The Day I Became a Railfan by Julian Bernard, published in Branchline, Oct, 1997

Memories of some of the events surrounding a 1943 collision on Canadian National's Montmagny subdivison have recently been revived by the receipt from Art Clowes of a number of contemporary newspaper articles, along with a report of the event written by George Horner which appeared in the October 1964 Upper Canada Railway Society Newsletter. While I was not involved in the accident, it did have an impact on the journey being taken at the same time with my mother and brother.

On the morning of Tuesday, July 6, 1943, the three of us, along with Duke, our dog, left Toronto for what was planned to be a 34-hour journey to Gaspe, Quebec. A few months earlier my father had been transferred to the naval base in Gaspe, H.M.C.S. Fort Ramsay, and we were to spend the summer at Baker's Hotel in the town until it was time to return to school. I was looking forward to the journey with some degree of anticipation because it was to be my first opportunity to travel in a sleeping car. A double bedroom and been reserved; in the excitement, I had not even been especially concerned that I was expected to share a berth with my younger, ten year old brother. While I had traveled several times by train, I had until then viewed the experience simply as a means of transportation and it had not yet occurred to me that trains could hold some special fascination.

Our journey began on #14, "The International Limited", which left Toronto at 9:15 a.m. Arrival in Montreal at Bonaventure Station, from which all but suburban traffic would be transferred a few days later to the newly completed Central Station, was more or less on time. Recollections of my last look at this Victorian relic are of a dark, somewhat gloomy, but impressive building bursting with activity as people moved hurriedly in all directions. #4, "The Ocean Limited", was scheduled to depart at 7:30 p.m. No coach passengers could ride the train - it carried sleeping cars and a dining car, only. When it came time to board, the congestion which had led to the rushed completion of Central Station after a decade of depression-induced inactivity became all too apparent. Another train was trapped at the inner end of a stub ended track and #4 was backed in beyond it, leaving many of its forward cars well beyond the end of the platform. We found our assigned bedroom and departure soon followed. #4 struggled around the sharp curve at St. Henri and headed for Victoria Bridge, still to this day my favourite rail bridge. As we were settling in to enjoy ourselves, the conductor came by to lift our tickets - and to tell us that we would have to leave the train at Drummondville!

At 3:18 that afternoon there had been a violent, head-on collision on a bridge just over half a mile east of the station at Montmagny. CN's #1, the "Maritime Express", hauled by 4-8-4 6166, was westbound to Montreal with 15 cars, almost 3 hours late. Fourth class eastward freight #702, with sister 6167 and 42 cars, had left St. Charles, it's engineer under the impression that #1 was on time and had passed that point. Both trains were operating at high speed on a tangent track with good visibility in both directions. The engineer on #1 has seen the oncoming train, applied the brakes and was almost stopped. Brakes on #702 were not applied until moments before the impact. Both locomotives and tenders were derailed as were the first two cars of #1, while about half of the freight consist was derailed. The engineer of #702 died in the cab of 6167. Surprisingly, injuries among the remainder of the crews and passengers were relatively few and minor. In the expectation that about 48 hours would be needed to re-open the line, it was decided to divert most traffic over the former National Transcontinental through Monk and Edmundston. This meant alternative arrangements had to be made for all passengers destined for points east of Levis and west of Moncton.

"The Ocean Limited", which was among those to be diverted, was scheduled to be followed 30 minutes later by #60, "The Scotian", which was to take the normal route and which arrived at Drummondville, where we had been deposited, over one hour late. It was crowded and all the bedrooms were occupied, but a member of the crew found us a reasonably comfortable place to sit - the men's smoking lounge in a sleeping car. The well worn leather seats were slippery but I viewed it optimistically as an opportunity to stay up all night. Our eastward progress was in fits and starts with what seemed like an especially long stop at Levis where I saw for the first time the lights of Quebec's upper and lower towns.

About 9 a.m. the next day we arrived in Montmagny, now about seven hours behind schedule. The sound of the collision had quickly brought out the army from a nearby camp and what greeted us at Montmagny was the sight of what seemed to be a well organized two-way transfer, using military trucks and buses, of the passengers from #60 and another train, probably #59, which had been brought up to a road crossing east of the bridge. As we passed by the accident site, we could see that most rolling stock had been re-railed and removed but the two locomotives remained locked together on the bridge and considerable debris could be seen in the water below. By this time we were becoming worried about Duke who we had not seen since he joined us at Drummondville the evening before but we were assured that he was having a great time riding around on the front seat of one of the military's trucks. The transfer took about seven hours and by 4 p.m. our eastward journey resumed. We had open section seats in a sleeping car and were now 14 hours behind schedule. At 10 p.m. we arrived in Matapedia and obtained a room at the old Hotel Restigouche, now a seniors' building adjacent to the newer hotel and directly across the tracks from the station.

