Canadian Railroads > Bras d'Or Tuesday

The Bras d'Or was heading west on the Bedford Sub at Enfield, NS at 08:18 on July 1, 2003.  This appears to be one of the rare trips that the train ran with the full complement of 3 coaches.  Once they reached Truro, in a bit more than half an hour, a CBNS crew would take over, and the rest of the trip would be eastward on the Hopewell and Sydney Subs to Sydney.

GTD

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Nice shot !
Gary

Damn, I wish I'd ridden that route. 

Great shot, Geoff!

texchief1

Nice photograph! 

So VIA would remove and leave in Halifax the cars between the Park Dome and Skyline Dome cars (e.g. sleepers and diner), and then retain a few coaches for the trip from Halifax to Sydney..... Domes were open to anyone on the trip. Wasn't there some sort of meal service out of the Skyline Dome Car? Pre-packaged or cooked onboard? I believe the schedule was an "all-day" schedule basically from Halifax to Sydney so that technically would mean breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but guess they could just get away with lunch if they really wanted to. I forget the exact schedule, but I know there were some "stops" made along the way, hence the longer schedule as compared to the RDC (Dayliner) schedules of past. 

Thanks for posting! Wish this train had lasted longer and operated twice a week. I had heard they were working to try and do a Friday departure to try and get a better market reach, in addition to the Tuesday, but that was being proposed as the curtain finally fell. 

I rode the last trip of the 3rd season, and we had two coaches on that trip.  The domes were open to anyone (there was only one "class" of ticket, roughly $200, one way).  I couldn't for the of me figure why anyone wouldn't want to spend the entire trip in one of the domes, but there was always plenty of room.  Had some good conversations with other passengers, mostly Americans, who were on the trip as well.

The train left Halifax at 07:30 and was scheduled into Sydney at 18:00.  I'm not sure about the eastward trips, but most of the Halifax ones were pretty close to being on time.  The original concept was to cater to the cruise ship business, but the departure from Halifax was really too early for that, although they did coordinate with a bus company to sell a one-way trip on the train and return on the bus.

I'm not sure where they prepared the meals (the Skyline is likely), but the crew would shoo us out of the domes and ahead to the coaches if we wanted to be fed.  I seem to recall breakfast as we left Sydney, but don't remember if there was supper or not.  At least two trips were the exception to the 6-car rule, and had the diner from the Ocean as well as 3 coaches.  The July 30/31, 2002 trip was one of them.  These were likely to accommodate charters from bus companies touring around the province.

GTD

On the one trip I made in 2004 breakfast and lunch were served each way.  A glass of wine was offered with lunch.  The cold meals  were served on a tray with VIA-1 china.

On the return trip from Sydney there were about 30 extra  passengers who had not been booked until the night before.  The tour bus carrying this group of British tourists had several air conditioning failures. The local tour guide told me the passengers had revolted and refused to get back on the bus and were prepared to wait for a replacement. The guide new of the Bras D'or and contacted VIA.  Although there was space on the train there wouldn't be any of the prepared meals available as they were stocked in Halifax. The people said they didn't care as long as they could get back to Halifax on a train.

The on-board crew had contacted a supermarket in Port Hawkesbury for supplies.  I can't remember if the market delivered the items to the train or if the crew went to collect them, but we had some time to walk around the town and waterfront.  The SM and the one attendant washed the dishes from the previous day's meals in the Skyline kitchen and prepared a seafood salad and some appetiser and a dessert.  The passengers were impressed with this service.  One of the tourists was a travel writer and told me she was going to write a positive review of VIA when she returned to England.  

As a bonus, the airconditioning worked well throughout the train.