There is a great new website just posted to me today on the history past/present of the C.P.R,it is really well done if anyone is interested in it here is the website www.cprheritage.com
Happy railroading to all Scott Vancouver B.C
Hi Scott,
Many thanks for your advice re New Westminster yard. I will be sure to visit there in the next few weeks when I come over from the UK. If ever you are over here and want to do some train spotting (our equivalent to railfanning), please do not hesitate to contact me.
Cheers
Thanks for the website. The photo of Signal Hill in St. Johns brought back memories. One good turn deserves another. If you can get it you may enjoy The Impossible Railway by Pierre Berton.
Can’t find the site, look up : Canadian Pacific R A I L W A Y
If you go back to the first post on this thread you will find, in the last line, a url to copy and post. Do that. There you will find a section of photographis. One of those photos is a sene of Telegraph Hill in St. Johns, Newfoundland. Once upon a time long ago there was a famous named train that ran from Port aux Basques to St. Johns, the Caribou.
The Caribou was affectionately known as the Newfie Bullet as it meandered across the Province. I ride it but only in my dreams. By the time I got to Newfoundland it had vanished. But the Ocean, which I took from Toronto to Halifax, Nova Scotia, still runs. You can stop at Antigonish on the way and learn about “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime.”
John, when did the Ocean run from Toronto to Digby? All of the information I have shows it to have been operated between Montréal and Halifax on the CN.
Johnny,
I think you are right. I took the train from Toronto (where I was living) to Halifax. So I think I must have changed trains in Montreal. And I spent a few days in Halifax touring around. Then I got a train to Digby and toured around the Annapolis Valley. Then my wife went back home but I continued by train to North Sydney and took a ferry to Port Aux Basques, New Foundland, visited friends at Corner Brook and went on to St. Johns. Then I hitch hiked back across the island. While in New Foundland I heard about the Antigonish Movement founded by Fr. William Coady at St. Francis Xavier University. I stopped in Antigonish and went to the University but I did not find anyone to tell me much about the movement. It was summer and most people were away. Then I went home.
Aside from the Ocean the trains I was on were often very local–sometimes no more than one or two Budd cars.
So as I reconstruct I’m sure the Ocean ended in Halifax. There was a lot of train service between Toronto and Montreal and I think there still is so most likely I just changed trains in Montreal.
John