Great Canadian Railway Journeys

[melmerby]

Hi all

 

Following on from his Alaskan jaunt Michael Portillo will be in Canada for some travel around the maritime provinces of Canada.

 

Starts in Halifax Nova Scotia

Monday 14th January 2019. BBC2 18:30

 

Keith

Edited January 14, 2019 by melmerby

[melmerby]

After starting in the Atlantic coast provinces for the second week Michael moves to the west and Vancouver BC

 

Keith

[railroadbill]

Saw the Halifax episode tonight, worth watching I thought.

[melmerby]

Saw the Halifax episode tonight, worth watching I thought.

Agreed.

I watch for the scenery,culture etc. and not just trains

(Is that the only episode where he never set foot on a train, tram, subway etc? )

 

Keith

[JCL]

I think you'll enjoy the Vancouver one. It'll be interesting to see if he's heading across the Rockies or up the coast towards Whistler. Either way, there's a lot of geography going on. I'll see if I can catch it on Youtube at some point.

[melmerby]

Did anybody realise the coaches on the train MP was using are the ex-Nightstar coaches sold to the Canadians?

 

Keith

[AMJ]

I thought that the coaches looked a bit like Mk III stock and was wondering if they were night star as they are smaller than the loco and other stock. Nice to know some one else spotted that.  Bogies looked similar to those on Mk III's.

[dibber25]

I thought that the coaches looked a bit like Mk III stock and was wondering if they were night star as they are smaller than the loco and other stock. Nice to know some one else spotted that.  Bogies looked similar to those on Mk III's.

 

I missed the beginning of the programme and assumed that the rolling stock had been mentioned. Can't believe ANYONE would make a programme about VIA 14/15 without mentioning that we sold those cars to Canada at a tiny fraction of their cost to the UK taxpayer. Politics, perhaps? Essentially they are Mk4 bodies on Class 158 bogies. The Canadians have done huge amounts of alteration to some of them (having bought many of them as empty shells) including creating disabled access cars with a large doorway cut in the side, all-seat coaches, and dining cars. They ride much better than the 60-year-old stainless steel cars which form most of their other stock, but they are not popular with VIA staff due to frequent equipment failures and their unsuitability to the extremes of the Canadian climate. Nevertheless there are no plans to replace them in the near future. (CJL)

[dibber25]

What might have been shown to make it more of a RAILWAY journey:

 

VIA 14 at Halifax NS in 2012

 

Dining car interior

 

Inside the strangest coach of all. This is nothing more than a coupling converter car to enable the Nightstar gangway to be connected to standard Canadian cars (we had a stainless steel cafeteria car on the back of VIA 15, in place of the tail-dome-sleeper 'Park' car that Mr. Portillo had. These converter cars contain an emergency equipment locker but little else. They would be good for holding a barn dance!.(CJL)

Edited January 17, 2019 by dibber25

[melmerby]

Via Rail were also criticised for wasting tax payer's money on unsuitable rolling stock that needed a small fortune to make them usable!

 

However they were the first "new" stock that they had had for 20 years.

Looks like their time is running out as new trains are on order.

 

Keith

Edited January 17, 2019 by melmerby

[jonny777]

I rarely watch any of Portillo's railway programmes, because the railway content seems to be minimal when I do watch, and the two Canadian ones are no exception. 

 

However, I will watch the series just for the scenery. I have always dreamed of going to Canada and sampling their long distance train travel; but may need the lottery fairy to be generous. 

[dibber25]

Via Rail were also criticised for wasting tax payer's money on unsuitable rolling stock that needed a small fortune to make them usable!

 

However they were the first "new" stock that they had had for 20 years.

Looks like their time is running out as new trains are on order.

 

Keith

 

Yes, but the new trains are for the Quebec City-Windsor corridor, to replace mainly LRC cars and provide extra capacity, not to replace the 'Renaissance' cars (as they call the Nightstar stock). What was Portillo doing tonight? He alighted at some remote country station to go to Quebec, but he alighted from the 'Ocean' which runs between Halifax and Montreal and goes nowhere near Quebec City. I know they play fast and loose with continuity in his programmes but...... (CJL) 

[melmerby]

Yes, but the new trains are for the Quebec City-Windsor corridor, to replace mainly LRC cars and provide extra capacity, not to replace the 'Renaissance' cars (as they call the Nightstar stock). What was Portillo doing tonight? He alighted at some remote country station to go to Quebec, but he alighted from the 'Ocean' which runs between Halifax and Montreal and goes nowhere near Quebec City. I know they play fast and loose with continuity in his programmes but...... (CJL) 

It does say on the Via Rail Wiki pages that they are using some Renaissance stock on that route and it will be retired when the new Siemens kit arrives.

