Canadian Railroads > VIA Rail Locations Needed Please

Bob Johnston shot a couple of VIA Rail trains but I have no locations for the photos.

1. VIA 6311 taken on 4-86.

2. VIA 6313 Taken on 3-19-88.

Thanks for your help and for looking.

Tom

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Number 1 Thunder Bay Ontario. This one gets everybody but I remember those streetlights on the Hydro poles with the porcelain multipart insulators when we were tied down there on the Sperry car. Here is a link to an earlier thread with Thunder Bay http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,3279787,3280635#msg-3280635.

Jim

Number 2 Looks like Coquitlam.

Now that spot your standing in is the West Coast Express Station.

My guess for Photo 2: Westbound east end of Smithers yard.

Chris Rye

BCR4619 Wrote:
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> Number 2 Looks like Coquitlam.

I think so...the background has changed a lot in 25 or so years but the mountains are right. Not Smithers; the tracks run pretty much dead straight through town so no curves and the station/platform is on the north side of the tracks...

Keith Robertson
Langley, BC

Number 2 is unquestionably Port Coquitlam, with the train eastbound. After moving its station half a mile from the original spot to here in 1965, CP continued to use the name of the original station, just plain Coquitlam.

But a 1988 VIA timetable shows that VIA was calling it Port Coquitlam when the photo was taken. That's the actual name of the municipality it is located in. West Coast Express continues to call it Port Coquitlam. When WCE started in 1995, a CP station namesign facing the platforms still used plain Coquitlam, but soon after, to avoid passenger confusion, CP renamed its timetable station to Port Coquitlam (MP 111.9, Cascade Subdivision).

The original site of the CP Coquitlam station was re-named MacAulay after the station moved. That's at MP 112.4 Cascade Subdivision, Mile 0.0 Westminster Subdivision.

Given the consist of mainly ex-CN stock, the photo shows train No. 4, the eastbound Super Continental, which in 1988 ran only between Winnipeg and Vancouver. Departure time from Port Coquitlam was 17:30.