Historic Calgary rail yard ends era
100-year-old Ogden shop sparked early growth in city
By Kim Guttormson, Calgary Herald April 26, 2011
Ogden, the Canadian Pacific rail yard that created an economic engine for a young Calgary and spurred the city's growth, is losing the repair shop that started it all.
Beginning in August, locomotives and rail cars will no longer be overhauled and rebuilt at the facility.
"It's the end of an era," said Jerry Thompson, who represents 154 employees at Canadian Auto Workers Local 101. "Ogden shops has been there for 100 years."
The transition will be finished by May 2012, a century after ground was first broken at the Ogden site.
Creation of the Ogden yards "was easily the most important single contributing factor to economic growth within Calgary before the oil boom of the 1950s," historian Max Foran has written. "With the establishment of the Ogden facilities, Calgary achieved its dream of becoming a major railway centre."
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