Canadian Railroads > Eastbound "Super Continental" just west of Jasper 1973

The eastbound "Super Continental" nears its station stop in Jasper on a Spring day in 1973.

Robert Morris
Dunsmuir, CA
Robert Morris Photography

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Beautiful shot!
Brian N.

Always liked that photo. Can someone tell us what the housing on the F-unit roofs is all about?

Heard something about a very large winterization hatch, moving warm radiator air back in the engine compartment, if so was that only for later F-unit days? Or passenger F-units? Or Eastern locomotives, or mountain assignments, did the power always run from one end to the other? ...., ...?

tia and HNY.

Before the days of drones, I wondered how you got the high angle shot. I notice the pole line rising up, so I assume there was a rock cutting there. This portion of track was double tracked in the early 1980's.
 

Three original series FP9s with the winterization hatches. Excellent photo.

Is it me, or did it seem the Super C always had a lot of "head-end" mail, express, traffic! Guess this was due to the remoteness of the route? It was still on an east-west mainline, but there were additional branch lines heading off to the north (e.g. to Prince Rupert, St. Albert, etc.)..........

The remote areas of the Super Continental were across Northern Ontario.....same as the Canadian today although some of the communities have better road access now than in the Super Continental era.

Posted from Android

ghCBNS Wrote:
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> The remote areas of the Super Continental were
> across Northern Ontario.....same as the Canadian
> today although some of the communities have better
> road access now than in the Super Continental era.
>
>
> Posted from Android

Understood on northern Ontario....but still more populated areas on the original Canadian route (southern route) from Winnipeg to Vancouver via Calgary, Banff, Revelstoke, etc. The Super C seemed to still be travelling with more head-end mail and express even up to the early 1970s.....CP's southern route seems a bit more accessible with the Trans-Canada Highway nearly paralleling the CP route West of Winnipeg. Especially more accessible on southern route in winter. The northern route still had to get mail and express to distribution points even NORTH of the general east-west route - to Prince Rupert (from Jasper), Fort McMurray, Prince Albert, Churchill, etc. Passenger trains were still delivering mail and express to these points on into the VIA years - even on RDC's. Just seems the Super C route had more head-end traffic than the Canadian, Dominion, or anything CP......Not sure if this is a basis or not.....

What a great shot !
Gary

Nice pic!!

Still learning sbout the CN, the CP and Canada in general, at the time of the photo the CN was a ' Canadian Crown Corporation ' which may explain the service to the northern areas, perhaps the number of head end cars as well. Lots of pros and cons but to me they are all individual studies, lots of interesting equipment and amazing geology. Just found this Wiki and was surprised who the largest shareholder is. Quite a bit of territory to cover between the road over Yellowhead Pass opening to the present day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_National_Railway

The CN F units in that scheme were sharp IMO. I never liked the early green scheme. But that's just my opinion.

Victor A. Baird
http://www.erstwhilepublications.com



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/08/21 20:39 by wabash2800.