ADAM TRAVELS ON THE CANADIAN, 1981

Minneapolis' Adam Platt recently posted two pictures to a Canadian-Passenger-Rail online [formerly yahoogroups] group. Adam shared the two photos because he was trying to cobble together the partially-forgotten itinerary of an extensive train trip he took across Canada and the western US in the summer he turned 18, in 1981. 

Does Adam's excellent photo (top) show Morant's Curve? A VIA F-unit is trailed in the locomotive consist by two CP Geeps. Then an ex-CP baggage, crew sleeper still in CN colours, two ex-CP coaches and an ex-CN coach. Definitely taken on CP rails, which the Canadian plied until it moved to CN in 1990. Tracing the Bow River, there are not many curves where the locomotives plus the first five cars are photographable!

Heading west on VIA No 1 from Montreal to Calgary, where his father joined him, the two rode then VIA No 9 Jasper-Prince Rupert, but Adam is unsure how he got from CP to the CN. There is a slide from the Lake Louise station, so Adam suspected they were bused or drove between there and Jasper. 

The whole trip was oddly eventful, beginning on the day/night that US Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) went on strike in the USA (or were fired by Ronald Reagan) sometime between August 2-5, 1981. Adam had to roam through O’Hare airport looking for an airline to accept his ticket when the non-stop flight to the east coast was cancelled. Adam lived in Chicago at the time, and knew from his old flight records that he flew O’Hare to Boston via Atlanta on Delta due to the ATC disruption. He then flew to LGA on New York Air, either the same day or the next day. That was the last flight until Port Hardy to Vancouver as the rest of the trip was done by train. Adam lists his August, 1981 itinerary thus:

--I took Amtrak from NYC to either Montreal or Toronto; I believe I rode VIA’s Cavalier; I rode the UA Turbotrain. I remember boarding or exiting it at Dorval.

--I met my Dad in Calgary off VIA No 1 and we continued to Lake Louise likely arriving on August 13.

--We traveled from Jasper to Prince Rupert on No 9 which ran daily that summer.

--BC Ferry Queen of the North (now at the bottom of the Inside Passage) to Port Hardy, overnight. Likely date of sailing was August 15 or 17.

--Pacific Western 737 to YVR, spent a night there, then Western Airlines to SFO. Two nights in SFO.

--Amtrak Pioneer OAK to Ogden, Utah.

--D&RGW Zephyr, Ogden to Denver, likely date of travel August 21 or 23.

--Home to O’Hare on United the next day.

Adam met a girl in Montreal who asked him to travel with her, which he almost did, but gallantly (and now a little regretfully?) stuck to his plan. He rode trains which were on borrowed time: the UA Turbotrain, defunct mileage on the CP out of Montreal, the now-gone Pioneer on Amtrak out of Oakland, and of course the Rio Grande Zephyr which died two years later. The Skeena when had a diner and sleepers. The Queen of the North later notoriously sunk in the Inside Passage. Sinking his teeth into the trip, Adam even got a piece of meat stuck in his esophagus on the Western Airlines flight from YVR to SFO and had to have an endoscopy in St. Francis Hospital in SFO to remove it. (Back when they served steak in economy flights for dinner!)

Adam writes, "It was a very emotionally resonant time for me. My parents had split up a year earlier and I hadn’t seen a lot of my dad, and this was the last time I was alone with him for an extended period of time before his death a decade later. I had difficulty with emancipating, I would get terribly homesick when I left home and by being away for three weeks literally a week before I left for college, I was trying to build independence."

Adam's trip account really sparked my imagination. Mainly because I was interested to see if I could figure out more about his consist on No 1, how far he travelled, and where his photos were taken. I like a good bit of sleuthing. Some of my favourite bits of sleuthing have previously been shared on this blog. (I used to enjoy 'looking for missing things' in my workplace - dogged tenacity paired with a minutes-long attention span after which I would generally admit defeat!) Adam has kindly acceded to being the subject of this post - as a reporter, he's used to writing about other people but not to someone writing about him!

