Category: Old Things

Old Jack is a friend. In 2017 he made an appearance in the documentary “Forgotten Prairie” (Rueben Tschetter/Cache Productions – links below), where he took Team BIGDoer and some pals on a tour of his local area. Included, was a (now) ghost town just up the road from where he...

They’re tucked away on an otherwise disused siding, way back behind a huge maze of pipes, valves and vessels and for the most part were well hidden from view. Here, at a recently decommissioned gas plant a little south of Calgary, a most amazing collection of vintage railway equipment. With...

To work no more, so many miles travelled, now there’s time for rest. Here’s an ancient farm truck found out on the Alberta Prairie, stripped down, forgotten and abandoned, that once was a farmer’s pride and joy. Toiling away in obscurity taking grain from field to granary or to market...

Here in Calgary, alongside always busy Crowchild Trail, on the grounds of the Military Museums, there’s a plane. It’s not just any old thing with wings, but a fighter jet, a CF-5 Freedom Fighter, stuffed and mounted to appear as though streaking off into the heavens. Whoosh! Here, it’s a...

There’s this sleepy community, home to some four hundred folk, a most pleasant little burg just a short drive southeast of Edmonton. And sitting there, within sight of the busy Canadian National Railway’s transcontinental mainline is Katie’s Crossing, in business come on seventeen years and a great place to enjoy...

The Crowsnest Pass, way down south there near the British Columbia border is one of our most favourite places to visit. Can’t get enough of it. History, hiking and the outdoors all rolled into one…it’s pure bliss! And one fine evening we’re wandering the town of Coleman, a community built...

We have this friend, a most ingenious fellow who operates an unusual niche business. His firm puts up decorative lights – you know those elaborate Christmas displays or those “lit-up-like-a-pinball” show homes you see? That just may be his handiwork. But it gets better since he does it in a...

A message arrives. Come view some trucks it says…we have some old big rigs. That has our attention. Now to make it happen. It’s not anywhere close to us, but as we always manage to do, we’ll find away. It might just take some time. And so the months pass...

There is nothing more exciting than poking around an old metal collection. It’s doesn’t matter the size of it, or what’s inside, it’s always a magic experience. All those ancient cars, trucks and machinery or whatever to photograph, these rusted monuments of days past, formerly someone’s pride and joy or...

Came this close – I mean a hair width is wide in comparison close – to calling this post “Bury me when I die at the Alberta Railway Museum”. Heck, I even hinted at it in a preview of this article. As a train buff I’d relish the opportunity spending...

It’s a frigid and blustery weekend, April 2017. There’s this biting cold, a constant numbness. We’re here on on the plains of Saskatchewan, north of this little town, west of that one, a place sparsely populated, fields stretching off to the horizon in every direction. All around, the trying conditions,...

If you have a thing for history and find yourself in North Battleford Saskatchewan the Western Development Museum is a must see. It’s a fantastic facility, good sized, well regarded, with numerous exhibits indoor and out. One highlight is a representation of a 1920s era pioneer village just like one...

Stop the presses folks…we’ve reached a milestone here. This post, which you’ll soon be enjoying, is the 1000th here at BIGDoer.com. Yes, our society has produced that many pieces and in only five years to boot! Not 1000 simple photo essays, but rather painstakingly researched history write ups, in-depth articles...

It looks like an Airstream. In fact the old motorhome that’s the topic today was made by a sister company, this line and the other both sharing a strong family resemblance. Introducing the Argosy. Considered a “budget” camper by the firm, not that they were really all that inexpensive…just less...

Give us an old scrap yard to explore and we’re happy campers. Dirty, full of dangers, it’s hardly a place one would think fun, but to aficionados of the decrepit and all things damned, Team BIGDoer, it’s a giant amusement park. All the cast-away things found there, they’re not shiny...

Scrap yards are filthy dirty places, full of dangers and populated by big brawny men in grease soaked clothing, dudes you give lots of room. They roam around in “road warrior” service trucks, hammers, wrenches and cutting torches at the ready. This is where old vehicles, machinery and anything that’s...

Affectionately she’s the Big Old Red Transit Bus or simply just Big Red. Spending a great deal of its almost fifty year working career for Calgary Transit, hauling commuters or in charter service, it’s now in semi-retirement and resides with a collector in Edmonton. This iconic “GMC Fishbowl”, the most...

The old vehicles and odd bits of metal we’ll exploring this day are part of the Crowsnest Collection but separate from the main storage yard a few clicks to the east. No less interesting however, just smaller in scale, there’s all kinds of stuff here to make a photographer giddy....

Our subject today, a monster truck, in retirement but looking fine and in fully running condition, that once hauled coal in the Crowsnest Pass of Alberta. A shiny bright blue, an almost playful colour belying its brutish, all business/no-nonsense demeanour, it’s taken out once in a while for a shakedown...

Every good thing must come to an end. And with that we present the final instalment in this series where were look at the Crowsnest Collection, an incredible and diverse mix of old metal. There are trucks, lots of trucks, rare makes including the likes of Diamond T and REO,...

Time for the eagerly awaited second instalment in the series where we explore the many vintage vehicles that make up the Crowsnest Collection in Southwest Alberta. There’s an incredibly interesting mix here, trucks mostly, dating back as far as the 1930s, and as recent as the 1980s. Of varied makes...

Tag along as we explore an old equipment yard bursting to the seams with all manner of vintage vehicles, machinery and odd bits of scrap metal of every description – aka the Crowsnest Collection for the area of Alberta where it’s located. There are plenty of old trucks here, some...

The remains of an ancient tugboat can be found not terribly far from Nelson British Columbia. This craft, the wood-hulled SS Hosmer, was launched over a century ago and for many decades worked hauling barges loaded with rail cars up and down that huge body of water (more on this...

A metal leviathan, this steam tractor was built close to a hundred years ago. Today it resides at Pioneer Acres Museum in Irricana Alberta where on occasion it’s fired-up, transforming it into a fire-breathing, steam hissing, smoke belching monster put to work entertaining visitors to the venue. At rest on...

Found at Pioneer Acres Museum in Irricana Alberta (a great place, BTW, if you love old metal), the leviathan earth mover we’ll be documenting is known as a DNR Excavator. Curious looking, as though random bits of machinery were thrown together by someone without a clue as to what they...

This short and stocky brute, a GMC L7000, can be found at Pioneer Acres Museum in Irricana Alberta. A bit tattered with faded orange paint, it looks as though it’d be ready to get back to work with minimal notice. Where’s that next load going? Hidden from view behind some...

Here’s one of the largest pieces of vintage machinery we’ve ever documented. A big-boy, a giant metal monster from the 1920s, a steam driven Industrial Works Company dragline that long ago toiled away in a southern Alberta coal mine. Rescued from an uncertain future not that long ago, it’s today...

The General Motors produced New Look, “Fishbowl” to those who know and love them, was the most common transit bus of the 1960s-1980s. There were tens of thousands of them made in the US and Canada and nearly every transit agency, big or small, had some on the roster. Many...

Story and photos by Chris & Connie. The old vehicles seen below were found in a very remote corner of Alberta and date back a long time, the earliest from the 1920s, the newest, the 1960s. Some are complete or mostly so, but the oldest ones are not. They’re just...