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Trains Magazine 1966 January Jet Search for Steam Photo section
Trains Magazine 1966 January Jet Search for Steam
62 Pages
NEWS --3
PROFESSIONAL ICONOCLAST -5
RAILROAD NEWS PHOTOS -7
STEAM NEWS PHOTOS -12
BACK FROM THE DEAD - - 18
TWO-HAT RAILROAD - - 20
JET SEARCH FOR STEAM - 24
PHOTO SECTION -- 29
TRACTION CLASSICS-46
SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW STEAM! - - - -49
WHAT'S IN A NUMBER? -50
CN AND CP SQUARE OFF
ITHAT controversial, inconclusive national election wasn't the only imponderable contest held last fall in Canada. On Sunday, October 31, Canadian National and Canadian Pacific, the Dominion's publicly and privately owned transcons respectively, broke up a paspool agreement between Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto dating back to 1933-1934 and went their highly divergent ways.
October 31 produced, among other things, what CN called the "fastest passenger train in North America"; an unexpectedly sharp reply by CP; and another general airing of the two road's differences over the question of whether passengers are worth it or not. The battle line was drawn between the nation's two largest cities, Montreal (population: 1,191,062 in 1961) and Toronto (642,407), the same region in which CN and CP engaged in a brief, spirited speed tussle in 1932 which wound up with CP 4-6-4's taking the world speed crown (on a 124-mile district at an average start-to-stop speed of 68.9 mph).
To replace the Montreal-Toronto pool in 1965, CN aggressively fielded no fewer than four trains each way - the morning Lakeshore, afternoon Bonaventure, late-afternoon Rapido, and overnight Cavalier - plus the Premier to cope with peak travel times such as Christmas and Easter. The Rapido caught the eye, for CN had timed it to cover the 335.3-mile route nonstop (save for engine-crew changes in Brockville and Belleville) in 4 hours 59 minutes, or 1 hour 16 minutes faster than existing schedules. To make the advertised timing of "less than 5 hours," CN raised its 83 mph speed limit to 90; ran advance test trains that proved a 41/2-hour timecard would have been feasible if a bit uncomfortable on the curves; and assigned the maiden six-car Rapidos (three coaches, one diner, two parlors) 5250 h.p. each in the form of an A-B-A hookup of 1750 h.p. FP9's. And go the Rapidos did on October 31, easily making the time with sold-out 276-pasloads.
CP's response was quiet but unique: a single afternoon train (the Royal York west, the Le Chateau Champlain east) on a slower 5%-hour schedule over its longer (340 miles) and often single-tracked route, but with an all-stainless-steel consist running seven days a week (the Rapido doesn't run Saturday) and featuring two domes, dining car and coffee shop meal service, and private rooms in its parlor cars. Yet the singleness of CP's retort, as well as the fact that its Montreal-Toronto fares will run 40 cents to $1.50 above those of CN, belied any change of heart regarding passengers at CP's Montreal HQ.
More likely, the domes and stainless steel were budgeted so as to control the
political fire raging over Canadian Pacific's dogged efforts to eliminate its 26-million-dollar annual passenger loss. Briefly, CP is permanently disillusioned about the passenger business ("I can see no future in it," says Chairman N. R. Crump) and asserts that it would be losing 76 million dollars per annum today on varnish if it hadn't begun to cut back a decade ago on red-ink runs. Currently, the railway is concentrating its efforts on transcontinental runs, which account for almost 20 million dollars of its loss. Specifically, CP wants to drop the secondary Dominion, declaring that it only carries up to 50 people a day in a 21i'2-month peak season; that it drops 9 million dollars a year; and that its F units are urgently needed to move export wheat.
But out in the prairie country CP is bucking a hoary argument more than familiar to Americans - namely, that it received 25 million dollars from the Government to build its line as well as 25 million acres of land grants in exchange for a promise of "perpetual and efficient operation of the railway." The fact that CP now makes much more money off its nonrail properties, including timber, oil, and minerals on its land holdings, than it does from its trains only adds fuel to the fire.
"There is nothing in the contract to provide that any particular passenger service must be operated forever," says CP, adding, "Generations of children in the West have been taught that the CPR made untold millions of treasure out of this grant, which it is duty bound to apply in aid to its benefactors. They have never heard that this money and this land were only the skimpiest kind of payment to the company for the fantastic risks and obligations that the company took off the shoulders of the government in agreeing to build the railway. It is never mentioned that the 25 million dollars and much more was used up in the first construction of the line, or that the land was of no value at all until it had been made accessible by the construction of the railway.
"The public is never informed of the millions of acres of farmlands that the company sold to settlers at a few dollars an acre with 20 years or more to pay, or of the thousands of farmers who had their whole indebtedness canceled by the company during the depression."
So interrailway feelings could scarcely be cordial in Montreal last fall as Canadian National fired off its Rapidos with "We're-pulling-out-all-the-stops" advertising and the tag line "The railway that wants passengers . . . CN."
The corporate contrast, if unfortunate [page 3, September 1965 TRAINS], is apparently inevitable. CN drops approximately 40 million dollars a year on its passenger trains, yet with management
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