Coincidentally, Adam recently retraced his route aboard VIA (partially, in reverse) travelling in late August from Vancouver to Port Hardy, Port Hardy to Prince Rupert, then VIA to Jasper and then Edmonton. It was 45 years to the week that he did it as a teenager, (not by design, but happenstance).  

Prior to retracing his route decades later, Adam started to get more nostalgic about 1981, where they travelled and why. With 2,000 slides from 1977-87 to go through, they may help him piece the trip back together, but right now it seems like dealing with a jigsaw puzzle. The exact dates and itinerary which he did not keep good records of, but have fairly narrow date parameters based on when the trip started and when Adam left for college.

Adam explains, "One of the real challenges for me in my current situation is trying to understand whether I was riding or just railfanning. I didn’t have a process to tip me off, like taking an interior picture of every train I rode. So my lack of note-taking is really taking a toll. All my transit and commuter photos are while railfanning, but the passenger rail, ugh. But I think on the big 1981 trip I did not do any railfanning outings or days. If I was shooting I was riding."

THE PLATFORM PHOTO

Just look at this photo (above) taken by Adam's dad from aboard the train. It just personifies the word 'Enthusiasm'! Adam's dad met him in Calgary and they rode No 1 westward from there. Believing that he just met his Dad when his Dad boarded the train, Adam doesn't think he disembarked at any time. Why would they have gotten off at Field where there were no services - no rental car, etc, especially since they were not staying at Emerald Lake or in Yoho? If they were driving or busing to Jasper the next day, Banff or Lake Louise would have been the logical stops at which to leave the train, not Field.

Adam realized that this seminal photo posed something of a mystery to him. It is a print, not a slide, and is the only photo he still has taken by his Dad, who died 34 years ago, on this trip. If it was today and he were 18, he knows he’d be taking pictures of himself every 10 minutes -  his Canon FtB was bulkier than a smartphone and not good for selfies.

That trip was really the only lengthy time he'd spent with his dad after Adam finished high school. Staying on the train while Adam got off to railfan and take pictures at that unknown location, Adam was sure the picture taken by his dad on the platform was at Jasper -  until the shadows created doubt and the feedback from the group discussion online convinced him that it wasn't

He had hoped that returning to BC with his friend and travelling up Vancouver Island to Port Hardy and taking the ferry, Skeena, and Super Continental (er, Canadian) to Edmonton, that there would have been some 'aha!' moment of inspiration - because it was 45 years to the week that he did it in the opposite direction. But that didn't happen. Asking the current VIA staff aboard the train about his photos, most of whom wouldn't even remember the train on the CP, didn't help much. 

Since the car in the photo is not a freight car but a CP Service car, it is obviously not on CN which greatly narrows the options and confirmed to Adam that it was not taken while aboard the train to Prince Rupert. Such script-lettered Service cars could be former CP smooth-sided cars, heavyweight coaches or boxcars repurposed into various uses: crew diners, bunk cars, storage cars etc. I'd favour the first two, as there is no access door visible, but some passenger car underframe elements like a water tank and a long span between wheel sets. Where the hands-in-pockets fellow is standing - is that a ladder and door, or is it a car-side consolidated stencil?

Departing Montreal on August 10, based on the VIA public timetable, here's  VIA No 1's schedule:

• Day 1 depart Montreal 2030
• Day 2 Carleton Place-Thunder Bay, ON
• Day 3 ON-SK including Winnipeg servicing stop 0920-1330
• Day 4 Swift Current -through the mountains-Kamloops
• Day 5 arrive Vancouver 0700

Day 4 stops west of Calgary were few, especially ones where passengers could disembark and take platform photos! Field and Lake Louise were both pickup points for Brewster and competing tour bus companies running along the Icefields Parkway to Jasper. In 1981, Day 4 of the schedule of No 1 put Adam's train at Calgary from 0810-1030, Banff 1240-1250, Lake Louise at 1335, and Field at 1455. So there were three main options for that photo's location: 

