Canadian Railroads > The Chicago Train

It's February 16, 1997 and Halifax is experiencing another snowless winter day as 148 navigates the cut between Rockingham and HOT, in the south end of the city.  Trains 148 and 149 were CN's highly touted "Halifax to Chicago in 72 hours" service which lasted until the early 2000s.  In the quest to run fewer and longer trains, 148's traffic got bumped to 122 in Montreal, adding almost a day to transit times, and before long 122 was combined with 120, carrying everything that was going to Halifax.  But back before PSR, the amply powered train was running down the transfer track between Jubilee Rd. and Belmont-on-the-Arm, in one of Halifax's most exclusive neighbourhoods.  The transfer track is noticeably lower than the mainline on the left, in order to accommodate double-stacks under the many concrete arch bridges spanning the cut.  At this time, the only train that regularly used the mainline was VIA's Ocean, and that track was taken up in the early 2000s.  More recently, plans have been set in motion to relay that track in order to move containers in and out of the south end by rail rather than truck.  Work has yet to start on that project however.

GTD

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Niice photo and description. Interesting, visually stacks don't look like fitting.

Bob

I remember all the big projections CN made about how they were going to run so much container traffic through the new St. Clair Tunnel between Chicago and the Atlantic ports. It has never come close to their forecast. Autoracks and other tall cars fit, too, so it wasn't a wasted project, but the Chicago container market has simply never borne out for them.