After seeing a little NB Southern action last Friday, I hopped on a plane for Montreal. I was to make a connection there to continue on to Winnipeg, but I had almost three hours to kill in between. On a previous visit to the lovely Dorval airport, I had noticed that the Dorval train station was in easy walking distance of the airport. It was time to take a stroll over and see what I could see.
There is no direct walking path between the airport and the train station. You would think there would be one, but you really feel like a trespasser tromping across parking lots and on-ramps to get to the station.
Anyway, I arrived at the station. There are actually two stations, the VIA Dorval station and the AMT Dorval platforms. I figured I would get hassled less at the AMT platform so I stayed there. On the double track CN line, a CN maintenance truck waited. Shortly after I arrived, an outbound VIA train stopped at the station, then headed out.
You can see the CN truck right at the start of the video. VIA 6426 pulled a short train of HEP 1 cars.
Shortly after that, the CN truck left, then another outbound VIA train came, stopped, and carried on. This one had VIA 913 and three LRC cars.
After that flurry of activity, things settled down for a while. There were a few passengers drifting around the platform but not a lot of activity. The sun was beginning to go down but there was enough to see an outbound AMT train come in and depart. AMT 1320 was pushing on the end pretty hard as they left the station.
Right behind that train was another set of headlights. It turned out to be a CP intermodal rolling through the station. I like the sunset reflecting off the sides of the containers.
I figured my time was up, and the light was fading, so I walked back to the airport and caught my flight with plenty of time to spare. I might have to arrange future flights to have a little layover in Montreal again!
PS it turns out there is a shuttle bus between the station and the airport. Who knew?
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