The decision made by the CPR, just a few years before World War I, to construct in Calgary the prairie West's second major repair and railway car shop facility (the first was in Winnipeg) had profound social and political consequences. The acres of locomotive sheds that comprised the Ogden Yard employed several thousand skilled tradesmen and labourers. In consequence, the residential subdivisions, such as "imaginatively" named Ceepeear, that grew quickly around the shops possessed a definite working-class flavour. The presence in the city of so many railway workers meant also that the voice of labour was not unknown in civic politics and that Calgary would play an important role in the western labour movement.
This interior view of the CPR's Ogden Shops dates from 1945 and shows a steam locomotive being lifted by a 250-ton crane.
