On September 2, 2021 I received an email from Richard Manicom that would lead to a lot of back-and-forth, some great knowledge exchanges, an article in CN Lines magazine, and the map above.
Richard aka “King Richard” aka “Dick Manicom” contacted me because he and Bill Linley were writing an article for CN Lines magazine. Bill and Richard were friends for a long time, and back in 1963, they rode a mixed train from Joffre to Monk, Quebec together with Dick’s younger brother. Apparently the CN crew was quite surprised that anyone wanted to actually ride the train.
He contacted me because, while searching for information on the CN Monk subdivision, he came across this blog post I wrote in 2014. It was about the VIA Rail Ocean train and its possible fate given that CN had announced their abandonment of the Newcastle subdivision (CN was persuaded to retain the subdivision with a big cash infusion, so the Ocean has continued on its usual route).
The post included a map I drew of New Brunswick and part of Quebec, basically the exact region that Richard and Bill were covering in their article. Richard asked if I would be willing to draw the map for their article, with more detail and focusing more on western New Brunswick and the area between NB and Quebec City.
We emailed back and forth a lot, and I kept sending revisions of the map for their review and comments. I drew the map in the Paint.NET program, which is a fine program for editing and drawing images. It’s no Photoshop but it is easy to use, and it is free for personal use.
The final version (rev 7) had 16 layers in it. It was a lot of work!
Here’s rev 2 to give you an example of how we started out.
The map was accepted by CN Lines editor Kevin Holland and the article was published in Volume 21, Number 1, which came out in May 2022. The ten page article “Mixed to Monk” featured two maps – a detailed map of the Monk subdivision in 1963 by Matthieu Lachance, and mine showing the Monk subdivision in the context of the overall region.
The article is excellent and well researched, and I’m proud of my contribution to the article. Several other people contributed to the article beyond Bill and Richard, and Matthieu and I, including Dave Knowles, Dave Stremes, Danny McCracken, Sean Robitaille and Ken Goslett.
Sadly, Richard died in August 2022, shortly after the article came out. He was 75. Read his obituary here.
I never met Richard, but I really enjoyed our virtual work together. I wish I could have met him in person.
His Zenfolio site is still online, so please go browse some of his excellent photography.