A Steam Locomotive for the Trans Canada Limited

Locomotive, c. 1929Trans-Canada Limited in 1929, headed by a "Pacific" locomotive.

Cranbrook does not yet have a locomotive to head the Trans-Canada-Limited, but it someday will. Arrangements have been made with the Canadian Railway Museum in Delson, Quebec (near Montreal) to obtain CPR No.2341, a heavy G-3-d Pacific once used on the 1929 Trans-Canada Limited. The big Pacific will not be restored to operation. Instead it will join the train where it belongs, at the front, as an integral part of the collection.

Acquiring the locomotive is important, but as Garry Anderson states:

"Almost without exception the Locomotive is usually given the primary focus in railway museums. The rolling stock (freight and passenger) is too often considered secondary, when in fact it was the rolling stock that moved the people and the goods that, in turn, earned the revenue to pay the costs, including the cost of the locomotive. Locomotives do not exist on their own, and we really have to try to balance our presentation of railway history, or future generations may think that trains comprised only locomotives and cabooses."

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