Canadian Railroads > Three lives of BCR SD40-2 757

Happy Canada Day to all my friends north of the border!

Here are three lives of BC Rail SD40-2 757.

1)  BCR Extra north at Mons, BC has the 757/710/707/KCC 107 up front.
2)  For the movie Narrow Margin with Gene Hackman the 757 was dressed up as VIA 757 for the movie.  Photographed at Squamish 6-24-89 the train waits for the weekend to end to get back to filming.
3)  On my last visit to the BC Rail 4-30-90 I was invited up into the cab of M630 717 as the southbound was waiting on their helpers to arrive from Pemberton.  Here the 757 is leading the helpers into a side track where the head end power will pull ahead and back down on to them for a seven unit head end power set .  First and last time I ever saw head end helpers on a BC Rail road freight.

Brian Ambrose
Renton, WA

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I think that the first picture is the best, (colour wise).

cvrrr

Posted from Android

All nice but I love that compostion on the 3rd one.  And you got the lighting perfect showing both inside and outside the cab.  Great operational interest photo.

Andy

Great photos!  Thanks for sharing them.

For the second photo, if VIA was allowing its logo and its passenger consist to be in the movie, why didn't they just supply an engine as well?  Did the producers want a paint scheme that matched the one on the rest of the train?

Magellan

I like'em all. wag216

Magellan13 Wrote:
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> Great photos!  Thanks for sharing them.
>
> For the second photo, if VIA was allowing its logo
> and its passenger consist to be in the movie, why
> didn't they just supply an engine as well?  Did
> the producers want a paint scheme that matched the
> one on the rest of the train?

That passenger consist looks too rag-tag to be the genuine VIA article, so . . .

I checked the Wikipedia entry for the movie and found this:  "The train used for both interior and exterior scenes consisted of a BC Rail SD40-2 diesel locomotive and 12 privately owned passenger railcars, all painted in Via Rail Canada livery to represent the Toronto-Vancouver passenger train. Some of the distant exterior shots were filmed using a model train."

I also checked a Vancouver-based rail publication and found this: "The train used in filming the new movie 'Narrow Margin' was composed of BCR SD40-2 #757, BCR "B unit" RCC 4 (ex-CP CFB16-4), VIA baggage car #9614 (ex-CP) [this should be ex-CN], sleeper Regal Creek #800226, DRCX coach #5200, DRCX diner #8085, Amtrak coaches #5428, 5421, 5663, 5202, Amtrak diners 7031/1". [the latter must be a typo]  This adds up to 10 cars, not 12, but the photo seems to show more than 10, so maybe the railfan who reported this in 1989 missed a few.

This publication also states that:  "Temporary (2 dimension) depots were built at Garibaldi (Las des Arcs) and Porteau (Monashee), while Squamish became Walltutik briefly, with signs over the station name boards."



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/20 03:49 by railsmith.

Very interesting!  Thanks for the sleuthing.

Magellan