Caption: Moncton bound Via Train 613 is about to scoot under the overpass on Mumford Road in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It had just left the Armdale station in the background at 5.25 p.m. in late March 1989. At the time, Acadian [bus] Lines was on strike so VIA allocated the customarily assigned RDC's to augment their Yarmouth and Sydney services. The trailing RDC would be cutoff in Truro and continue to Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia as Train 606. VIA employed conventional equipment on the Moncton route powered by GMD and MLW cab units. The FPA-4s ended their service at the end of the month as they were not retrofitted with Reset Safety Control as mandated by Canada's National Transportation Agency. CNR 6505 (GMDL 11-1954 #A-635) was part of the railway's initial order for passenger units, 28 A-B pairs in early 1954. It became VIA 6505 on Friday, March 31, 1978. Later, VIA sold it on Wednesday, March 8, 1995, for use on the Conway Scenic Railway. Pan Am Railways bought the unit for its executive train and renumbered it PAR 1. Much has vanished from this scene in the last thirty years. The rail-served Sears distribution centre has become a Walmart on the lower level and a Sobeys supermarket on the upper level of the West End Mall. Sears, formerly, the Simpsons store in the background, has been transformed into an office complex while Sears has withdrawn from retailing throughout Canada. The Sears siding formerly gave access to the Scotia Railroad Museum just to the left of the fencing. Also, CN removed the inbound double main track in the 1990s. With all the changes around the city, the vantage point remains one of only a handful in Halifax, where one may easily get a photograph of an entire passenger train coming and going.
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