VIA Rail Trip Report - Sennetere and others

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VIA Rail Adventures: Two Routes in Quebec

After nine days at home, it was time to return to our Neighbor to the North for an additional ten days with more rides on VIA Rail, a tourist railroad based in Quebec City, more time in Montreal, and a visit to Halifax, Nova Scotia. That itinerary included the trains between Montreal and northern Quebec, to the towns of Senneterre and Jonquiere, the only routes in the VIA Rail system that I had not yet ridden. My trip included a visit to historic Quebec City.
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At the station, the train was among the most unusual I have ever seen. It was, quite literally, two trains in one. The head half was the consist bound for Senneterre as Train 603. The hind half split at Hervey Junction and went to Jonquiere as Train 601. The train left at 7:30 and ran with its two sections combined for slightly more than four hours. Each “half” of the combined train consisted of an F40PH-2 locomotive, a baggage car that appeared to use the shell of a 1954-vintage Budd-built car from the original consist for CP Rail’s Canadian, and a single coach from that equipment roster. That coach was the only passenger-carrying car in each consist, the same sort of long-distance coach used on the trains to Vancouver and Churchill, as well as on part of the consist of the Ocean between Montreal and Halifax, which I would ride the following week. The coaches on each section were modified to add a place to store coffee, other drinks and a few snacks, items that were available for sale during the trip. The two trains run north from Montreal on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. They return on Tuesdays and Thursdays, starting with an early-morning departure. On Sundays, they leave five hours later on a trip that ends with a late-evening arrival at Montreal.
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I have wanted to ride these trains for years.

If the writer thinks 601/603 is unusual he should see the Corridor J-trains, which could be one loco-coach combo (like P42-Renaissance) attached to a wholly different one (F40-LRC, say)