A Twenty-One Year Visit to Gage Park

 

TH&B locomotive 103 was retired in 1956 but was spared from the scrap yard by an agreement between the railway and the City of Hamilton. It was accepted by the Hamilton Parks Board in 1956 and moved to the south side of Gage Park where it became a landmark piece for a generation of people in Hamilton.

 

Even in retirement the 103 was still used by the TH&B. Their sidings ran along Lawrence Ave. past Gage Park where the old locomotive could be easily seen by engineers. Dispatchers used it as a waypoint when shunting cars. “Push’em back as far as the ol’ 103,” was common radio chatter.

 

Many visitors to Westfield Heritage Village, where the 103 now rests, reminisce about climbing on the old engine when it was in Gage Park. As rewarding as that experience was for them it was rather punishing for the locomotive. The lack of security in the park left the engine vulnerable to vandals and thieves who broke lights and windows and stole brass fittings for their salvage value. The locomotive was fenced in by the Parks department and was receiving some care from Parks and the Upper Canada Railway Society but they didn’t have the facilities or the budget to support an effective maintenance program.

 

In 1976 Upper Canada Railway Society spokesperson Charles Doubrough petitioned the City of Hamilton to have the locomotive moved to ‘Wentworth Pioneer Village’ in Rockton where the TH&B’s Jerseyville Train Station was located. It was a debated issue but in the end the decision was made and the move was planned.

 

Aldershot Transport’s tender won the contract and in the winter of 1977, on frozen ground, a convoy of massive cranes and flatbed trailers entered Gage Park. The steel fence around the 103 was cut down and the first trailer was moved into position. Unexpected disaster struck as the weight of the tender came down on the trailer. The frozen earth compacted and the stumps of the steel fencing posts punctured the trailer’s tires in a series of staccato bursts. One can only imagine the air turning blue as the transport team worked to repair the trailer and trim the fencing in the freezing cold. They persevered however and loaded the tender and locomotive for the fifty kilometer move to Westfield.

 

The route from the park was south west, up the escarpment in the city to the ‘Mountain’, south to Highway 53, west to Highway 52 and north across the new Copetown bridge. From 52 up Highway 8 to Kirkwall Rd. the procession made its way to its new home.