A Walk Down Main Street with Roy Oldford.

Recorded audio interview with Roy Oldford completed by Terra Barrett with the Heritage NL.

Main Street was a centre for both towns because of the train. The railway station was a sort of central point of meeting at least once or twice a day when the trains came in. The merchants were smart. I don’t know if you know the area well but next to Main Street, is a street called Bond Street that was set up for the merchants to have their storefronts on Bond Street with their backs to the station. They were smart and they said, “Look if all these passengers are coming on train and our business is coming on train why are we going to put our backs there? Why not put our fronts there?” So Main Street became a street with all of the store fronts facing the trains and the train station. Everything happened there. When the passengers came they were usually there for 20 minutes to an hour depending on what trains had to do and how much maintenance was required. So they went across to the various establishments, especially the food establishments that were there. There were a couple of chip vans, (they were called chip vans in those days) and there was two or three Chinese restaurants and retail stores.