page_title: Deux-Montagnes line
section_title: CN service
hierarchical_section_title: Deux-Montagnes line / History / CN service
caption_attribution_description: English: This is from Roger Puta's Winterail slide program First Class, A Study in Lighting.
context_page_description: Deux-Montagnes or Two Mountains Line is a commuter railway line in Greater Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is owned by Exo, the organization that operates public transport services across this region.
  The line was created in 1918 as a Canadian Northern Railway service. Canadian National Railway ran the line starting in 1923 following the merger of CNoR into CN. CN transferred the Deux-Montagnes Line to the Société de transport de la communauté urbaine de Montréal on July 1, 1982. The line was refurbished from 1992 to 1995. It was transferred to the RTM's predecessor agency, the Agence Métropolitaine de transport on January 1, 1996. The RTM assumed current operation of the line upon its establishment on June 1, 2017.
  On May 11, 2020, service between Bois-Franc and Montreal Central Station was closed due to the construction of Réseau express métropolitain. In the early 2020s, the Deux-Montagnes line will close permanently in favour of REM service which will operate along the same route.
context_section_description: The Deux-Montagnes line was built by the Canadian Northern Railway. While other railways including Canadian Pacific and Grand Trunk Railway already had prime downtown locations for their terminal stations, Canadian Northern did not, having only a station out of the way on Moreau Street in Hochelaga.
  In 1910, it was decided that the best way for Canadian Northern to get downtown was to drill their way downtown — through Mont Royal. The construction started at both ends and met halfway through with only an inch difference. In 1918 the electrified (2400 V DC catenary), double-track 3.2 mi (5.15 km) tunnel was dubbed Montreal's first subway. Because the tunnel is on a steep grade and inadequately ventilated it was decided from the very beginning that the locomotives would be electric. The ventilation shaft is located SW of the intersection of Édouard-Montpetit Boulevard and Vincent-d'Indy Avenue very close to the Édouard-Montpetit Metro Station.
  The structure gauge of the Mount Royal Tunnel limits the height of bilevel cars to 14 ft 6 in or 4.42 m.
  In order to finance the project, Canadian Northern built a ‘model city’ north of the tunnel, modeled after Washington, D.C. The Town of Mount-Royal has grown to be an upper-income neighbourhood today. Construction began in 1912 and finished in 1918.  The first train was pulled by electric locomotive #601 (retired as #6711), which left Tunnel Terminal at 8:30 a.m. on October 21, 1918. The Canadian Northern Railway went bankrupt and was absorbed into what is now Canadian National. Tunnel Terminal was replaced by Central Station in 1943. CN added electric multiple units from Canadian Car and Foundry in 1952.
  In the 1960s, the first plans were announced to renovate the line, whose equipment was 40 years old at the time. First, it was to become metro line 3 (red), but plans were shelved because of the importance to build line 4 for service to Expo 67. With the equipment ageing, and ridership declining, CN wanted to close the line in the 1970s, but their proposals were rejected. The Quebec Ministry of Transport considered using the line for a high-speed connection to Mirabel Airport (Transport rapide régional aéroportuaire Montréal Mirabel, 1974) or as the first line of a BART-style regional metro system (Réseau express de Montréal, 1977; Métro régional, 1979). None of these projects progressed beyond the planning stage.
caption: An Electric Boxcab locomotive hauling CN electric multiple unit coaches in September 1979.
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