Canadian Railroads > Some Chaleur Shots from Last Weekend

As a followup to the previous thread about Skyline domes on the Ocean, here are some pictures from the June 25th trip of the Chaleur in Eastern Quebec.

I had planned this trip during the longest days of the year to try and shoot the combined train in the Matapédia Valley, at roughly 04:30 Eastern time. The heavy fog didn't exactly facilitate that, although with ISO 1600, and an f/1.4 lens, I did get at least a few viewable shots that morning.

The light rain or fog did lend a nice atmosphere to some of the scenes though, like this one of the 7-car Chaleur in Listiguj at 05:45. The consist was F40PH-3 6431, baggage 8612, coaches 8101 and 8124, Skyline 8512, and Chateau sleepers Richelieu, Lasalle and Lemoyne.

There is a little bit of freight on the line, mostly at Nouvelle, which is also the home base for those operations. The Chaleur passed a sleeping RS-18u there at 06:37, but didn't pause at this flag stop. Those are brand new 78 ft. 100 lb rails, ready to be installed somewhere on the line, so they seem to be serious about the maintenance at least.

At Coin-du-Banc, the railway takes a shortcut on a sandbar across a large bay to Barrachois. On a sunny day, the train would be running just about directly out of the sun, but the fog allowed for this shot and still maintained some detail. In this location, they're actually running on 132 lb. CWR. Not exactly a worn out branch line at all.

GTD

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Sort of a 'mini Canadian' . . . looks good . . . like the paint job on the loco . . . thanks for getting up so early to catch this !!

A neighbor to the south and west here, wondering why the Baggage-Dormitory is cut into the consist dorm first...

~ BZ

Notch16 Wrote:
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> A neighbor to the south and west here, wondering
> why the Baggage-Dormitory is cut into the consist
> dorm first...
>
> ~ BZ

I've never really thought about it, but I'm pretty sure they don't use the dorm section for the on-board crew. When I've been a passenger on the train, the crew seems to be assigned some roomettes for sleeping. The Skyline is also "backwards", at least from the way they were operated by CP.

GTD



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/11 12:50 by cn6218.

cn6218 Wrote:
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> Notch16 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > A neighbor to the south and west here,
> wondering
> > why the Baggage-Dormitory is cut into the
> consist
> > dorm first...
> >
> > ~ BZ
>
> I've never really thought about it, but I'm pretty
> sure they don't use the dorm section for the
> on-board crew. When I've been a passenger on the
> train, the crew seems to be assigned some
> roomettes for sleeping. The Skyline is also
> "backwards", and least from the way they were
> operated by CP.
>
> GTD

Soon after VIA acquired the CPR equipment, they removed the dormitory from the baggage cars. The next change was to operate the Skyline cars in reverse. Obviously, the seats in the dome had to be reinstalled. The reason for reversing the cars was to provide the dining area (the original coach seating space) closer to the sleeping cars. For several years the Skyline car was the diner for the Canadian in the off-season until the upgraded Silver and Blue sleeping car service started in April 1992. Many will remember that the Skyline food service in the CPR days was provided only in the small section and the larger section at the front was coach seating, although in the summer some of the Skylines had the seats removed, to be replaced with tables and chairs for dining or in rare cases lounge seating with old parlour car seats.

why the Baggage-Dormitory is cut into the
> consist
> > dorm first...

Short platforms?

Ted in OR

DrawingroomA is correct - the crew dormitory section in the ex-CP baggage dormitory cars was gutted many years ago to convert the cars to full baggage cars. The positioning of the bag dorm on the train in the pictures is no doubt random based on the direction the car happened to be facing in the coach yard. It is actually more common to have one of the ex-UP Budd 1963 baggage RPO cars (also gutted and made into full baggage cars when acquired by VIA Rail) on the Chaleur.