DCHP-3

end of steel

DCHP-1 (pre-1967)

Entry from the DCHP-1 (pre-1967)

This entry may contain outdated or offensive information, terms, and examples.

1a

the farthest point to which railway service extends; the terminus of a railway.

See: head of rail,head of steel(def. 2),railhead(def. 1b),steel(def. 1)

Quotations

1909
Edmonton is the end of steel. Three lines converge here: the Canadian Northern, the Canadian Pacific, and the Grand Trunk Pacific.
1938
The "Muskeg" was just pulling out, headed not south for The Pas but north for Mile 214, which was then the "end of steel" on the Hudson Bay Railway.
1962
The railroad terminus--the "end of steel"--is at Waterways, Alberta. . . .
1b

the most recently laid tracks of a railway under construction; the farthest point to which tracks have been laid.

See: head of steel(def. 1)

Quotations

1933
Winter, therefore, had scarcely gripped the country, when an engine drawing a train of ballast trucks and two steam shovels steamed to the end of steel. . . .
1964
The end of steel now is 140 miles from its terminal point at the Hay River, N.W.T. . . .
2

a community at the end of a railway line.

Quotations

1913
The weather had favored them and eventually they had found themselves in Athabaska, end-of-steel!
1935
It is a drama which finds its foci on those days when . . . trains leave for that most eloquent place-name to be found in any railway guide--"the end-of-steel."
1961
It was on April 5th, 1902, that my husband and I arrived at Strathcona, Alberta, the end of steel. . . .