Tremblant Park Car Question

Hi
Laura and I recently travelled from Vancouver to Toronto in the Tremblant Park Car. I am nowbuilding an N-Scale model of the Tremblant Park, starting with a Con-Cor dome obs.

The Tremblant Park has 2 blank(non corrugated) panels near the rear, one on either side of the rear door. These aren't on any other Park Car that I've seen. I talked with the car attendants about it, but neither knew why they were there. One did say he thought a Park Car had been rear ended many years ago, but couldn't be sure. Anyone know the reason for these panels?

We had a fabulous trip in the Park Car, and thanks to those on this forum who helped and gave tips on what to see.

Cheers
Steve

Hi Steve, Did you actually have a cabin in one of the three cabins located in the Park Car. I'm travelling on The Canadian both ways in August and September and are booked in Cabin A and are curious to know what its like.

Thanks Graeme, Melbourne Australia

Hi Graeme
Yes, we had cabin B, which is second from the bar. B, C & D are double rooms while A is a tripple and is sometimes called a drawing room. The double rooms are quite small, but great just the same. We spent most of our time either in the dome or the lounge. We were the first on the train and quickly sorted out stuff in our room then went up to the dome for the ride out of Vancouver. We went to bed soon after leaving Mission, but I didn't sleep much, too excited I suspect. I was up again around 4.30 to see some of the Fraser River. I missed the best of it.

At Kamloops we walked to the engines to watch the refuelling, then after breakfast went up to the Park dome, where apart from lunch, we stayed for the trip through the Rockies to Jasper. That was very spectacular.

After we left the Rockies behind, we did have afternoon sleeps in our room on days 2 and 3. The room was very comfortable, the service was great. Tremblant Park has been recently refurbished and everything worked, unlike one of the Manors that had a water leak and lost the use of its toilets. We had one moderately sized bag that fitted up above the toilet wash basin area, and each day we'd sort out what we'd need for the day and leave it in a smaller bag on the floor. That worked well and we had plenty of space. We asked for the beds to be left made up, a choice we think was a good one. We could sit on the bed to look out the window, but more often we were elsewhere.

We did walk the length of the train a couple of times, and enjoyed some of the activities in the other cars. The wine tasting was fun. At each stop we would walk the platform, talk with the crew and if we ran out of time, we'd get on near the front and walk back inside. As long as we told our car attendant what we were doing, he seemed happy.

I'd do it again tomorrow if I could. I had read some negative comments about the train taking second place to the freights and having to wait for long periods. We didn't see this, just the normal who gets there first waits for the other, rule. Through the Rockies I was impressed with the size of the trains, complete with mid train and pusher power.

You'll have a fabulous time, we did. After Toronto/Niagara Falls, we then spent 3 days looking for Alcos. Saw 53, photgraphed 51 and had 2 cab rides (well Laura did), not a bad effort. Hope it's not another 20 year before we get back!

Cheers
Steve
PS. Now does anyone know about the panels on the rear of Tremblant Park?

Good Morning Steve (from OZ)!!!
Thank you very much for taking the time to reply in the detail that you did. We certainly are looking forward to it. In addition to The Canadian, we have also secured Cabin A in the Park Car both ways on The Ocean. We are also travelling on various VIA Rail equipment along The Corridor as it is referred to and incredibly we have managed to get to travel on the various different train sets VIA Rail operates. (More by good luck than design). For your interest we are also travelling on three Rocky Mountaineer sectors - Vancouver to Whistler and return. Vancouver to Calgary and Jasper to Vancouver via Quesnel. These are all services I've wanted to travel on for a long time. A particular highlight will be our Royal Canadian Pacific journey out of Calgary. Whilst the Rocky Mountaineer and Royal Canadian are obviously pretty special there is like in Australia something special about riding on a regularly scheduled passenger train like The Ghan, Indian-Pacific, The Canadian and The Ocean.

