GT Class E3 2-6-0 Type

The period between 1860 and 1905 was marked by spectacular growth in the Canadian railway system, thanks to the birth of the Canadian nation and the resulting geographic expansion. Long before Confederation, the British had seen the building of a railway system as a timesaving link between the mother country and her Pacific colonies. Later, the discovery of gold in British Columbia led to the creation of a new British colony, which became a Canadian province in 1871 on the strength of the young Canadian government's promise to build a railway. Thus in 1876 the Intercolonial Railway system was completed, and in 1886 the Canadian Pacific inaugurated its transcontinental line. The Scotia, built in 1861 in the Great Western Railway's shops in Hamilton, was the first Canadian locomotive with a steel boiler. The Countess of Dufferin, purchased from the Northern Pacific in the United States and brought to Winnipeg in October 1877, was the first locomotive to see service in the Prairie provinces. Between 1886 and 1896, the Grand Trunk Railroad's 2-6-0 type, E3 class locomotives were built in the Pointe-Saint-Charles shops in Montreal and in the Canadian Locomotive Company's shops in Kingston. The Canadian Pacific built one hundred and ten of the D10 class a, b, and c locomotives between 1905 and 1906. Its fleet of these locomotives would later become quite impressive, with the five hundred and three engines. These stamps, designed by Ernst Roch of Montreal, continue the series begun in 1983 and shot the locomotives against a plain background, which enhances their attractiveness and complexity. The stamps in this year's grouping are wider in order to accommodate the larger dimensions of locomotives built between 1860 and 1905, while maintaining approximately the same scale used for the 1983 stamps.