New Haven Trains and Consists, April 1965

stewartsage wrote: The Ambassador (Montreal-New York)
All trains all coach
-Train No. 59
-Train No. 66
-Train No. 89

Did they really make the run all the way from New York to Montreal without any food service? Or was a diner/grill car switched into/out of the consist at Springfield or White River Jct.?

Ridgefielder wrote: Did they really make the run all the way from New York to Montreal without any food service?

Yep. No food service of any kind except what you carried on yourself. I rode the NH-B&M-CV-CN Ambassador a couple times during its final year (1966) and photographed it a couple more, and it was typically just a CN RPO and two NH coaches behind the power, or sometimes one CN coach and one NH coach for variety. But this was far from the only example of a secondary long distance train in the pre-Amtrak years of the 1960s that lacked food service... that was often a sign that the railroad was doing its best to drop a train but the ICC wouldn't let them.

There was no food service of any kind between New York and Montreal in 1965 on the day trains. Often by then they only had an RPO and one coach between Springfield and White River Junction and sometimes the CV would put on an old Grand Trunk Western coach to help with any excess load. The CN/CV ran a cafe grill car on these two trains for quite some time between Montreal and White River Junction, I'll have to dig to find out when they came off. One good break came at White River Junction where there was a decent diner very close to the station and the 15 or so minute stop allowed time to find at least something. I rode these trains many times and always made sure that (a) I brought some food with me before I got on and (b) I often made a run for the diner at White River Junction for a burger and a soda to go.
As for trying to answer this topic in full, I suppose I could but it will take a lot of time and effort and right now I am not going to try to tackle that job. From memory trains 2 and 3 between New York and Boston in addition to the head end traffic they had one coach and one sleeper east of New Haven and additional coaches as needed between New Haven and Grand Central Terminal. Train 6 ran with a diner or grill between New York and New Haven and a parlor and maybe three coaches between New Haven and Boston. In 1965 most Boston or Springfield trains ran with more coaches west of New Haven than they did east of New Haven. train 33 ran with two coaches through from Boston to New York maybe one or two more on Sundays.
Noel Weaver