One thing I should mention on this post is the fantastic help of our Canadian rail fan colleagues. I made contact with the guys at Canadian Rail Observations (William H Baird), these guys have both a western Canada VIA Rail correspondent and an eastern VIA Rail Correspondent who have emailed me lots of information and you maybe through them be able to get the answer your looking for. Even if you can't, their monthly on-line magazine appears to me to be an excellent source of current rail activity in Canada. I'm not sure of the policy in regard to posting details of that site in these forums but no doubt you can Google and go from there.

Regards

Graeme

The answer, from VIA Rail:

"When the HEP program was started in 1988, there was a thought to include
marker lights lower down on the fluting to make them more visible.

This was tested on Tremblant Park and Assiniboine Park, and then it was
decided to modify the marker lights in the letter board instead.

So Tremblant Park and Assiniboine Park each got solid stainless panels to
cover the holes that had been cut."

Cheers
Steve
NZ

I had read some negative comments about the train taking second place to the freights and having to wait for long periods.

This puzzles me. The Canadian isn't exactly known as a method for speedy transport, rather it's for tourists and vacationers. Anybody who rides knows they can probably get there faster by car, plane, or bus. So why would they complain about freight interference? It's like eating a pretzel and complaining about the salt...

Hi Tadman
As a railfan, I found it a bonus to be waiting somewhere to pass another train. Another photo op!

Riding the Canadian was one of the "bucket list" items we crossed off during our vacation. There were others such as cab rides on the Western New York & Pennsylvania, and our beloved Morristown & Erie, plus some non-rail related ones. Sometimes it's the little items that are fun to "tick the box" with, so funny you should mention pretzels. On our list, was eating one of those large pretzels from a street vendor in Manhattan. Both of us enjoyed the experience, but thought they were a little salty. lol.
Cheers
Steve

Tadman wrote:

I had read some negative comments about the train taking second place to the freights and having to wait for long periods.

This puzzles me. The Canadian isn't exactly known as a method for speedy transport, rather it's for tourists and vacationers. Anybody who rides knows they can probably get there faster by car, plane, or bus. So why would they complain about freight interference? It's like eating a pretzel and complaining about the salt...

It is possible to have too much salt on pretzels and, similarly, too many lengthy meets are an annoyance. People who take a long-distance train in Canada know very well that there are faster ways of travel. That is not the point. They are paying for an experience. Being delayed by freight meets is not an issue - until those meets take an unusual time. I have been on trains that frequently sit 30 to 60 minutes for a meet. We must remember that VIA does not exist just for the handful of railfans who occasionally leave their cars at home and take a train. Especially on the Canadian - in summer season - most of the passengers are tourists who come from other countries where passenger rail is taken seriously. They may be astonished to know that a few years ago, at CN's insistence, VIA added a fourth night to the Toronto-Vancouver run. If you have a CNR timetable from the 1940s you will see that the steam-hauled "Continental" made the four-night trip in less time than it does in 2012 and it probably ran on time more often than not.

The fourth night was added to make it possible for the Canadian to run on time. Alas, that hasn't worked. On my June trip on the Canadian we arrived in Toronto just under four hours late. That's no big deal, of course, but all of that delay was caused by waiting for freight trains. There is much padding built into the schedule for that reason, but at some point the lengthy waiting in sidings overtakes the value of the padding. If a fifth night was added to the schedule I bet the train would still run late much of the time.

On a recent trip from Edinburgh to London, our train was delayed five minutes in Newcastle because the dispatcher allowed a coal train to proceed in front of us. The conductor was furious and announced: "This is not supposed to happen and I will be filing a report about it." But within a few minutes of 125 mph running we overtook the offending coal train and arrived at the next station four minutes early. My wife and I agreed that, sadly, this situation will never happen at home.

It should go back to a three night schedule. Even THAT schedule had too much padding. CN's traffic loads have fallen since they insisted for VIA to take the four night schedule.