On hiatus with the Clairtone Train

Design sketch of the Clairtone Train from The Art of Clairtone

Programming Note: Hiatus resumes. 

The hiatus is no longer on hiatus. Canoes to paddle. Bikes to ride. Lakes to swim. Paths to walk. Trains to see. And a stack of books to read. Especially this one I recently picked up: The Art of Clairtone: The Making of a Design Icon 1958 - 1971, written by Nina Munk and Rachel Gotlieb, published in 2008. Clairtone was the originator and manufacturer of the legendary Project G hi-fi as well as a long line of audio and tv products. Among the fascinating things I’m learning was that sometime in either the late ‘60s or 1970 Clairtone had:

“A model showroom on rails, the Clairtone Train travelled right across Canada, bringing the company’s line of products to dealers in small towns. As a sales technique, the Clairtone Train was innovative. “It was about creating a ‘total experience’ for the buyers”, said Eleanor Brydone, then a staff designer with A. D. Pollard & Assoc., the firm that designed the showroom.”

I recommend this book for the photos alone, but I’ve got the summer to find out the whole story. 

Later. 

Stay cool.

Rooms with a view on VIA Rail's The Ocean train

 

When we went to Nova Scotia we took VIA Rail's The Ocean. The service runs from Montréal to Halifax and takes 22 hours. For us, living in Ottawa as we do, the trip took a bit longer than that once you account for the train trip from Ottawa to Montréal, a couple hours or so of layover in Montréal before The Ocean's 7pm departure, and around 3 hours of delays on The Ocean part of the trip. I can't complain though because it was a great experience.

We booked a cabin in one of the sleeper cars. They're small, but comfortable for two. There're two seats, two fold down bunks, a fold down table, cubby holes for storage, and a toilet room - it's hidden behind the open door to the corridor in this photo.

Speaking of corridors, here it is. There were a few sleeper cars in the train. Maybe 4 or 5, I lost count walking through them all. A crew member told us the train was 19 cars long.

As well as the chair and sleeper cars there was a dining car, which if you're staying in a sleeper, eating here is included in your ticket. This meant dinner on the night out, and breakfast and lunch the next day. I think my Uncle Bill would have enjoyed this.

Contrary to the image on the menu, there isn't a dome top observation car - the so-called 'Park' car - attached to this train. According to Wikipedia and the crew VIA got rid of it a couple years ago due to some operational problem with no longer having access to track they needed to turn the train around. I can appreciate the technical issues, but look, if there is anyone from VIA reading this, you really need to figure out how to bring that car back. The views from this train are one of its draws, so I suspect you're losing out by not having it. Think about this: it only took us 1 hour and 25 minutes to fly on Porter airlines on the return trip from Halifax to Ottawa, so it isn't travel time that attracts the long distance traveller. 

Ok, so enough grousing :-) The dining car has a lounge car attached to either end. One has an operating canteen and the canteen in the other car is closed. That photo up there is of the one with the closed canteen.

Here's that same lounge car, but looking towards the other end. It turns out Wifi seems to be only available in these two cars. It might be available in the chair cars, but it certainly didn't work in the sleepers. 

And here we are in the second lounge car during the night leg after I had had a couple of 'beverages' from the canteen :-)

The most unusual car had to be this 'Transition' car. Basically it's used to couple dissimilar cars. For such a prosaic car it's very nicely appointed with wall-to-wall carpeting and framed pictures on the walls.

I didn't get any photos of the train when we got in to Halifax station as it was late and cold and we were focused on getting to our hotel. But, the next morning I got that shot of the train in Halifax awaiting its return to Montréal.

Would I do it again? Probably not, but I had to do it once and enjoyed it very much. Although, VIA Rail, if you're listening, I'd be glad to return and do a 22+ hour build of some sort of railroad model streamed on YouTube live from The Ocean, with proper sponsorship of course :-)

Among the Cumbres and Toltec locomotives

I was very surprised to find this envelope of Cumbres and Toltec locomotive photos from the September 1996 trip - I had completely forgotten about them! I think what happened was that after they were printed they were almost immediately boxed-up in preparation for moving house and then forgotten. Yeah, that box has sat in the house, unopened, for nearly 23 years! Until now.

Of the pair of locos shown above and below, it looks like No.488 is in front, and No. 489 is behind.

These beasts don't run without coal.

Flat cars are my favourite type of freight car. Come to think of it, I don't recall any on the EVRR - I need to check on that.

I could have used one of those bad boys on my driveway today :-)

Some Cumbres and Toltec lineside structures

I also took photos of a few structures along the Cumbres and Toltec line. Like the train photos, I don't have any information other than I shot them in September 1996.

[6 Jan '19 update: I found a photo of what looks a like a brick engine house loose in the bottom of a box of photos so I added it to the collection.]

Cumbres and Toltec highway crossing

I was rummaging through some boxes and discovered a set of photos I shot back in September 1996 in Colorado (maybe it was New Mexico?) of a meet-up with a Cumbres and Toltec train. Believe it or not it was completely by coincidence.

Back then my train interests were quite dormant and I was generally blase about trains and such things, but I guess you can take the boy outta the trains, but you can't take the trains outta the man, so I grabbed my old SLR when we were lucky enough to get stopped by this thing.

I see some photos of buildings in the envelope with these ones. I'll scan those next. Stay tuned!

[6 Jan '19 update: I found 2 more photos of passenger cars crossing the highway loose in the bottom of a box so I added them to the sequence.]

Interurban derailment?

Over the Thanksgiving weekend I was going through the family archives and came across these three photographs. They weren't all in the same albums, but the first and third may have been taken at the same event. I don't know if the second one is part of the group, but the body language of the men in the photo suggests something important might be happening.

All I know about these photos is purely speculative. My best guess is that they were taken somewhere in upstate New York, possibly near Rochester, sometime in the 1920s.

Work trains in the Havelock yard

I had the opportunity to drive through Havelock on my way to Toronto over the long weekend holiday in August. Havelock is a good place to watch trains. It has an easily accessible train yard and station right in the ‘downtown’. The yard runs adjacent to Highway 7 as it cuts through town. There’s a large parking lot, with grassy areas and picnic tables, right beside the tracks. Just on the other-side of the highway are grocery and convenience stores, so you don’t have to go hungry. As well, the old train station has been converted to a restaurant serving moderately priced good food. It has a patio just a few metres from the rail yard, so you can eat and watch yard operations if they happen to be going on. Debra – always a good sport in these matters ! - and I did just that on one occasion.

On this trip I saw all these rail maintenance cars parked on the track closest to the parking lot. Turns out there were 29 cars in total, and they were lashed up into trains of around 3 to 5 vehicles each. I had never seen so many in one place, and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take their pictures.

They, or some variation, might make for some interesting models. I think what makes them compelling is that size-wise they have a scale similar to automobiles, pick-up trucks, and small delivery vans – people sized, unlike everyday boxcars and the like. They also have lots of interesting detail to boot that draws in the viewer.

I can’t say that I know what all these machines are for – well, other than the port-a-potty on rails :-) Enlightenment is always welcome.