The Partially-Air-Conditioned Winnipeg Limited

This little brochure is undated but is probably from somewhere between 1938, when the Winnipeg Limited began, and World War II. The brochure describes the all-heavyweight version of the train whose streamlined version was previously featured here.

Click image to download a PDF of this brochure.

The train apparently included two air-conditioned first-class cars, a sleeper and a sleeper-lounge-diner. The rest of the train was “comfortable modern coaches,” but note the absence of the words “air conditioned,” indicating that the coaches were not.

It is interesting that both the heavyweight and streamlined trains used a sleeper-lounge-diner. As noted in the post on the streamlined train, GN took a 16-duplex roomette, 4-bedroom car and replaced half the sleeping rooms with a lounge-diner-kitchen. A similar rebuild was probably used for the heavyweight car, which had an “eight berth section” (probably meaning four sections as each section had two berths), and a “club-observation room, serving complete meals at popular prices.” The other sleeper on the heavyweight train had eight sections, two compartments, and a drawing room, so the sleeper-lounge-diner sacrificed more than half the revenue space for the lounge-diner portion of the car.


Leave a Reply