Designated Purpose of Specified Symbol Trains Handling Transcontinental Traffic

Designated Purpose of Specified Symbol Trains Handling Transcontinental Traffic

901 Required to handle high rated truck competitive traffic between major
cities on the main line from Toronto to Vancouver
921 Required to handle high rated truck competitive traffic from Toronto to
Winnipeg, and Piggyback traffic from Thunder Bay to Winnipeg.
965 Required to handle through traffic from Toronto, Southern Ontario and
connections to Western Canada. At Winnipeg traffic off 949 consolidated with
this train and from Winnipeg handles Regina and Vancouver traffic.
953 Required to handle overflow traffic from Southern Ontario to Western Canada.
Terminate Winnipeg and traffic consolidated with 951.
949 Required to handle through freight from Saint John, NB, Montreal and Smiths
Falls to Western Canada.
From Winnipeg handles traffic for Brandon, Regina, Moose Jaw and Calgary.
Vancouver traffic goes over to 965.
951 Required to handle overflow traffic between main line cities from Montreal
to Vancouver. Handles 953’s traffic west of Winnipeg.
902 Required to handle Pacific import traffic and high rated truck competitive
traffic between major cities, Vancouver to Toronto. Montreal traffic is handled
to Winnipeg for connection with 952. Room permitting also handles selected empty
equipment to Eastern Canada.
952 Required to handle traffic from Western Canada points to stations east of
Sudbury as far as Saint John, NB.

Recent Posts

Layout Update and 2026 Doubleheaders Tour

It’s that time of year again, our layout will be open to the public this coming Saturday, 28 March 2026, in participation with the annual Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge-Guelph and area layout tour, organized by the Doubleheaders Model Railway Club. This is a self-guided tour of a large number of club and private home layouts in the area.

If you are new to the Doubleheaders tour there are approximately 20 different layouts you can visit, varying from modular displays, large club setups to small N-scale pikes. You can see everything from tinplate trains to scratch-built prototype models. However the layouts are spread over a large area, and that makes it difficult to see them all in a day. So you should prepare for a full day of layout touring, and also maybe consider making this an annual, or at least semi-annual event to frequent over the years.

Please note; some layout are open until 9PM, however the CP Sudbury Division closes early at 5PM. If you are taking this year’s tour, please plan accordingly.

As usual we’ve been working on an number of layout projects over the winter in anticipation of the tour, at least as best as this year’s weather would permit. To start, we’ve completed the base scenery at our INCO – Crean Hill mine scene (photo above). If anything says ‘CP Rail in Sudbury’, it’s nickel ore trains; and not only do we have a large fleet of appropriate ore gons in service, but we now have a nicely sceniced mine for them to operate in. Well, as nice as an industrialized hole in the ground can look.

We also have a lot more carpentry happening upstairs as our layout expands to the second floor. The above photo shows what we’ve named the Verner helix, though like many of our helices it is actually connecting many different sections of the layout together. If you want the details, you’ll need to visit us and ask one of our friendly club members to find out. You will also see the new rails being laid at Levack, the benchwork at Sturgeon Falls along with the associated trackage at the Abitibi Paper mill located there, and much more.

Of course the feature attraction is seeing the fully operational portions of our CP Sudbury Division layout in action, with long sound-equipped freights running smoothly under DCC control. This is your chance to interact with us; to swap stories, exchange ideas, share techniques, and to celebrate the art of railway modelling, because that is always the best part of the world’s greatest hobby.

Hope to see you on the tour.

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  4. 2025 Doubleheaders Layout Tour – Saturday March 29th, 2025 2 Replies
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