I saw this interesting negative on eBay and had to have it. It’s pretty rare to see such an odd combination of locomotives and cars on a train, so after a few days and a few dollars, it was mine.
I knew that the train was in London, Ontario (the CN building behind it is pretty distinctive) and the notes with the negative said it was taken in October 1995.
Still… why would there be a train with CN, CP and GO Transit locomotives, followed by a GO Transit car and two VIA Rail cars?
I decided to crowdsource the answer, and posted the photo on the Canadian Trains Facebook group. Within a few hours, the answer was at hand.
This train ran on October 20, 1992 – not 1995 – as an Operation Lifesaver special.
Bill Miller said the train ran from Toronto to London on CN tracks, where it backed over to CP and returned to Toronto via the CP Galt subdivision, still with the CN locomotive leading.
The consist was:
- CN 9669
- CP 6034
- GOT 543
- GOT 2304
- VIA coach
- CN “Coureur du Bois” (crew dormitory)
- CN “Sandford Fleming” (observation car)
Initially I thought there were two VIA coaches, but one of the cars in the image above was actually a CN car in VIA blue and yellow, likely painted when VIA was still part of CN.
While I was scanning some other negatives I had in my “pile to scan”, I found this image showing the same train turning on a wye. The whole train is visible here, including some suited gentlemen visible through the large window on the tail end of “Sandford Fleming”. Note the railfans!
I did a little research in Branchline magazine back issues. In the October 1992 issue, it was noted that the two CN cars were on an “operations special” from Winnipeg to Chicago to Toronto in late August, then they were on the Renfrew subdivision on September 10 to commemorate the creation of the Arnprior-Nepean Railway Company.
The November 1992 Branchline mentions an Operation Lifesaver display train at Union Station in Toronto between September 21 and 25. That train included:
- Locomotive GOT 540
- Cab car GOT 227
- CP Safety Instruction car 51
- CP display cars 80 and 81
- VIA baggage car 9628
- VIA coach 5522
- CP flatcar 315078 with a TTC information bus
- VIA dome-observation car “Riding Mountain Park”
In the January 1993 “Branchline”, there was an article on Operation Lifesaver by Raymond Farand. The article mentioned a special train that ran in Quebec in November 1992 on CP lines, with CP 9019, CP exhibit car 91 and business car “Wentworth”.
I don’t know why Operation Lifesaver was running these display / exhibit trains. At first I thought it was for their 10th anniversary, but they were founded in 1981 so this was their eleventh year. Maybe someone will enlighten me in the comments?
Eric Gagnon helpfully shared a link to this article on White River Division about the same train. It includes a colour photo from pretty much exactly the same spot as the lead photo in this post, as well as detail on each locomotive in the consist.
The reason why the two CN business cars are painted in the VIA style blue and yellow has to do with CN adopting that livery also for the business car fleet. It partially has to do with VIA being a part of CN for the brief period from the spring of 1976 when VIA-CN was created untill the short period when VIA Rail was a subsidiary of CN from 1977 to early 78 when it be and a standalone crown corp. The main reason for adopting the blue and yellow was it was easier to hide dirt build up than on the lite gray (off white) sides. You wouldn’t need to clean the sides as often. Also it as a bit easier to paint an entire side blue than having to mask off sections to paint in the black and gray. Also note there’s no VIA logo on the cars. The yellow stripes go right to the ends. Usually a small white CN noodle logo or a CN noodle with the word rail was located under the stripes towards the cars ends to show the cars are CNR owned and not VIA. OF note there were still a few CN business cars in the black and lite gray will into the 80’s. Most were repainted blue and yellow but a few stragglers existed untill retirement or getting repainted. The only hold out on CN was in Newfoundland. CN subsidiary TerraTransport never adopted the VIA style blue and yellow. They kept the black and lite gray for what was left of the passenger fleet and the sole business car “Terra Nova 2”. This car featured the red TerraTransport arrows logo and name TerraTransport – CN written in black on the side. A few coach cars also got this logo. The rest of the passenger cars kept the red CN noodle logo.
I always liked the blue and yellow – very distinctive compared to the off white and black. I have seen a few photos showing that small CN logo at the end of the car.
VIA photos from the very late 1970s / early 1980s show quite a rainbow of car colours with blue and yellow, white and black, and stainless cars all mixed into the same train.
There weren’t many passenger cars running on Newfoundland in VIA times, so I imagine it wasn’t worth repainting them… plus Newfoundland always did its own thing.