Lyster was a rather small Village, as you will gather from the following anecdotes!

There was one 'hotel' & whenever I decided to ride on the evening trip I would send a message to the Station Agent to get a reservation ' I am still not sure why, I only recall seeing one other hotel guest on a few occasions. The train departure was quite early & I left before my host was up so we paid on arrival, & let ourselves out. The heating system was a space heater so there were large grills to allow heat to circulate. Obviously the hotel was quite old & presumably was built without a bathroom. There was a shower located on the landing & it rather resembled the shower seen on Mash ' it was a shoulder high cubicle allowing one to exchange greetings with anyone who should come up the stairs!

The village hall was adjacent to the station & they showed movies, I think it was on Saturday nights. Whatever night it was one had to approach Lyster with caution ' it was frequently necessary to have a notice flashed on the screen ' 'Would the owner of car xxx please move it to allow the train to enter the station'. Needless to say I normally saw the car off with a prayer & stayed in Richmond where there was quite a reasonable hotel across from the Station. (When I last went through Richmond around 1990 the former hotel was a Retirement Home.) Richmond is actually known to you all, the picture on the back of the then $2 bill was a pastoral scene just North of the town!

The daily, weekly & monthly maintenance was done by the one diesel maintainer in the Richmond round house, & if there was any problem he or the Foreman would call me & I would try to diagnose it on the phone and or rush down to fix it. (Richmond was about a 90 min. drive S.E of Montreal). Any major work was done in the Pointe St. Charles diesel shop.

One time I got a phone call concerning loose bolts on the fuel pump drive. The maintainer at my request got some supposedly high tensile bolts from the local hardware store & outwardly fixed the problem however there had been a Company 'mod' on the drive bolts so I grabbed the necessary parts & hightailed it to Richmond. The affected engine was by then running well with the temporary bolts & it was a simple job to install the modification parts. The Engineer was unaware of any problem & I had forgotten that he was retiring that day. He was convinced that I had concocted a reason to accompany him on his last trip. On the return we were coming over the Quebec Bridge when he stood up & said he was taking a break! I made a leap for the dead man's pedal & took the controls for some 50 miles. At that point he returned to the cab from his conversations in the passenger section, & looking at his watch congratulated me for keeping good time through about 4 station stops! On arrival in Richmond there was the usual welcoming committee & I was virtually captured by some of his relatives & prevented from taking the connection to Montreal, so that I could be present at his retirement party. I returned to Montreal on the early morning freight train the next day & had a run-in with a CN Policeman who objected to my jumping off a moving train as it passed over Wellington Street in Pointe St. Charles. Fortunately I had a CN pass stamped "good on engines"!

One of the freight items regularly transferred from the Montreal - Island Pond train was bags of coins. Some were en-route back to the USA; some were for local banks down the line. The Station agent in Richmond was armed to protect the cargo, however his gun was always behind his back, & he told me he had no intention of ever using it - if anyone was about to rob the train they could take the bag(s). On one occasion there was a flag displayed at the first station (Danville I believe, a flag stop). I was not there that day to my good fortune since three armed individuals came out & took the bags of cash. I was told the haul was a few thousand dollars in pennies! One of the robbers stationed himself between the tracks ahead of the Car while his two pals climbed aboard & took the money. Something must have startled him & he fired a shot, through the windshield narrowly missing the Engineer & put a dent in the ceiling over his head. The dent was still there when I saw the D204 again (then Via 6204) around 1990! They never did capture the villains.

On both CN & CP it was normal to operate Budd RDC-2 Railcars with the baggage section leading. This had two advantages ' firstly passengers would board through the rear door directly to the passenger compartment (& if in multiple they would use only one door for two cars). The second advantage was for the Engineer ' the door between the 'cab' & baggage section would be propped open so that a quick exit could be made if an accident appeared imminent. (On the CN D204 between Richmond & Quebec City the bags of coins served well as doorstops!). On a normal day of around 250 to 300 miles I would be at the back of the baggage section braced for impact on the average twice per day & on one of those times the Engineer would be there too! I sure learnt to respect grade crossings as a driver.

