Our last overseas trip, and The Ocean
Or First World problems before the wheels fell completely off!
Part 2 - Off to the Maritimes.
Toronto’s Union Station was undergoing a refurbishment when we passed through, great to see the magnificent building being kept in fantastic condition.
Next morning, it was back across the road to Union Station, and off to Halifax, via Montreal.
For the most part, our rail travel so far had been behind mostly F40PH locos, and that wasn’t going to change, however, at Montreal we would be swapping the early 1980s LRC passenger cars for something a little different, Renaissance sleeping cars with a 1950s Budd ‘Park’ car bringing up the rear.
A fairly typical Via Rail train at Toronto, F40PH loco up the front, with LRC cars behind.
The Renaissance cars were built in the UK in 1995 to provide a sleeping car service between the UK and Europe, known as ‘Nightstar’, a sister service to the ‘Eurostar’. It never actually got off the ground, and Via Rail purchased them in 2000.
After boarding the train, and checking out our compartment with its typical fold down beds, toilet and shower, we made our way back to the Park Car for our 7pm departure, not long before we headed to the dining car for dinner.
The Park Cars (named after Canadian National Parks) would have to be the favourite passenger car I’ve travelled in. With a curved observation lounge at the rear, a dome area upstairs, and a small bar / lounge area in the lower middle of the car, finished off with two sleeping compartments they are a fantastic piece of 1950s streamlined railway equipment.
This was the first run of The Ocean since the blockades were lifted, and it was fairly quiet, so for the most part, we had the dome to ourselves.
After our previous trip on The Canadian, which was all Budd cars, seeing the smaller English loading gauge Renaissance cars between us and the loco was a bit different, clearly showing how much bigger the North American railway equipment is!
Moncton is a refuelling stop for the train on its way north to Halifax, which gave some time to get a few shots of the train. The size difference between the UK built Renaissance cars, and the Park Car is considerable.
We were retracing our travels over the first part of our journey, as the train headed for Quebec City, then followed the St. Lawrence before turning into New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.
An interesting part of this is that the train doesn’t actually go all the way into Quebec City Gare du Palais Station, rather, it crosses the St. Lawrence and stops some 7km short at Sainte - Foy station. After completing station work, the train reverses back out across the river, before proceeding north again.
It was around 11pm - maybe closer to midnight when we left Sainte Foy. I was in the Park Car, so got to witness the interesting operation, the ‘Headlight’ above the rear door of the park car was turned on, and with the door open, the train slowly started to reverse back whence we came.
Unfortunately, my camera was four carriages away, and I wasn’t actually sure how far we were pushing back, so I missed capturing this really interesting aspect of the trip, but it’s an amazing memory.
Next morning we woke to falling snow at Matapédia, just before crossing into New Brunswick, and it continued for most of the day.
Bathurst, New Brunswick, with a stop in the steadily falling snow to pick up a few more passengers. Taken from my favourite seat on the train, up the front of the Park Car dome.
A few other trains were passed, nothing as big as we saw on the Transcontinental route, but some were still impressive. Halifax was, and still is an important port city, which certainly accounts for a lot of container traffic.
Lunch in the Renaissance dining car was quite good, more airline style, rather than freshly cooked, but with an interesting selection of local beers and Canadian wines, something Via Rail does very well at.
We had a slow trip, not helped by some signal failures, and arrived at Moncton, a refuelling stop for the train a couple of hours late at most at around 2:30 pm. This triggered in interesting event. It really didn’t seem to be that long since we had lunch, but due to the late running, the catering crew had arranged for chicken and chips to be delivered to the train. I was happily taking photos, and talking to the driver when the Train Manager came running down to tell me to get back on the train, yelling out “we’ve got chicken, you need to get back on”!
Refueling both man and machine at Moncton,
The second loco was still being fuelled at this stage, but regardless, I wandered back, as told, after getting a photo of the driver in front of the train, with his boxes of chicken :).
We had some of our second lunch, still not super hungry, well before the train departed Moncton, and had a fairly uneventful arrival into Halifax in the dark some four and a half hours later.
