Chris Andreae

22 Maitland Street, corner of Maitland Street and Philip Street

 

John’s Fruit was formerly the London and Port Stanley Railway Car Shops. The building was a fairly standard design. Every car shop can be a slightly different, but this one had four large doors with tracks going in. And there would be an inspection pit beneath the rails so you could walk underneath and see what was going on. An overhead crane for lifting bodies off the wheels so you could get the wheels out to do repairs.  There was a big area with four tracks on it and then a machine shop off to one side. The building represents a very distinctive period in the development of transportation in Ontario, well and in North America for that matter. Most of the railways like the London and Port Stanley were called inter-urban railways, and these were all built between… 1890 and 1920. So it fits into a very short distinct period of transportation development. My name is Dr. Christopher Andreae. Over the past forty plus years I have worked as a heritage planner.

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