen on having the extensive Fredericton trail network go on their property. I'm glad they have changed their minds.

One should keep in mind that the vast majority of Fredericton's great trail network is built on former railway roadbed.


I am very impressed by the work that has been done. The station looks great.


PS - sorry for not posting very often these days. I picked up some kind of flu bug on the way home from New Brunswick and I've been fighting it all week.

Fredericton Station Update

In early May I was criss-crossing the Maritimes on business. You might recall my shots from Moncton and Halifax. On May 7 I was in Fredericton and visited the train station after supper for a few minutes. I wanted to see the restoration progress for myself. It is quite striking!



The liquor store in the rear is in service and there was considerable traffic when I was there. The former Hartt shoe factory is visible on the right edge of the photo above.

The sign in the photo above says the heritage restoration is being done by Fabinex.

I walked around to take a shot of the south side of the buildings.



You can see that work is still in progress here. The station is connected to the liquor store via a glassed-in walkway visible on the left edge of the photo above.



Here's a closeup from the previous photo. The station looks a lot nicer with a roof, windows, and the brickwork cleaned. There was a distinct lack of pigeons, too!

I stuck my camera up to a couple of windows to try to get some interior shots. I think they turned out pretty well.



The above is shot from the south side. You can see a bit of what could be original wood on the left, brickwork on the north wall, and what might be laminate flooring. The ceiling looks nice but I have no idea if it resembles the original ceiling.



The above was shot from the west end (adjacent to York Street). I think there is some kind of bar / kitchen at the west end of the station. You can see some kind of stainless steel fume hood at the top of this photo.

I hope you enjoyed this brief glimpse of the work in progress. I hope to visit the station again this summer to check on how it is progressing. It sure makes me happy to see the work that has been done.

Previous update

Fredericton Train Station Exhibit

An exhibit developed by the Fredericton Heritage Trust and the Fredericton Region Museum will be unveiled at Fredericton's City Hall gallery on Tuesday, June 14 at noon. The exhibit is entitled "A Celebration of Union Station" and features eight panels showing historic railway photos and text. The mayor will speak and admission is free.

The exhibit will be at City Hall until the end of July, and will then move to the Fredericton Region Museum (formerly the York Sunbury Museum) for two months.

I was contacted about this exhibit and four photographs of mine are among the 60 in the exhibit.

CP 8743

In honour of the cold day outside here in Winnipeg, here's a shot of CP 8743 on a cold day in Fredericton, NB. This slide was shot by Greg Brewer in January 1984. You can just imagine the crisp snow crunching underfoot. There are a few long icicles dangling from the former shoe factory in the background.

CP 8743 was built in May 1957 for CP by the Montreal Locomotive Works. In 1989, a few years after this slide was taken, she was rebuilt with a chop nose and renumbered to CP 1865. 1865 soldiered on for a few more years until she was sold to the Ottawa Central Railway in December 1998.

She was captured in OCR livery in May 2008 at Ottawa Central's Walkley Yard by Mark Chouinard.


Anyone know what the eventual disposition of Ottawa Central 1865 was?

The current CP 8743 is a GE ES44AC built in late 2005.

CP 1814 Revisited

I wrote about CP 1814 back in December 2008. I found another slide of 1814 that I wanted to share. Here's a slide by Greg Brewer showing CP 1814 in Fredericton, NB in the Canadian Pacific yard, back in January 1984.

Clearly it is late in the day, as the sun is low and in the west. CP 1814 is wearing the white flags of an extra. In fact, it looks like the white classification light above the number board is lit as well. A crewman is visible on the other side of the short hood.

I like this slide, because readers know I love MLW/Alco units, but I also like the slide because of what is on the left side of the slide - a glimpse at the yard itself. Here's that portion of the slide.

You can see an engine house? just peeking out on the left side of the image. The foundation of the engine house was just broken up last year when the station was being refurbished. I was told the workers couldn't believe how thick the concrete was.

Next is a small building, purpose unknown, with what looks like a snowplow roughly in the middle of the image. There are a few other tracks back there, including one that goes to what appears to be a loading ramp just to the left of the engine railing.

The large building in the back was the Palmer-McLellan Shoe Company, and the building still exists today as a general purpose office building, facing on Aberdeen Street. A major tenant is the Grand & Toy office supply company, and it holds a Salvation Army thrift store as well.

EDIT: Peter Gough told me what the large building in the back of the slide was.

This Day, 27 Years Ago

This slide was taken in Fredericton, NB 27 years ago today (January 17, 1984) by Greg Brewer. CP 4221 is in front of the Devon station just north of the train bridge linking the south and north sides of Fredericton.

There are a few things to note. CP 4221 is flying white flags indicating that it is an extra. Based on Greg's slides it seems that the C424s were around Fredericton during this time, prior to the arrival of the RS18s and later the RS23s.

Also note the block signals behind the unit, which appear to be turned parallel to the tracks. I wonder what they were protecting, pointing that way?

CP 4221 was built by the Montreal Locomotive Works as a C-424 in 1965 and was owned by Canadian Pacific for its entire career. It was retired in March 1997 and scrapped.

There is a really interesting photo of it on Railpictures.net showing it leading a picnic train on my birthday in 1991 in New York state, with some passenger cars and RDCs trailing.

CN 1765

Happy new year!