Banff?  Private-car 'garden tracks' had their own platforms but they were narrow and made of wood. His photo doesn’t show a wooden platform. Unaware of the garden tracks at Banff that had been suggested, Adam thought perhaps Banff was the only option other than Calgary. Banff being a scheduled 10-minute stop makes the possibility of temporarily disembarking more plausible.  I'm looking back at the Banff station from an ex-CN E-series sleeper aboard No 1 in 1980:

Here's a Skyline view of a short work train there in 1986, combined with a vintage view looking toward the station in the other direction, showing the garden tracks occupied at left and a switcher at right:

Lake Louise?  The platform photo cannot be at Lake Louise because yard tracks there were removed before 1981 to allow construction of the second main track on an embankment. The Lake Louise station and new embankment are shown in a screenshot from aboard Rocky Mountaineer dated 2021 in this video, with a Sperry car waiting on the other main track:

Field? Though married at nearby Emerald Lake in 1992, the summer of '81 was Adam's first time in the Canadian West and he is positive he would never have left the train at such an obscure place, so he seriously doubted the photo was shot there. However, there would be a crew change at Field, so there would be ample opportunity for passengers to get some fresh air on the platform. Field station, west of Lake Louise, had two platforms - one on each side of it - and as a division point was a likely place to find ex-passenger cars in maintenance-of-way service. The presence of a CP Service car on the track running behind the station, the unusual paved/stone wide platform between that track and his train, and the reported departure of tour buses from Field to Jasper, all convinced me that his dad took the photo at Field.

Check out two photos that quickly popped up during an online search. The Stan Styles photo looks east in 1984 (above) and 'DM' photo looks west, undated (below) both show boarding car outfits across a wide platform at Field, matching afternoon shadows in Adam's photo. Look sharp and you can see the crack running down the platform visible in his Dad's photo. No 2 is stopped at Field, headlights and ditchlights dimmed for a meet and not on the platform track. Its stop was scheduled for 1645 in the summer of '81; VIA 6569 was released from rebuild from VIA 1425 at the end of December, 1980.

A circa 1962 pre-VIA photo from this previously-published post shows Mount Stephen dominating the yard and station, giving an idea of how many cars would be spotted along that wide platform:

Interestingly, Adam used Google Gemini to input information and receive a Historical Photo Verification Report incorporating astronomical data, track geometry, regional geography to evaluate his photo. If you are a fan of AI's reliability, you'll be pleased to know that in providing a full verification matrix, the AI confirmed with absolute certainty that the photo is at Field, British Columbia.

THE CONSIST

Since I also travelled and railfanned out West that month, I was hopeful that there was a good chance I could provide Adam his consist on No 1. I rode the Canadian later in August, 1981 and core cars in the Canadian's consist routinely stayed mostly together for at least one pair of east-west trips across Canada.  Having said that, there were often minor changes to the consist - a coach or sleeper swapper here or there - but the majority of core cars were the same. My Dad made an intensive investigation into Corridor Canadian consists (though that was post-November, 1981 and into 1982). He was able to document a robust and reproducible rotation: 12 days between a consist's westbound departures out of Montreal. A consist would reach Vancouver, departing there and passing again through Kingston nine days after it had left Montreal. But that was when the Canadian was operating over CN's Corridor Montreal-Toronto before continuing to Vancouver. That rotation would not necessarily hold in August, 1981 when the Canadian was still departing Montreal, staying overwhelmingly on CP rails westward to Sudbury and beyond.

For the August, 1981 time period, I consulted my own consist notes from that month, finding only one east-west paired example I considered reliable. VIA No 1 through Portage on August 26 (core cars Skyline 512 and Butler Manor) returning through Portage eastward on September 4. Using my Dad's rotation, that consist would have been serviced and restocked in Vancouver between its 0700 arrival and its same-day eastward 2145 departure, returning east through Portage as No 2 four days later, not nine. That means my August 26 example spent six days in Vancouver. Was this a representative example, or a one-off? Forty-five years later, it's hard to know!