The next morning, Thursday, July 8, saw us ready to board #36, known not entirely unaffectionately by the service personnel as "The Bullet". Unfortunately, so were a lot of other people. The conductor understandably ruled that only those with tickets for that day's train would be allowed to ride in car #84, a buffet sleeping car being used as a parlor car so we were out of luck again. Three sections were set up with tables and one busy crew member was parlor car steward, waiter and cook in the tiny galley. Normal consist of #36 was two head end cars, two coaches and the buffet parlor (or sleeping) car hauled by one of CN's attractive little ten-wheelers. However, it was apparent long before the scheduled 10:15 a.m. departure time that there were twice as many passengers as there were seats and something had to be done about it. There was, of course, still no eastbound traffic other than the train on which we had arrived the night before but westbound main line traffic was starting to move over the normal route in anticipation of the clearance of the accident site, 253 miles to the west, later in the day. While my mother worried about her dwindling cash resources (no credit cards in those days), Duke and I took up a seat on a bench at the north end of the platform where I watched happily and with growing fascination the parade of activity going on around us. #36 stood on it's track behind the station. From the direction of Campbellton to the south (or east to use the railway's parlance) appeared another ten-wheeler and two more baggage cars. Several westbound trains arrived, all well off schedule, and one main line coach was detached from each of three of them after the passengers occupying the chosen cars had been herded to others on the train. Gradually "The Bullet" grew until, by 4 p.m., it was ready to leave with two locomotives, four head end cars, five coaches and the buffet sleeper bringing up the rear. Fortunately I had paper and pencil with me because at some point during the day I decided it would be a good idea to write down the locomotive numbers, not knowing that millions of 14 year olds all over the world had been doing the same thing, probably for a century. The notes I made have long since disappeared but I do recall that 1134 was the first on the list and presumably it was one of the two locomotives on the head end when we left Matapedia that Thursday afternoon. It also explains why a photograph of it taken by Kenneth MacDonald nine years later in Moncton hangs over my desk. I like to think that 1134 was the cause of my personal epiphany.

With a jolt we started down the somewhat shaky Cascapedia sub-division which quickly curved to the left leaving Matapedia and the heavy main line rail behind. Within a few miles the waters of the Bay of Chaleur came into view and, as the New Brunswick coastline gradually receded, it was becoming increasingly apparent that double-heading was not an art that had been pursued too often on the Gaspe branch. It was probably also apparent that, unless the jolting stops and starts ceased, somebody could be injured or something would be broken. Accordingly, possibly at Carleton, the train was divided into two sections - first #36 took the four head end cars while second #36 consisted of the six passenger cars. By this time it was also becoming apparent that the ice was exhausted in the bunkers of the three main line coaches so there was no longer any air conditioning and, of course, the windows could not be opened. Air conditioning was unknown on the branch so there was no ice supply either. The problem was solved to some extent by opening the end doors and the upper half of the dutch doors but we found seats in one of the older coaches where open windows solved the ventilation problem and simultaneously furnished all the smells and sounds of steam era railroading.

A pair of naval policemen constantly patrolled the length of the train. As dusk fell, vestibule lights were extinguished and blinds were drawn on the seaward side as German submarine activity had been frequent all around the peninsula for about two years and there were some fears that the train could become a moving target. From then on, the journey was uneventful. About 2 a.m. we passed Sandy Beach where a small station had been built the year before to serve the naval base and, a few minutes later, came to halt at Gaspe, the end of the line, about 30 hours late. First #36, with Duke on board, had made few stops and had arrived about 2 hours earlier.

Since then I have ridden the branch several times. "The Bullet" has evolved through many incarnations into VIA Rail's "Chaleur". The buffet sleeping cars which had been pressed into parlor car service were replaced a few months later by the ex-Canadian Northern cafe parlor cars "Mistaya" and "Tawatinaw" which remained fixtures on the branch for many years. Eventually the old equipment gave way for a time to Budd RDCs and, today, fully standardized as are most VIA trains, the "Chaleur" provides what is probably the best service the branch has ever seen, albeit now only three times a week, but the train remains under what seems like almost constant threat of termination.

Little remains of the naval base but much of the spur into it is in place and is used to wye the VIA trains. The branch still offers a great rides but, in my mind, nothing will quite match the excitement of that introduction to it over 50 years ago.