The following morning, we set out in the sea mist to explore Halifax.
The 1803 Town Clock peers through the fog, with the Citadel out of sight behind it.
It was fairly chilly, and didn’t really improve as we explored Citadel Hill, with its fort built by the British to overlook the harbour. The commanding position high up on the hill is the reason why the city developed where it is today. Another important building on the hill is the Town Clock, which marked time both for the military, and townsfolk alike. Walking back down towards the harbour took us past the clock tower of the City Hall, which has one of its four faces still displaying four minutes past nine, the time of a massive explosion that destroyed a large part of the waterfront, and killed 2000 people on December 6, 1917 in what was the largest man made explosion until the atomic bomb detonations in Japan in 1945.
We learned more about this at the Maritime museum later in the day..
We wandered past several Donair cafes - a regional twist with lamb and garlic yogurt being replaced by beef mince and condensed milk (we didn’t attempt it), and on toward the Old Burying Ground, which dates back to 1749, when the settlement of Halifax was founded.
Some notable ‘residents’ include Major General Robert Ross, who led a raiding party to invade Washington DC, and amongst other buildings, set fire to the White House, leaving it nothing more than a burnt out shell.
The Old Burying Ground, as old as the European settlement of Halifax itself.
The waterfront, like most modern port cities has been ‘cleaned up’, with heavy container shipping moved further around the bay, away from the city centre. The old warehouses are still there with shops and bars, and, closer to the water, some artisanal crafts were worth a visit.
There was a silversmith, and a little further along, a crystal glassware atelier, where craftsmen were blowing and cutting beautiful pieces.
Cutting patterns into the crystal, so much skill in blowing the shape, marking out the patterns, and finishing it so they are all the same.
It was fascinating watching the glassblowers in action, and, something I hadn’t seen before, the cutters at work. We ended up bringing home a couple of whisky glasses - nice at the time, and even more so now. While writing this up, I found that NovaScotian Crystal has closed after 24 years.
We wandered down to the wharf where so many Canadians headed off to both the first, and second world wars, supporting The Empire, never to see home again. The mist set an appropriate tone for this sombre site.
A ferry from Dartmouth emerges from the fog near the Last Steps memorial on the Halifax waterfront. The Ferry service is the second oldest saltwater ferry route in the world, and has been operating since 1752
Next on our itinerary was the maritime museum. Halifax is the closest port on the North American continent to Europe, and as such played an important role in connecting Canada, the US and The Continent, as well as the UK.
Many mail routes passed through Halifax to and from New York, and the city was the birth place of companies that became famous, the White Star Line being one of them.
Halifax also played a large part in the aftermath of the loss of White Star’s Titanic, being closest to the disaster, many survivors, and casualties of the sinking made landfall there.
A deckchair from RMS Titanic, one of many fantastic items on display in the double story, beautifully presented museum.
The museum has an amazing collection of artefacts of the area’s maritime history, including large scale models of various ships and equipment, a deckchair from Titanic, as well as other salvaged items,
https://maritimemuseum.novascotia.ca
The Halifax Explosion which I mentioned earlier also features in the museum - the cause of the explosion was two ships colliding in the harbour. The Imo heading to New York, and the incoming Mont-Blanc, loaded with a hull full of explosives, and a deck cargo of petrochemicals, which set off a massive three kiloton explosion that devastated Halifax, and showered debris up to eight kilometres away. It severed underwater communications cables to the continent, and killed more than 1700 people.
It might sound like we had a rather gloomy macabre time in Halifax, but it was all very interesting!
Our late lunch was a seafood platter overlooking the foggy harbour, where regular ferries criss crossed to and from Dartmouth, barely visible through the fog.
Lobster, Prawns, Scallops, fish and chips with an ocean view, you can’t really go wrong.
More wandering in the afternoon until it was dark and that was about it for our visit to Halifax as we were on the train again next day.
There's still plenty more to see in Halifax and surrounding areas, so another trip on The Ocean is on the revisit list. I’ll continue our journey in the next instalment.