Based on that timing, however, Adam's consist that departed Montreal on August 10, reached Winnipeg on August 12 thence Vancouver on August 14 before departing Vancouver late on August 20 and again reaching Winnipeg eastward on August 22. The same day, unfortunately for this investigation, was the day I left Toronto for Winnipeg on VIA No 3, so I would not be trackside on the appropriate day to see his consist through Portage. Not knowing the turnaround dwell times in Toronto or Montreal, I can't predict when that same consist would return west when I was trackside in Portage.

The good news is that I have several west-of-Winnipeg (where the sleeper swap took place) consists that would be representative of Adam's consist. A new set of CP units was always swapped at Calgary for the trip through the mountains, but the passenger consist remained the same from Winnipeg through to Vancouver:

Visible in Adam's photo are:

• ex-CP F-unit
• two CP passenger Geeps
• ex-CP baggage
• crew sleeper still in CN colours
• two ex-CP coaches
• ex-CN 3200-series snack bar-coach
• ex-CP Skyline

Following would have been:

• two ex-CP Manor sleepers
• two ex-CN Dayniters
• ex-CP diner
• three ex-CN E-series sleepers
• ex-CP Park car

LOCATION OF THE CURVE PHOTO

Following the line via satellite imagery, there appear to be only two left-hand curves adjacent to the Bow River west of Banff. At Massive, between the river and a large curved gravelly cutting:

And the world-famous Morant's Curve a few miles to the west at Mi 113 CP Laggan Sub. (Photo above - looking the opposite direction aboard Rocky Mountaineer dated 2021 in this video looking back at Morant's Curve. Screenshot - Life of a Train Driver):

I checked my three trip accounts riding west on VIA No 1 on CP rails [obligatory statement of regret here as to why this route is now the sole province of willing-to-pay Rocky Mountaineer passengers]:

• October, 1980 - in left-side vestibule perhaps continuously from Exshaw to the Spiral Tunnels.
• September, 1985 - in the Skyline on a snowy/rainy afternoon from Banff to the Spiral Tunnels.
• May, 1986 - in the vestibule from Exshaw again to the Spiral Tunnels.

My 1980 curve photo (above) shows no cut at right. Could this be Morant's Curve? The mountain profile (below) suggests 'maybe'. Understandably, despite searching cab ride/vestibule videos on YouTube, it's virtually impossible to reproduce this track-level view today, the closest approximation location being Morant's Curve viewpoint on the Bow Valley Parkway, sans train in June, 2019:

Here's a comparison of my 1986 curve photo which seems to match the background in Adam's, including the yellow-circled mountain crag and trees at right. Without doing a rock-by-rock, tree-by-tree analysis, I believe this curve is the one near Massive, backed by the gravelly cutting visible in my photo, and hey, the trees along the river do match, just five years' taller in my photo. So, not Morant's Curve:

Perhaps imprecisely, my notes say "Train on curve near Mi. 108"

Regardless, by the equipment and topography, I can conclusively confirm that Adam was riding the Canadian over CP rails - before he began the Jasper-Prince Rupert leg of his journey.

UPDATES AND UPCOMING

After all the sleuthing, there are certain things that only Adam can further elucidate: where he disembarked from the Canadian, and how he and his father travelled to Jasper. It seems we have been able to allay some of his lack of clarity about this segment of his extensive trip. Now Adam is exploring his slides and will likely come up with some key details that help him recreate his itinerary in detail. I'm in favour of consulting enthusiasts online and answering initial questions, but those answers are being superseded by what he finds in those slides, I intend to preserve preliminary and presumptive posits in this post, as a way of documenting our research and 'showing our work', just like in math class. I will share updates here, hoping that Adam and I can collaborate on a follow-on post.

