Locomotive 1201
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1201 Locomotive
Description
Locomotive 1201 is an example of a late era steam locomotive that was built in Canada in 1944 and used to pull passenger trains across the country. It was the last steam locomotive built at the Canadian Pacific’s (CP) Angus Shops in Montreal and so it also embodies stories of transition (from steam to diesel), changing labour knowledge (both in terms of the manufacturing capacity at Angus and in the knowledge of steam and diesel conductors and engineers), and the place of locomotive manufacturing, particularly steam locomotives, in Canada. For the workers of CP in Montreal, 1201 held a place of significance as ‘the last’ of the steam engines; it is for this reason that this engine exists today. In the 1960s, steam engines were decommissioned and the Angus shops became a site of scrapping. As one of Bytown Railway Society volunteers has said, “Legend has it that 1201 was spared such a fate because of her reputation as the last locomotive to be constructed at Angus. Time and again, as she came to the head of the scrap line, she would mysteriously be switched to the rear.” At about the same time as this transitional and decommissioning work was taking place at Angus, the new Canada Science and Technology Museum was starting to take shape and so workers at CP pushed to have the artifact preserved as part of the new national collection. Ultimately, their actions were successful and CP 1201 was the 7th artifact to be acquired by the new museum.
Provenance
Ingenium: https://collection.ingeniumcanada.org/en/id/1967.0007.001/
Geographic Region(s)
- North America
- Montreal, Ottawa
Industrial Context
Time Period
- 1944 - 1959 - 1976
Company
In the Ingenium - Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation Collection (Ottawa, Canada)
Source Collection
Thematic Initiative
Keywords
- museum ,
- locomotive ,
- steam era ,
- closure
