New vents (?) on Renaissance cars

Hello all,

After a trip on the Ocean (Train 14 to Truro, NS) at the end of July, I noticed an interesting new vent (or some piece of hardware) on the "engineer's side" (for lack of a better descriptor) of Renaissance diner 7402, and on the same side of the second coach on the train. I don't know if this was on the other side as well.

You can see what I'm talking about here:



And here, on the coach:



As a result, the Canada logos had to be shifted to the ends:



Does anyone know what these are? I assume they're to do with the winter modifications (HVAC system perhaps?). This was the first time I had seen them.

Nice catch rather odd to see vents on the side in such a manner... My guess is as good as yours, ur proudly right, Option1: some type of mod equal to winterization. VIA is pretty inventive, OK more like MacGyver when it comes to modding there fleet of equipment. Or option 2 seeing as how its only on the dinner the original vents down below could be experiencing too much debris through the rest of the seasons (my hypothesis is based on the belief the diners filter design is different from the coaches). the one you saw on the coach is the mystery and leads me to lean more to option 1. for the vent.

Fresh air intakes to avoid sucking in brake shoe dust which has been a problem on REN cars from the very beginning.

From Canadian Passenger Rail.....

"These might be air intakes. The Ren cars had their air intakes under the
car which would suck in a lot of brake pad dust. A damper was installed
that would close when the brakes were applied but for some reason this
didn't work well so we might be looking at a mod which might be the solution
to this problem." Jim

"I'm almost positive that's what they are, an attempt to draw fresh air in from
higher up on the carbody thus avoiding the brake shoe dust altogether. Ugly as
sin thou if you ask me. I know this has been a serious problem on the REN cars
but I wish they would have come up with a better solution then this, guess they
just couldn't find the space within the carbody." Terry Brennan