UPDATE: Between completing the draft of this post and the publication date, Adam answered the slides' siren-song and waded into the boxes of slides from his 1981 trip. He's planning a slide-scanning marathon. There are slides showing that he and his dad continued on to Vancouver, not disembarking before that. So our discussion about Banff, Lake Louise or Field as a disembarkation station is now moot. He reports, "...have started the slide box exploration….last night’s box, labeled Winnipeg-Calgary, revealed photos of a lot of cars at station and yard in Winnipeg. If I could get better magnification there are numbers and names. Also prior I got a cab ride in an F! ...and then pix from in Calgary, from the tower and streetside."

Here are three photos from my 2019 visit to Field. No life in that old station whatsoever, with the entire dead end property posted 'No Trespassing' by CP. Overlook northwest from the townsite:

Looking southwest down the mainline.

COINCIDENCE AND CONCLUSION 

There are so many coincidences that really got me interested in this intensive investigation. I'm nearly the same age as Adam, I was also travelling solo across Western Canada that summer, just a couple of weeks after Adam's Dad took the photo from aboard the train. Also, like Adam I retraced my 1980s VIA routes years later, in our case in 2019. On that trip, a young fellow about Adam's age, also a railfan photographer, was travelling west with his parents as a graduation gift. Toting a Canadian Trackside Guide, the young Illinois lad named Eric on a gifted grad trip. We also met Tim and Liz on our way back east on the Canadian who happened to be from...Minneapolis! Adam is now editor of Twin Cities Business magazine (not to be coincidentally confused with Another Adam Platt - the New York magazine restaurant critic and 'glutton-in-residence).

I'll close this post with this appraisal by Adam about looking back as a young solo traveller. (I, too, made my first solo trip on the Canadian in 1980 at the tender age of 16):

"One thing I realized is once I turned 16 I was on the move. It was a simpler time, but also a harder time to travel. I didn’t have a credit card, no cell phone, etc. I’m barely old enough to drive, and yet I’m all over the damn continent. Multiple trips in these slide boxes that I have no memory of..."

Running extra...

Faithful Trackside Treasure reader Mark Hudson sent me some VIA Venture photos taken June 24, 2026. In the area to visit some of his wife's family, Mark normally photographs Nos 71 and 72 at Glencoe, ON, where they have a scheduled meet.  "We took a wrong turn and ended up in Bothwell.  It all worked out.  We made the short jaunt to Glencoe, after taking pictures, to enjoy some refreshments at the trackside Timmies! The first shows Sarnia-Toronto No 84, speeding through Watford, ON, at 0910."

"The second is Toronto-Windsor No 72 at a crossing in Bothwell, ON, at 0958 (above) the last, No 71 moving quickly at Bothwell on its trek to Windsor (below).  Mark adds, "Relaxing at Lake Huron is great but the itch to see VIA, CN, and possibly CP trains gets me out one morning during our week long stay.  By the way, a wooden CN caboose and the depot (beautiful) are on display at Glencoe." Thank you, Mark!

Some YouTube finds:

• This is just fun to watch. America does it bigger and better. I didn't count. Are there actually 250 locomotives? 
• Also fun to watch. It's not relaxing in the Park car with a beer, but it is a very scenic trip through Northern Ontario nonetheless. Sadly, 30 minutes of fire-ravaged forest from recent wildfires.
• Autumn 2025 at Morningstar Road action, though the last minute zoom-outs are a little jarring at times.

First past the post...

The coffee-table book Between Friends/Entre Amis was Canada’s official gift to the United States on the occasion of its bicentennial in 1976. This treatise discusses the tome's historical impact, ending with "As polarization reshapes North American politics, the question is not whether Canada and the United States remain 'between friends'. It is whether they are prepared to practice the kind of friendship that democracy requires: honest, resilient, and capable of self-reflection."

We are fortunate that 80% of Canadians support our Prime Minister Mark Carney, and that he is not responding rashly to midnight memes while our country which sits serenely atop our neighbour to the south - the neighbour I cannot Gander as I gooseneck from our Lake Ontario shore, save the steam escaping from the Oswego nuclear plant - if the wind is just right. 

We have to believe the winds will shift amicably.