Re: (rshsdepot) Moncton, NB, Canada

[CoolGuy127_@_aol.com]

In a message dated 5/24/02 7:56:16 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
jp.underwood_@_ns.sympatico.ca writes:


> . The other train "The Atlantic" ran from halifax to Moncton, Saint John, 
> then through Maine to Quebec. That route was cancelled twice by the federal 
> government, the last time in the cutbacks of 1990, when VIA service was 
> reduced 50 per cent by then transportation minister Benoit Bouchard.
> 

    No, that's not correct.  The 1990 cutbacks represented the first time the 
train was cut, I think.  It was subsequently reinstated, only to be abandoned 
in December 1994 because the line on which it operated was sold by the 
Canadian Pacific Railway to several regional short lines, with the status of 
the line being uncertain until the very last minute.  I remember this 
distinctly because I rode from Montreal to Halifax and return on VIA in the 
summer of 1994, taking the Ocean eastbound and the Atlantic westbound.

    What is particularly ironic is that a new station had just been completed 
at St. Johns, N.B. for this train, less than a year earlier.  That brand-new 
station had to be abandoned when service on the Atlantic route was 
discontinued!  Although this represented a waste of resources, the building 
itself was an undistinguished modern structure with no reedeming 
architectural value.  I wonder what has happened to it.

                Daniel Chazin
                   Teaneck, NJ

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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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