In 1954, Canadian National advertised that it had made the largest order of new passenger cars in history, a total of 359 cars. These cars were streamlined, of course, and made significant improvements over the heavyweight cars that preceded them. This booklet introduces the new (for Canadian National) accommodations and features found in those cars.
Click image to download a 2.6-MB PDF of this 32-page booklet.
The booklet includes two pages each for coach, sections, duplex roomettes, roomettes, bedrooms, compartments, drawing rooms, parlor cars, buffet cars, dinettes, and diners. There are also two pages each for sleeper-grill (eight sections with a 16-seat diner) and parlor-grill (20 parlor seats and a 16-seat diner) cars.
Each of the descriptions includes a sample fare for that accommodation. Unfortunately, the samples are all for different routes: coach from Montreal to Ottawa is $3.90; a lower berth from Toronto to Windsor is $4.00; a duplex roomette from Winnipeg to Vancouver is $14.10; etc. This makes it difficult to truly compare the costs of the different accommodations. Of course, complete fare data could be found in CN timetables such as this one from 1956.
Streamlined and lightweight, and they look nice (even if they’re only black and white illustrations)…but they couldn’t hold a candle to the beautiful stainless steel Budd equipment that the CPR was just then acquiring–not least the Vista Domes and Park Cars!
Once CN acquired Milwaukee Road’s dome cars and beavertail lounges in the early ’60s, then they could assemble some decent consists for their transcontinental trains (dome cars in the West, and beavertail lounges in the Maritimes).
Even so, one of my fondest early memories is the fun of sleeping in a section in a CN sleeper (like the ones depicted here)…but that was exceeded by the joy of riding in CPR equipment for the first time, some years later.