The CN Pointe Saint-Charles Shops are long gone.  However this clip gives you ideas for the modelling of CN maintenance facilities.  This beta video was edited in honour of the 50th anniversary of OVAR.

My friend Kevin Miller's dad used to work at Pointe Saint-Charles truck repair shop. Here is a story he related to me after viewing the video.

"Actaully, my dad worked in the adjacent truck shop and worked on the friction bearing trucks and later roller bearing trucks. The friction bearing trucks, as one would imagine, required tremendous maintenance, especially if the journal ends were not properly oiled. Hence the traditional image of a carman going up and down a train with his oil can in hand. At about the 2:11 point of the video, one sees a lathe operation. My dad told me that they could "turn" a wheel twice before the end of its servicable life. This shaving, to make it round (usually the result of "flat" wheels through excessive break applications, or simply going out of round due to wear and tear), would have an effect on the acceptable standards. Just as modellers have to ensure the KD couplers line up properly, so the the big boys!

The CN shops also had a Bessimer furnace where they could melt the metal and re-form it into virtually anything they wanted, including wheels. It was a equipped with a 500-ton hammer. The boys in the shop had an expression - "burn it!" which meant that any part which was no longer useful would end up in the furnace. He also told me that when the hammer was pounding out forms, it felt like an earthquake had struck Pointe St-Charles.

The last anecdote from those days from my dad was about the 35-ft boxcars that CN had rounded up from all over the country. At one point, the Pointe St-Charles yard was chalk a block with these boxcars all awaiting their turn in the furnace. However, a number of them, with new sides pounded out by the 500-ton hammer, became the - ta da! Pointe St-Charles carbeese!"

Here is a second video of the locomotive repair facilities. It was one of the first cameras used in railfanning by the OVAR crew in 1987.

The final video shows GMD 1s in the shop, deadline locomotives and rolling stock and carshop.

Hope you enjoyed this bit of history