 

Keith

Edited January 17, 2019 by melmerby

[dibber25]

It does say on the Via Rail Wiki pages that they are using some Renaissance stock on that route and it will be retired when the new Siemens kit arrives.

 

Keith

 

Interesting. Unless the Siemens kit includes some sleeping cars, it sounds like that means the end of 'The Ocean' as a through Montreal-Halifax service. I have seen suggestions that VIA was looking at increased frequency but shorter distance services on part of that route. (CJL)

[Pacific231G]

Portillo is clearly a lover of railways and rail travel without that requiring him to be a knowledgable railway enthusiast (though he may well be) and his programmes have always been about the journeys and the places the train takes him to than about any details of the railways themselves. 

 

It's an approach I can totally understand. In my twenties I travelled around Europe by rail, best of all travelling on a steam hauled mixed train on an OBB  "lokalbahn" only a few miles from Vienna. I couldn't though tell you anything about the coaches I travelled in (except that SNCF couchettes were particularly uncomfortable as day carriages)  and far less about the mostly electric locos pulling them (I was though intrigued to see an obviously American diesel pulling the train I was on in Yugoslavia as I'd seen such locos in N. America the summer before)

 

In the latest episode i  was intrigued by the stretch of apparently disused track and restored station in the Village Historique Acadien that he visited. The gare (station) is mentioned on their website but nothing about whether the railway is used for anything*  or is just a static feature

 

* To keep it car free, visitors can only reach the restored Landaise village of Marqueze in South West France by a three kilometre train ride to the écomusee from Sabres. This is clearly not the case in  the Village Historique Acadien but I wondered if a similar idea had once been used there.

[dibber25]

Including a mention that these coaches were built in the Uk for the Channel Tunnel service and never used would, I would have thought, have been relevant and interesting to a UK audience without requiring anyone to be a railway enthusiast. They could even have had a quick screen shot of the 'Metro-Cammell, Birmingham' builders plate that I seem to recall forms the tread plate in every doorway. (CJL)

[melmerby]

 He alighted at some remote country station to go to Quebec, but he alighted from the 'Ocean' which runs between Halifax and Montreal and goes nowhere near Quebec City. I know they play fast and loose with continuity in his programmes but...... (CJL) 

He alighted at Sainte-Foy which he said was "for Quebec" and is shown as such on the Via Rail map for The Ocean.

 

Keith

 

EDIT Sainte-Foy is on the outskirts of Quebec City on the same side of the river.

I don't know how the train does the journey as it needs to cross the river by Charny and then do a reversal from there to get back to the main route of the Ocean on the south bank

Edited January 18, 2019 by melmerby

[Pacific231G]

Including a mention that these coaches were built in the Uk for the Channel Tunnel service and never used would, I would have thought, have been relevant and interesting to a UK audience without requiring anyone to be a railway enthusiast. They could even have had a quick screen shot of the 'Metro-Cammell, Birmingham' builders plate that I seem to recall forms the tread plate in every doorway. (CJL)

It might well but I wonder if VIA even mentioned that to the programme's researcher. Serendipity aside you tend to find out what you're looking for and, as details of rolling stock simply don't figure in this series, it's likely that nobody thought to raise it. There was also no mention of the Budd stainless steel dome/club cars that were the last two vehicles in the train and I was definitely curious about those having travelled in one on the Rio Grande Zephyr through the Colorado Rockies in 1972. 

 

Back in the early 1980s the Swanage Railway once furnished me with a steam hauled train for a couple of hours to film a sequence about carriage prints. Their compartment stock had the holders (our other local preserved line, the MHR didn't) but I couldn't tell you from which company the coaches had originated- LSWR or SR presumably as I don't think they were mk 1s- or even the loco they used as that simply wasn't relevant to my script.

The film was by the way about BR's archive of photographic plates being transferred to OPC in Bournemouth for publication in some kind of joint venture and introducing the the story with the reporter aboard a steam hauled train "remembering" the once common carriage prints made a very pleasant opening before we went to OPC for the meat of the story. ISTR that the plates had been stored in less than ideas conditions under Paddington station and most of them were of GW buildings and installations. The GW did though encourage their official photographers to use up any spare plates on a few pretties or vistas that would be useful to the publicity department including for carriage prints. I think they took out extra plates for that purpose but don't know to what extend other railways companies did the same.

 

Back OT. I've just had a look at the Village Historique Acadien, that Portillo visited in the latest programme, on Google Earth and photos. There appears to be about 300-400m of a single fairly well laid track running across the western part of the site and roughly centred on the restored station. There is a vague line through the trees that would extend from the eastern end of the rails via a level crossing to a site adjoining the main car park and that would give a total length of about 1km. There is though no sign of any earthworks or grading for that, so the track laid may just be purely cosmetic to set off the station. An old caboose seems to mark one end of the line of rails and there are no turnouts.

