The main line of the Newfoundland Railway stretched some 547
miles from St. John's to Port aux Basques. During the mid-1930s there
were scattered along the line a number of small, isolated settlements
where railway workers and their families lived for part or all of the
year. Being far removed from regular schools, the children living in
these settlements had no way to obtain a formal education. In
response to the situation, the Department of Education and the
Newfoundland Railway, in co-operation with the Anglo-Newfoundland
Development Company, devised an imaginative approach involving a
School on Wheels. For six years, this mobile schoolhouse travelled
back and forth along the main line of the Newfoundland Railway,
bringing to the children of remote locations the opportunity to attend
school and learn the Three R's -- reading, writing, and arithmetic.
In The School Car, Randy Noseworthy provides a detailed account
of the School on Wheels program, from its beginnings in 1936 through
to its discontinuance in 1942. In addition, the book documents the
history of the railway car which was used in the program, from its
origin as the private car Shawnawdithit through to its last years of
service and its ultimate fate.
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