Canadian Railroads > Train arriving with ex-Reading Crusader cars

Dec 1980
Arriving Toronto with a couple of the ex-Reading cars.
Including one of the two observation cars (302) built by Budd in 1937 and acquired by CN in 1962.
Gary

 

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Pretty nifty. I like the metal "CN"s added to the car. Not sure if they got a full shopping upon arrival at CN, but initial use was on Montreal to Quebec corridor. Seems just the right size for that, whereas the Montreal to Windsor corridor trains could be enormous. Maybe VIA channeled their inner Reading when sizing the Venture trains.

one obs is for sale now

dan Wrote:
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> one obs is for sale now
I believe the second observation car is at the RR Museum of PA is in Strasburg.  (east of Lancaster PA)

Thank you for sharing these interesting photographs. Did CN and VIA use the ex-Crusader cars in a dedicated consist, or were they intermingled with other cars?

 

rrhistorian Wrote:
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> Thank you for sharing these interesting
> photographs. Did CN and VIA use the ex-Crusader
> cars in a dedicated consist, or were they
> intermingled with other cars?
>
I can tell you only my observations.  For a long time they operated only as a set.  One of the "observation cars" was a coach and the other was a Club Car with 2 + 1 seating.  Later I did observe a couple of coaches mixed in with other equipment.