Don You saved me typing and spell correcting a big E mail . A Sault Ste Marie
to Kingston route via CPR would be slow to say the least. I had a BRMA picture
book with a shot of a CNR 6200 pulling out of Windsor Station with a pool train
taken in the afternoon. The caption explained that the train ran west till a
crossover on West Montreal Island. then ran on CNR tracks to Toronto Union
Station. a pool train would have a combination of CPR/Pullman staff . I wonder
did they have to have 2 butchers boys on the pool trains. Regards David Hill
David E Hill
Sales Agent
E MAIL techill@xxxxxxxxxx
________________________________
From: Don Thomas <thomasd@xxxxxxx>
To: cpsig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2012 1:00:57 AM
Subject: RE: [cpsig] Re: Train 21
In practice the base pool train consists stayed pretty stable throughout the
over 30 years of their existence. The main reason the pools were not
extended was that neither railway was sufficiently willing to compromise
their incompatible demands. They remained fiercely competitive within the
pool framework. Your experience of being ticketed on a CP car from an office
hundreds of miles away is exactly symptomatic of how the railways operated.
It also shows some of the benefits of the pool. If there were no pool
trains, the Sault Ste Marie agent wouldn't have dreamed of ticketing you
entirely over CP from the Sault via Sharbot Lake or Tichborne to Kingston,
and if you had asked for such a routing he would have done so only
reluctantly, after getting your explicit acknowledgement that your routing
was slow, circuitous and in part rather primitive. A passenger unknowingly
routed that way would have had a valid complaint against CP. However with
the pool in place, CP could send passengers directly to Kingston in its own
parlor cars.
Parlor car attendants, like sleeping car porters would always be from the
road owning the car. (The sleepers and porters on CN's Montreal-Toronto run
were provided by Pullman.) There was no reason for each road not to staff
its own cars, since they departed and arrived at the same union stations in
Quebec, Ottawa and Toronto, and a couple of blocks apart at Montreal.
Don
_____
From: cpsig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:cpsig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of W.
A. (Dale) Wilson
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2012 8:08 AM
To: cpsig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [cpsig] Re: Train 21
Don's description of how pool trains were originally planned would have
required a huge volume of "administrivia" to propose then find approval for
consists. This may go a long way in explaining why the pool concept was not
extended further across the country despite some initial planning done on
transcontinental trains across northern Ontario.
The logic is clear for each railway running their own overnight train with
their own equipment over their own line.
There are some 'detail' questions regarding this mixture of equipment
between any two points in the pool zone: (1) Would a single car (or a few)
be serviced at end points in the easiest to reach coach yard or have to be
interchanged to the 'home road" for servicing? (2) Would attendants in
parlor cars always be from the 'home road' or not?
My personal memories concerning pool service were that growing up in Sault
Ste. Marie and often travelling with family to Kingston would involve a
sleeping car ex the Sault, through Sudbury to Toronto, arriving there early
morning. The onward journey to Kingston would be on one or another of the
morning trains and because tickets and reservations had been arranged
through the CPR ticket office in Sault Ste. Marie, almost always we would be
in a CP parlor car in a train made up mostly of CN rolling stock.
Dale Wilson <dale.wilson@xxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:dale.wilson%40sympatico.ca> >
Nickel Belt Rails, Box 483, Station "B", Sudbury, ON, P3E 4P6
On 2012-10-14, at 3:33 AM, Don Thomas wrote:
The "way equipment was assigned" for the afternoon pool train to Torontowas to have mostly CN equipment and a few CP cars.
