Here's a photo I took on August 24, 1976, FORTY-SIX YEARS AGO, when I made a one-week trip to British Columbia and Alberta. This is Canadian National's westbound Train # 1, the Super Continental making its way through the Rockies between Hinton and Jasper. Notice how much longer the train is compared to Canadian Pacific's "The Canadian". Almost all of this smooth sided passenger equipment that was owned by CN was rejected by VIA RAIL and most of it has been scrapped. VIA RAIL just retained the Budd-built stainless steel equipment that was purchased by Canadian Pacific and has added some to the fleet by buying second-hand Budd-built stainless steel equipment from Amtrak.

Perhaps someone more familiar with the area can identify this location more specifically. I'm guessing it's somewhere near Swan Landing, where the relatively-new Alberta Resources Railroad has a connection with the CN east-west mainline. In 1987 Clark Johnson's High Iron Travel operated a special chartered train over the Alberta Resources Railroad that also ventured to Hay River and Pine Point in the Northwest Territories -- as far north as you can go on the North American rail system.

I wasn't lucky enough to be able to make the trip, but here's a black-and-white photo taken by my friend Jack Swanberg of High Iron Travel's Explorers I chartered train during a photo run-by on the Alberta Resources Railroad. In an email to me, Jack noted the following:

Sure, no problem on posting my 1987 Alberta Resources Ry photo. Clark Johnson should get everlasting credit for arranging that first Explorers trip; it is amazing that he was able to pull it all together to cover such remote mileage, and to cover it in style indeed. And he even included a float plane flight over the Great Slave Lake to Yellowknife and back. Rare air mileage.


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