Life's Going To Be Dull Without CPR's Old "33", Published 3 September 1958
‘The Canadian Pacific Railway took Pool train 23 and 24 off the Ottawa-Toronto
run, after Labor Day. Every night, for 18 years now, Saturday excepted,
this train has left Ottawa around midnight for Toronto. Though described
as “pool”, it ran over CPR tracks with a CPR crew all the way.
‘Back at the beginning of the war, they found the
night train, No. 33, so heavy. they started to run it in two sections.
(No. 33 actually began to run from old Broad Street Station at the turn of the
century). But train controller Tom Lockwood, would not even admit the existence
of this new train, since he had decreed that no new trains to go on the Toronto
or any other run,.
‘So it was a wide-open secret that there was
another train to Toronto at night, and she went by the name: “The Second
33”.
‘In the old days, when I would be playing bridge
after 11 p.m. – I lived it up those days – I might look up from my potential
three no trump and remark:
“The Second 33”.
“I beg your pardon”, my partner would say Then I would
have to explain what the second 33 was.
‘The train ran via Trenton and Oshawa rather than follow the
first 33 via Havelock and Peterboro.
‘Everybody liked it, because it left late, and
arrived late. It was the last thing out of Toronto at night. In
winter, instead of arriving on a cold dark winter “night”, you got to Ottawa
late enough to step off in daylight.
‘The secret of the second 33 became such an open one
that it was finally dignified with the number 23, and it has run now just about
18 years.
‘But the coach business has fallen off – no one
wants to go to Port Hope or Oshawa at night apparently, and the sleeper business
has languished, as we’ve bred a new breed of
early-to-bed-and-early-to-
‘So say goodbye to this grand war-time
train. Her big 2400 blasted her way through what later became Alta
Vista We took the curve at Kemptville like a cortege, and the late sitters
got a vista of Smiths Falls at one a.m. Came the dawn, and maybe
Whitby or it could be rejoining the double track at Agincourt. Then
down to Don River till you were set down opposite the Royal York Hotel
tunnel.
‘But the biggest thrill of all was on the return trip,
when they double-headed you up the long crawl to Leaside Station, while the
train fell back to a creep, as the engines cough got hoarser all the time.
‘As I say, the CPR is making life dull for me. |