Chris Andreae

22 Maitland Street, corner of Maitland Street and Philip Street

I’m right now standing in front of John’s Fruit. This building was formerly the London and Port Stanley Railway Car Shops. In the 1960s the City of London owned the London and Port Stanley Railway, and then they sold it to the Canadian National Railway. It was through my father, he knew somebody at the city of London that had control over the car shops, and my dad asked him if I could go down and look at the car shops. One thing that was really amazing is at the back of one of these drawers was a couple of shoe boxes, and they were letters written from the girlfriend to the boyfriend who was working in the car shops. And I don’t know why he stored them in the back of this drawer of blueprints, but they were…like, there must have been about forty of them. And they were like “oh my dear,” you know “I can’t bear to be without you, when will I see you again” kind of thing, you know.  But it just struck me as, what an odd thing to find in a car shop building. My name is Dr. Christopher Andreae. I’m a former president and current member of the Society for Industrial Archaeology.