In a Train-yard, Looking East, June 1910

Of this image, Colin Churcher writes — "A June 1910 picture (PA-42484) [no photographer credit] taken from the cupola of a snowplow on the main line at the Bank Street Yard Office looking east.  It shows the Isabella Street Coal Shed with a decided tilt."

Mr Churcher probably knows more about Ottawa rail history than anyone else in the city, so when he says we're looking out from the cupola of a snowplow, he is to be trusted. Plus it would explain the pointiness of the foreground mass. The fellow in the middle of the picture looks like Buster Keaton, about to pull one of his hair-raising train stunts, so yes, we're in a train-yard.

To be specific, this is, was, J.R. Booth's Canada Atlantic Railroad (then styled C.A.R.) Bank Street Yard — Bank Street because, as it happens, the snow-plow car (engine?) sits at or very near the point at which Bank Street dove under the train tracks, affording the rails a level passage.

I hadn't noticed Churcher's "decided tilt" of the coal shed (middle distance, right side of the tracks) now it has become hard to unsee. Compared with the two small buildings in the foreground, it indeed looks ready to topple backwards. That said, Goad 1912 depicts the shed as "still standing" two years later — I've here coloured it to look like a strawberry freezie (I was in a lot of pain and on drugs at the time.)

For context, here's Goad's sheet showing the tracks immediately to the west, crossing Bank Street (as our snowplow does in the old photo.)

Indeed, I've boxed the plow's rough location in red (and notice how the tracks ramify anew west of Bank.) 

But let's return to the upper map. Notice the brick (pink) furniture factory on the SE corner of Metcalfe at Isabella. If you look at the old photo, you'll see two features on the right horizon — a water tower and a tall chimney stack. Both are part of said furniture factory. The ground occupied by that factory is now the west of the Loblaws on Isabella. The water tower stood on the corner of Metcalfe and Pretoria, next to what is now the Loblaws loading dock.