ABOVE: Perhaps getting the last laugh, VIA FPA-4 6781 is readied for assignment to Train 11, the Atlantic, at Moncton, New Brunswick, on June 16, 1987, after the assigned F40PH- 2 6412 failed prior to departure from Halifax. A borrowed CN RSC-18 led the train between Halifax and Moncton.
RIGHT: VIA FPA-4
6772 has the eastbound Atlantic well in hand at Bedford, Nova Scotia, July 1986. While used system-wide during their CN careers, the MLW cab units were regularly assigned to VIA’s Eastern and Maritimes routes.
the railway’s circular maple leaf mono- gram, were replaced beginning in 1961 by a geometric arrangement of red-or- ange, light gray, and black that fitted the angular contours of the FPA’s par- ticularly well. Fifteen years later, new colors appeared again with CN’s cre- ation of VIA to manage its passenger train services, and the FPA-4s and FPB-4s would wear variations of blue and yellow for the rest of their VIA ca- reers.
Circumstance gave me a front-row seat as the curtain fell. Living in Hali- fax in 1986 and 1987 let me document the Atlantic’s daily passage, quite liter- ally, in my own backyard. Leaving sight of the Atlantic Ocean near Hali- fax, traversing Nova Scotia’s forested, hilly interior, and regaining tidewater
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near the Bay of Fundy on the New Brunswick border, the 189 miles be- tween CN’s east-coast main line rail- head and Moncton afforded a diverse stage upon which these MLW cab units looked anything but the aging veterans they were.
A circle closes, another begins VIA’s first new GMD F40PH’s were built in October 1986, which heralded
the beginning of the end for the MLW cab units. Waiting for the Atlantic’s headlight to appear on that cold, still morning near Moncton, condensed breath evoked images of the steam loco- motive exhaust that once drifted over those rails. It was easy to imagine a kindred observer standing in the same spot, next to the CN main line west of Moncton, experiencing the same bitter- sweet pangs when steam’s curtain fell
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