Un Train à Montreal Peut-Etre?
It was probably 20 years ago, perhaps even more, when I rode an Amtrak train called The Montrealer, from New York up to Montreal. I remember the trip particularly because it was an overnight ride and I, in my sleeping car roomette, was awakened in the middle of the night by a series of jerks and bumps.
I had a scanner with me on that trip and turned it on in time to hear the conductors talking to the engineer. They were trying to extract an old mattress from beneath the locomotive. It and an old refrigerator had been put on the tracks by a couple of brain-dead individuals. After a few minutes, the mattress was removed and we were on our way again.
Alas, the Montrealer is no more. Not many years after that incident it was renamed The Vermonter and became a daily all coach train operating pretty much in daylight hours. It’s a very scenic ride, especially in the Fall, originating in Washington, DC, and terminating at St. Albans, Vermont (photo above). Start to finish, it’s a little more than a 13-hour ride.
However, for a number of months now, a grassroots movement has been actively pressing for a return of the service to Montreal. And why not? It’s only about another 65 miles from St. Albans. Of course, things are never that simple. For one thing, it would mean additional immigration and customs personnel of both sides of the border and the Canadians have been loath to provide those services. That was the case when a second daily train from Seattle to Vancouver was proposed, and it took cries of outrage from business and tourism interests in Vancouver to bring the Canadian government around.
This is one more instance when pressure for new or expanded passenger train service has originated from the public. That’s encouraging because the politicians—the savvy ones, anyway—are very sensitive to wishes of the general public that have the potential of developing into a movement. It’s early, but this has real potential, especially because Canadian officials have reacted positively to the first overtures. We shall see.
Amtrak renamed the Night Owl to the Twilight Shoreliner if I recall. Back in the 90s I would take the Lakeshore from Syracuse to Boston on a Sunday and then ride the Shoreliner to Washington and be there in plenty of time for Monday morning meetings with my customers. Yes, I miss the overnight train between DC and Boston.
Can I assume when you were awakened you were in a sleeper car? Or was the Montrealer similar to another northeast overnight train, #66 and #67, that does not have sleepers even though it runs overnight? (And now that I mention it, I wonder if demand for sleeper cars exist for those who leave Boston in the evening and arrive early the next morning in Washington, DC. Do you know if that’s ever been considered?
Thanks for noticing that. I’ve added a clarification to the first paragraph. There used to be a train from Boston to Washington called the Night Owl, I believe. There were sleeping cars on the train and, although it arrived in DC very early, those passengers were permitted to stay asleep in their berths until something like 6:30. Very civilized, don’t you think?