Not Quite Twins

The two trains pictured on these post cards are both part of Canadian National Railways’ (CNR) flagship the Super Continental.

It was a transcontinental Canadian passenger train operated by the CNR from 1955 until 1977. Via Rail took over the train in 1977 and operated it until the train was cancelled in 1981. Service was restored in 1985 but was again eliminated in 1990. The original CNR train had a Montreal–Ottawa–Toronto-Winnipeg–Saskatoon–Edmonton–Jasper–Vancouver routing with daily service.

CNR waited until April 24, 1955, to introduce its new transcontinental flagship to replace its former flagship, the Continental Limited; this was the same date that competitor Canadian Pacific Railway introduced its new streamlined transcontinental train The Canadian. The two routes competed with each other until 1990 when Via Rail cancelled the Continental Limited. The Super Continental route was advertised as the longest single run of a diesel locomotive powered train in North America without changing locomotives. Even though Canadian National Railways had not yet completely switched from steam to diesel power, the Super Continental was always hauled by a variety of diesel locomotives, including Montreal Locomotive Works FP-2s and FP-4s. I have written about the AFP-4s in the last few posts.

On the backs of the post cards it mentions that these trains are part of Canadian National Railways’ “Super Continental”. Notice that they say Canadian National Railways (possessive). That was the official name of CNR until they dropped the final “s” in 1960. CNR started because the Canadian government amalgamated several struggling regional railways into one large corporation back in the early twentieth century. That is why it was called the Canadian National Railways with and “s” at the end. This fact tells me that both of these post cards were published in the 1950s. The bottom post card was printed and published by Smith Lithograph Company, Ltd. out of Vancouver. It was distributed by Harry Rowed, O’Neill and Associates out of Jasper, Alberta. This post card has a date of 1958 in the bottom right hand corner. The first post card simply informs us that this is the “Super Continental” in the Fraser Valley, near Hope, British Columbia and that it was printed in Canada. Even though they do look so similar, I am not sure that they are the same photograph.

The train in the second picture is shorter than the first. However, the snow in the mountains in both pictures is the same. It is possible that the top one is the original and someone removed the spectator in the white shirt and took off a couple of cars before reprinting it. If that is the case, the second publisher copyrighted the picture. There is no indication of a copyright on the top one. On the other hand, I could be completely wrong. The back of the top card still reminds us that the message goes on the left side and the address goes on the right-hand side of the post card. This could be left over from when they started to allow both items on the same side of the card. Although, that did happen back in 1907.