Franz station

Franz railway station is a railway station located in the community of Franz, Unorganized North part Algoma District, northeastern Ontario, Canada. It is a Via Rail flag stop station on the Sudbury – White River train; service by the Algoma Central Railway ended in July 2015.

In his autobiography, Stompin' Tom: Before the Fame (Viking, 1995), Canadian country/folk-singing legend Stompin’ Tom Connors relates the story from the early 1950s of him and a travelling companion, Steve Foote, disembarking from a freight car as the train they were on slowed through Franz. “When the train slowed down at one point,” Connors writes, “we figured we must be coming into Hearst [their destination]. So we jumped off and decided to walk into town. But there was no town. There was only a railroad gang there — mainly Métis or Cree — and only one building where they all ate and slept.” A worker told them they had “made a big mistake” and were “still out in the middle of the bush.” After inquiring after the foreman for work, the latter — who “looked like a big bear” — “started up the tracks with a big shovel in his hand, hollering, ‘get the f—— out of here before I cut your heads off with this spade!’” It took Connors and Foote four and half days of walking the tracks to get to Hearst, a distance Connors estimated at over a hundred miles.