REMEMBERING A CANADIAN CLASSIC
Curtain Call for VIA FPA-4’s
BY KEVIN J. HOLLAND/PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR
CRUNCHING THROUGH THE FOOT-DEEP New Brunswick snow one morning in February 1987, it was all too obvious that, as far as the operation of passen- ger
trains in Canada’s Maritime
Provinces was concerned, a circle was closing.
Word had come earlier in the week. The F40PH-2 locomotives ordered to re-equip VIA Rail Canada’s long-dis- tance passenger trains were being as- signed to the Ocean and Atlantic, VIA’s overnight runs at the time between Montréal and the Maritimes. The in- evitable had come to pass, and the era
of Alco-designed cab units leading VIA’s long-distance trains was over. The displaced FPA-4s went on to run their last miles for VIA in Ontario and Quebec short-haul service, while their matching FPB-4 booster units lingered, with GMD-built F9B counterparts, to provide steam heat and occasional muscle on the long-distance eastern trains led by new F40s.
Time well spent As the ultimate Alco-design cab units
(the last ones built, three decades earli- er, and the last in scheduled main line
service), the ex-Canadian National
FPA-4s and FPB-4s served their two owners well. They also earned the sta- tus of icons to a generation of ob- servers; I had been drawn trackside 15 years before by these stocky servants, and that day in Moncton I reflected that my time had been well spent. The only examples built, Canadian National’s 1800-hp FPA-4 and FPB-4 units were delivered by the Montreal Locomotive Works in late 1958 and ear- ly 1959, on the cusp of the railway’s sweeping visual redesign. Their origi- nal green, yellow, and black paint, and
OPPOSITE: VIA Train 11, the Atlantic, curves away from Canadian National’s Halifax Ocean Terminals complex immediately after departure from Halifax station on November 16, 1986. ABOVE: Leaving the Montreal skyline behind in twilight, VIA Train 14, the Ocean, hustles eastbound through Southwark, Quebec. Time was running out for the classic cab units seen here on July 27, 1985.
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