This slide from Greg Brewer shows CN 1765 and the rest of a plow train in the Devon yard in Fredericton, NB in January 1984. You can see that the plow is on the long hood end, which is the Front of an RSC-14.

Like many RSC-14s, CN 1765 noodled around the Maritimes on various branch lines. It did a stint in Newfoundland at the Port-aux-Basques standard gauge yard. As you can see, it was in Fredericton in 1984 and I have a Bill Linley shot of it in Millville near Nackawic in 1983. I also have a record of it in Halifax in September 1990.

CN 1765 holds the distinction of being the power for the last CN train to Woodstock, NB on March 26, 1987. It had just a caboose on the way to Woodstock, and came back with two empty flour cars from Karnes Bakery and a covered hopper. CN service to Woodstock ended on April 1 of that year when ice from the spring flood took out the east span of CP's bridge at Upper Woodstock (credit to Brian Barchard, I think, for this information).

The CN Cyclopedia shows that CN 1765 was built as RS-18 3864 in 1960. It was rebuilt and renumbered in 1975 by replacing the 4-axle trucks with 6-axle (middle un-powered) trucks and reducing the horsepower from 1800 to 1400. She was retired on September 30, 1993 but served a short second life with the Cape Breton & Central Nova Scotia Railway before being retired again in late 1995. CN Lines says she was used for parts, and presumably she has been scrapped.

Fredericton Train Station Update

There hasn't been anything in the news lately, but looking at the train station webcam, I can see a lot of change from when I was last there.

Watch the webcam

Fredericton Train Station Update

On September 17 I visited the Fredericton train station to see how construction was going. As I mentioned earlier, the old baggage shed was removed. In September work was well underway on the foundation for the new building that will be attached to the station. This building will house the main portion of the NB Liquor store.

Here's the rear of the train station where the shed used to be attached.


Another view from the rear. I tried to get the whole foundation in the shot.


Note the old Hartt Shoe Factory in the background, on the other side of York Street.


Bird Construction is working on this phase of the construction. Note the pile of bricks in the foreground. They have taken great pains to preserve as many original materials as possible.


These two fellows are two former presidents of the Fredericton Friends of the Railway, an advocacy group that fought to have the station restored. My good friend Tim Scammell is on the left, and I'm on the right.


Nice to see the work progressing!

Fredericton Train Station Renovation Delayed

CBC is reporting that the renovation of the Fredericton train station has been delayed. The cause is reported to be delays in the federal approvals process. As a protected building, all changes to the building have to be approved before work can commence.

The completion date has been pushed back to December 2010. It was originally scheduled to be completed by this month.

The article reports that Bird Construction will begin work this week. I understand a sod-turning ceremony is slated for Wednesday.

Fredericton Station Baggage Shed Removed

This morning a backhoe made short work of the baggage shed on the back of the train station in Fredericton. These photos were yoinked from Tim Scammell.

Here's the station sans baggage shed.

Nice to see progress and I look forward to seeing more. Don't forget about the webcam!

EDIT: Here's a Daily Gleaner article.

Fredericton Train Station Work To Resume in July

The Daily Gleaner reports that work should resume on the Fredericton train station in July of this year. They have been waiting for approval for their plans to restore the front part of the station, and build the liquor store annex on the rear where the freight shed currently stands. Approval has been given by the federal cabinet, but the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada must sign off on the final plans and that has not happened yet.

After the rush to replace the roof, nothing has happened in the summer to date. I'm glad to hear there is planning work going on behind the scenes.

Fredericton Train Station Gets Refurbishment Go-Ahead

The Daily Gleaner is reporting that the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada has given its approval in principle for the refurbishment of the train station in Fredericton. The station will have the main section refurbished, and the baggage section on the rear will be demolished. The Fredericton Railway Company (owned by J.D. Irving) must still submit detailed plans for approval.

Read the article.

Fredericton Train Station Article

Here's another article on the rebuilding of the Fredericton train station. There are a few inaccuracies in the history of the station (i.e. it had passenger service again from November 15, 1981 to early 1985) but it is worth a read.

Fredericton Train Station Update

The Fredericton station is coming along nicely. I saw it Monday (March 15) and the roof appears to be done. The trim along the edge of the roof needs to be put in, and the column at the front needs to be replaced. There are piles of materials taken from the station around the site, including the original bricks. No doubt a few people have taken a brick or two as a souvenir.

Just to prove I was there...

Fredericton Train Station Webcam

This is too cool! Fredericton train station webcam

Click the link above, or the picture below, to view the webcam.

I see workers toiling away on the front of the station right now. Amazing.

Hat tip to Tim Scammell for posting the link!

Fredericton Train Station Article

There was an article in the Daily Gleaner today about the Fredericton train station. My good friend Tim Scammell was interviewed for the piece.

Fredericton Station Update

Work on the Fredericton train station is progressing well. The work is being done by the Urban Farmer. Their intent is to preserve as much of the original station as possible during the construction.

The front canopy has been removed.


The distinctive red cross is preserved, thankfully. This used to be on the front of the canopy.


In fact, a lot of the roof has been removed.



There is an article in the Daily Gleaner about the refurbishment. Also, Charles Leblanc has pictures.

EDIT: I forgot to credit Fredericton Friends of the Railway president, and good friend, Tim Scammell for the photos. Mea culpa.