CPR's Alyth Shops

In late June 1968, I decided to try to get a job as a laborer at the CPR's Alyth Shops. They were located on the Eastside of the Alyth Overpass across from the stockyards. I went to the office of the Laborers Foreman Max Tims, I told him that I had worked at Ogden and gave him my employee number; he said he would hire me, but he needed a birth certificate. I didn't have one to show, so I went downtown to the Bowlin Building where the Provincial Government had their offices, I applied for a new birth certificate, which would have to be sent down from Vital Statistics in Edmonton. The clerk said he could expedite my order and have it down in Calgary the next day, so the next day I picked up my new birth certificate. I went down to Alyth to see Max, I showed him my new birth certificate, but he said he could not hire me and could give me no explanation why. I figured it must have had something to do with the time I was off sick and paid by Sun Life in 1966. Anyways, that was it for the CPR, I would have to find employment elsewhere.

Alyth Shops are quite different from Ogden, that was a major repair shop. Alyth is a running repair shop that is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week It is designed to service and do light repairs to locomotives in active service. When trains arrive from Red Deer, Field, Lethbridge, Fort Macleod, and Medicine Hat the locomotives are taken from the train to the east and of the shops, where they are filled with fuel, water, and sand. The incoming locomotive engineer will book any repairs required on his report. If no repairs are required the locomotive consist world be ready to send out on another train. If repairs are required the locomotive will be moved inside one of the shops bays the repairs will be done. In the photos I have attached shows the West End of the diesel shop, where engines come out after being repaired.