Ocean (train)

The Ocean (French: L'Océan), previously known as the Ocean Limited, is a passenger train operated by Via Rail in Canada between Montreal, Quebec, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. It is the oldest continuously operated named passenger train in North America. The Ocean's schedule takes approximately 22 hours, running overnight in both directions. Together with The Canadian and Via's corridor trains, the Ocean provides a transcontinental service across Canada.
The Intercolonial Railway of Canada (IRC) inaugurated the Ocean Limited on July 3, 1904, as a summer-only "limited stop" service to supplement the Maritime Express. In Halifax, it connected with the Dominion Atlantic Railway's luxury train, the Flying Bluenose. During the immigration boom of the early 20th century, the Ocean Limited and other passenger trains on its route saw increased use as they provided key wintertime connections for both the Grand Trunk Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway in moving sponsored immigrants to lands in the Prairie provinces.
In 1918, the IRC was merged into the Canadian National Railways (CNR) and the Ocean Limited continued its operation much as before. During both the First and Second World Wars, the Ocean Limited provided important service to the port of Halifax.
In 1964 the Ocean received ex-Milwaukee Road Skytop Lounge lounge-sleeping cars.
CNR dropped the "Limited" from the train's name in 1966 as part of the company's adoption of bilingual names. Despite the name change references to the Ocean Limited remain commonplace.
During a landslide which affected the old IRC line near Rimouski, Quebec, in 1977, for six months CN diverted the Ocean onto another parallel line several hundred kilometres to the south, maintaining the same Halifax–Montreal schedule times.
In 1976, CN placed operation of its passenger services under a new division using the marketing slogan "Via". In April 1978 this division was split off as a separate Crown corporation named Via Rail Canada, taking with it all CN passenger trains and equipment. The new national passenger rail service did not begin to change train names and operations until 1979, following the October 1978 assumption of all CPR passenger trains and equipment.
The Ocean did not get renamed by Via, and in fact became supplanted on the Halifax–Moncton portion of its route in 1985 by another Via train, the Atlantic (formerly the Atlantic Limited), which saw its eastern terminus extended to Halifax from Saint John. This train also assumed the train numbers and equipment of the defunct CN passenger train Scotian, which survived only into the first few years of the Via era.
Under Via, the Ocean underwent several changes in its operation:
The route taken by the Ocean runs through eastern Canada including the Island of Montreal and the city's skyline and suburbs, the lower St. Lawrence River valley, the Matapédia River valley, the south shore of Chaleur Bay and the forests of eastern New Brunswick, the Tantramar Marshes, the Cobequid Mountains and Wentworth Valley, the edge of Cobequid Bay and mixed farmland through central Nova Scotia to Halifax.
Three Renaissance train-sets supported the Ocean route, but the reduction to three departures in each direction per week in late 2012 reduced the need to only two sets of equipment. These sets range from as few as 14 cars in the off season to as many as 21 cars during the peak summer period, and each includes a baggage car, several coach cars, a dining car bracketed by two service cars, multiple sleeping cars, a transition car (see discussion above) and a Park sleeper buffet-lounge dome observation car. The Ocean is almost invariably hauled by a pair of London, Ontario-built GM F40PH locomotives, all of which CAD Railway Industries of Montreal has upgraded to the F40PH-3 model. A third locomotive is sometimes added in autumn and winter to help deal with difficult track conditions.
For several years prior to 2012, Via Rail removed one set of Renaissance equipment from service during the winter for upgrade work and replaced it with Budd-built stainless steel HEP1 equipment (including a baggage car, coaches, a Skyline dome car, a dining car, Château sleeper cars, and a Park car). This practice ended after the service reduction, as only two sets of equipment were required. However, in 2014 and again in 2015, Via added trains during the Christmas holiday period, which they ran using a set of HEP1 equipment much like in past years. These runs have been popular with railfans and the travelling public, as they provide more types of sleeping accommodations, a dome accessible to coach passengers, and a full dining car with meals cooked on board (a contrast to the catered meals in the normal Renaissance dining cars).
Prior to August 2013, the Ocean ran from Montreal to Matapédia, Quebec, joined to Train 16/17, the Montréal–Gaspé train (formerly called the Chaleur) three times per week. In Matapédia, the trains were separated with Train 16 continuing to the Gaspé peninsula and Train 14 (the Ocean) continuing to Halifax (and vice versa with Trains 15/17). Train 16/17 had its own locomotive which ran from Montreal, resulting in the combined trains (14 + 16 and 15 + 17) running with three locomotives between Montreal and Matapédia. The Montréal–Gaspé train used Budd-built stainless steel passenger cars, including a Skyline dome car. It was not possible to pass between the two trains when connected. Trains 16/17 were suspended due to infrastructure problems on the line to Gaspé, and service will not resume until the line is upgraded.
The balloon track at Halifax used to turn locomotives and passenger cars located in the Port of Halifax's South End Container Terminal was taken out of service in late 2020 to create more storage space for containers and the balloon tracks were severed in the fall of 2021. This necessitated certain operational changes to maintain service in both directions. The two F40PH locomotives are coupled back to back, unique for Via Rail trains, to enable the locomotives to couple on to the opposite end of train in Halifax for the return trip to Montreal. A result of the inability to turn the train set in Halifax is that the lead car on the eastbound Ocean (Train 14), typically a Renaissance baggage car, becomes the trailing car on the westbound Train 15 (in 2022, there is a second baggage car, a Budd HEP1 car, on the opposite end of the train). This situation has also resulted in the dropping of the iconic Park car (customarily the trailing car on Via's long-distance trains) from the Ocean train consist.
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