VIA LRC Double Dip

LRC locomotives no longer pull VIA Rail Canada trains. The last of them was retired in 2001 and two have been preserved.

LRC was an acronym for light, rapid and comfortable and at one time it heralded a new generation of intercity passenger equipment. Some LRC equipment appeared for a time on Amtrak’s International between Chicago and Toronto.

We turn back the clock to 1987 and view LRC equipment at work in two locations a month apart.

In the top image, made on July 31, 1987, in Newcastle, Ontario, VIA 6917 and its train has a second LRC-powered train added to run as one train. 

In the bottom image VIA 6913 is eastbound at Bayview Junction, Ontario, on Aug. 12, 1987.

Photographs by Robert Farkas

The Way it Used to Be

VIA Rail Canada announced this week that its flag ship long distance train the Canadian, will resume operating next month between Toronto and Vancouver.

The proud Canadian has been suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic and then returned to run only between Vancouver and Winnipeg.

The news that the Canadian will again trek across Canada, though, came with some caveats. There will be no access to lounges and dome cars so scenes such as the one above of the two Canadians passing east of Hornepayne, Ontario, in May 2014.

There will be sleeping car service and passengers will be given reservations to eat breakfast and dinner in the dining car. But lunch will be served in your room.

Furthermore Nos. 1 and 2 will operate just one a week. In short, it won’t be the same experience that people from all over the world come to experience.

But at least it will be have some semblance of transcontinental service and the scenery hasn’t change.

Maybe some day the Canadian will once again be the Canadian.