Would you pay $108 (in today's dollars) to ride in a wooden coach behind steam for 14 hours?
If you took one of these trains to Mont Laurier and back, that's what it would cost.
This 3.5 x 6 inch timetable was published for the 1950-51 season.
Skis are unwieldy, so a few options are available depending on people's preferences. However, you won't be taking them into the parlour car!
The train schedule is quite an interesting, comprehensive document.
So that you can look it over in comfort - depending on your screen - I have reproduced it in two sizes, below.
To convert from 1950 dollars (below) to 2025 dollars, multiply by 13.
So Montreal to Mont Laurier and return on the weekend $8.35 x 13 = $108.55
... Fourteen hours behind steam, in wooden coaches for just over $100!
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| from: Western Canada Atlas; 1927; WJ Gage & Co, Toronto. |
The end of the line at Mont Laurier can be seen in the top, left corner of the map above.
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| from: Winter Sports in Canada. An undated page probably saved from a newspaper insert by LC Gagnon. |
I don't know if any of these people are railfans.
And we don't know if they are being made to feel that they're 'big shots to the railways'.
A trip to St Marguerite might have felt similar in comfort
to a person making a two-hour trip in a school bus today.
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| from: Trains Up North, Part 1 ; M Peter Murphy; February 1975; Canadian Rail. Photo credit: LO Leach. |
The caption says:
"Ski Specials were the thing on the CPR's Laurentian line before and after World War II. Most winter weekends, you could see this or a similar line-up of specials in the yard at St Agathe waiting for the southbound Sunday evening rush. Each train consisted of one baggage car for skis and accident victims and about 10 coaches. The photograph was taken about 1935."
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My paternal grandfather was a bilingual anglophone, he did not drive, and he retired to a small lakeside property at Lac Saguay. Our visits there before 1962 (when my parents bought their first car) would have been made by train. My grandfather probably clipped and forwarded this article to my father.