 

*(I've always been grateful to the Swanage Railway and its volunteeers who turned out on a weekday morning to run a train several times up and down the same length of track while we filmed several takes plus a few exterriors of train and loco)

[Steamysandy]

I had known about the Nightstar stock on VIA but I didn't know about the German 628 dmu on tonight's episode!

[jsp3970]

I missed the beginning of the programme and assumed that the rolling stock had been mentioned. Can't believe ANYONE would make a programme about VIA 14/15 without mentioning that we sold those cars to Canada at a tiny fraction of their cost to the UK taxpayer. Politics, perhaps? Essentially they are Mk4 bodies on Class 158 bogies. The Canadians have done huge amounts of alteration to some of them (having bought many of them as empty shells) including creating disabled access cars with a large doorway cut in the side, all-seat coaches, and dining cars. They ride much better than the 60-year-old stainless steel cars which form most of their other stock, but they are not popular with VIA staff due to frequent equipment failures and their unsuitability to the extremes of the Canadian climate. Nevertheless there are no plans to replace them in the near future. (CJL)

Having ridden on both the old stainless steel fleet and the Renaissance fleet I prefer the old equipment. The trip on the Renaissance was from Truro, NS to Montreal, QC and was one of the most uncomfortable trains I have ever ridden on in my life!

 

I had known about the Nightstar stock on VIA but I didn't know about the German 628 dmu on tonight's episode!

They are actually class 643, but OC Transpo used them on the O-Train until 2015.

[dibber25]

Having ridden on both the old stainless steel fleet and the Renaissance fleet I prefer the old equipment. The trip on the Renaissance was from Truro, NS to Montreal, QC and was one of the most uncomfortable trains I have ever ridden on in my life!

 

They are actually class 643, but OC Transpo used them on the O-Train until 2015.

 

Just shows how personal experiences can vary. I found the 'Renn' stock very smooth and comfortable, while my last ride on 'The Canadian' in a sleeper named 'Stuart Manor' was that bad that I vowed never to ride The Canadian again. Admittedly part of the issue was delay and late running, then going like the proverbial Bat out of Hell to make up time, but Stuart Manor had equipment underneath that banged and rattled about, it lurched on its springs and had some pretty spectacular wheel flats. 60 years of renovations, rebuilds and upgrades have also made some of the stainless cars look like patchwork from the outside. I notice that the 'Park' car on Mr. Portillo's train was one that has not been refurbished to 'Prestige' class and retained the blue letter board instead of that horrible brown that's used on the Prestige cars. I would agree that the bullet lounge in a Park car is a fabulous ride and those cars always seem to ride like Cadillacs. (CJL)

[mdvle]

Interesting. Unless the Siemens kit includes some sleeping cars, it sounds like that means the end of 'The Ocean' as a through Montreal-Halifax service. I have seen suggestions that VIA was looking at increased frequency but shorter distance services on part of that route. (CJL)

 

There are 30 Renaissance coaches used on the corridor (along with 97 LRC / 33 HEP II).  It is this part of the Renaissance fleet that is mentioned in the fleet renewal section of the VIA entry on Wikipedia.

 

VIA still hasn't said anything publicly that I can find regarding the future of the Renaissance equipment on the Ocean, or for that matter of HEP I fleet on the Canadian.

 

The 2016-2020 corporate plan (1) mentioned a review of its long haul fleet to be done in the coming year, but no mention of review (ether done or to be done) appears in the 2017-2021 coporate plan (2).

 

1. https://m.viarail.ca/sites/all/files/media/pdfs/About_VIA/our-company/corporate-plan/Summary%20of%20the%202016-2020%20Corporate%20Plan.pdf

 

2. https://m.viarail.ca/sites/all/files/media/pdfs/About_VIA/our-company/corporate-plan/CorporatePlan_2017_2021.pdf

[mdvle]

He alighted at Sainte-Foy which he said was "for Quebec" and is shown as such on the Via Rail map for The Ocean.

 

Keith

 

EDIT Sainte-Foy is on the outskirts of Quebec City on the same side of the river.

I don't know how the train does the journey as it needs to cross the river by Charny and then do a reversal from there to get back to the main route of the Ocean on the south bank

 

The train reverses back across the river from Ste-Foy as can be seen in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmkMTgpAVLM

[dibber25]

The train reverses back across the river from Ste-Foy as can be seen in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmkMTgpAVLM

 

Yes, I remember it doing that, now you mention it. Lost us a lot of time, too, but allowed a freight to pass if I recall correctly. (CJL)

[jsp3970]

The train reverses back across the river from Ste-Foy as can be seen in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmkMTgpAVLM

When I took the Ocean, back in 2004, the train did not cross the river but stayed on the south side. We did however have to reverse at Charny.