Idle curiosity...
Looking through some of my photos taken while riding The Canadian in 2008, I realized that the baggage on my train had several windows along one half of the car. The car was VIA #8609. After doing some research on the web, I've found that this car and several others like it were former Canadian Pacific property and originally contained dorm berths (roomettes?) and a shower for the train crew as well as an office for the conductor. From what I remember of #8609, it had long been stripped of the crew accommodations and was a pure baggage.
Does VIA still run Bag/Dorms on any of their trains, or have all of them been gutted to be pure baggage cars by now?
Considering Amtrak's move to re-introduce Bag/Dorms with the Viewliner II's, I have to wonder why VIA would have ever gotten rid of the concept in the first place considering they had cars specifically built like that. On my Canadian trip the crew were bunking in the room-for-one accommodations on the Chateau and Manor cars, taking up revenue space (and the sleeper spaces were sold-out, even in February!)
Looking through some of my photos taken while riding The Canadian in 2008, I realized that the baggage on my train had several windows along one half of the car. The car was VIA #8609. After doing some research on the web, I've found that this car and several others like it were former Canadian Pacific property and originally contained dorm berths (roomettes?) and a shower for the train crew as well as an office for the conductor. From what I remember of #8609, it had long been stripped of the crew accommodations and was a pure baggage.
Does VIA still run Bag/Dorms on any of their trains, or have all of them been gutted to be pure baggage cars by now?
Considering Amtrak's move to re-introduce Bag/Dorms with the Viewliner II's, I have to wonder why VIA would have ever gotten rid of the concept in the first place considering they had cars specifically built like that. On my Canadian trip the crew were bunking in the room-for-one accommodations on the Chateau and Manor cars, taking up revenue space (and the sleeper spaces were sold-out, even in February!)