The CN operation was a single car so the baggage section was always in the lead, (it was wyed in both Quebec City & Lyster). The CP operations were frequently multiple units, however since the Rolls Royce reversing gearbox was a mechanical engagement, #9194 usually ran in lead position so that the engineer could ensure the gears were properly engaged (there was an indicator light), & again the baggage section was always in the lead.

I was relatively fortunate; I was only on board the D204 for one accident & that was a wandering cow. (This was also its only serious accident in two years). I was taking a break in the passenger section when there was a full service brake application & a loud bang. Something went flying past the window & it was only when I ran to the cab I was told the object was a cow! We suffered some minor damage and finished the day's run on one engine.

The car was sent back to Pointe St. Charles to straighten the pilot & repair the lead engine start/stop panel. On return to Richmond later the first run was the only time I had to suffer the indignity of having to terminate the run & be towed home! The Twin Disc transmission had a lock-up feature that took place at 63 MPH. On the first trip after the damage repairs, the very first time we reached lock-up both engines shut down & that was that ' there was a ground in the circuit that had not been located in Montreal. This was before the use of radios & we had to get the portable phone from the baggage car & hook it on to the phone lines running beside the track to call for help.

The CP car #9194 was less fortunate. The first part of the run to Megantic was to Farnham on the South Shore of the St. Lawrence River. The speed limit was 90 MPH & we used all of it! On two occasions the 9194 was the lead car in a serious accident however again I was lucky not to be on board for either of them. The first was a car of 4 teenagers who went around a lowered crossing barrier & were all killed. Fortunately the 9194 was not derailed although the front end was badly dented. The second, about a year later was a slow, loaded, dump truck in the same area. The truck was demolished & the 9194 derailed. It took several months to fix the car in Angus shops, including returning one power unit to the Rolls Royce Montreal factory for repair ' a rail had pierced the engine block!

That repair was subsequently the cause of many nights of lost sleep for me! On return to service we kept getting a shutdown of one power unit after several hours of running. The indication was a transmission problem & do you think we could find the cause ' not on your life. We were confident that there was no real problem since after being shut down for 15 min. or so it could be restarted & would finish the trip. After changing all the sensors & related relays etc. without any improvement I was desperate. I got the call again one night at the usual time of around mid-night ' Mr. Dathan she did it again! I went down to the Glen yards where she was maintained & by luck found the problem! I had the engine covers removed & much to the consternation of the shop staff I applied full brakes, chocked the wheels & ran the engine at full stall for around 20 minutes. (This would have been fatal for the GM Allison transmission). I was standing in the pit under the transmission & by luck could see the oil sight glass. To my surprise the level started dropping & eventually the engine shut down ' not as we had thought due to transmission temperature or pressure problems but due to low oil level. The transmission & gearbox shared the same oil circuit & there was a blockage preventing the oil from returning to the sump in the transmission. The two units had been separated during the repairs & when reassembled a plastic dust plug had been left in place causing the oil to back up in the gearbox. Since it was in a cored cast hole some oil did get passed through slowly which explained the variation in shut down intervals. It took some sort of contortions to remove the plug with the power unit in place ' I was lying prone over the engine twisting my arm inside the gearbox & eventually pierced the plug with a screwdriver & managed to extract it. With joy I cleared the car for service & went home to sleep. On waking around noon I had a parking ticket! I went to the Office & gave both the plug & ticket to the Manager ' what reprimand he gave the Fitter who had assembled the power unit I do not know ' I do know he (or the Company) paid the parking ticket!

The only other memorable incident in my time with the Budd RDCs was when CN decided to test the pulling capacity. For an entire weekend we pulled the CN Dynamometer car around on virtually every piece of track south of Quebec City. I don't know what they had in mind, possibly a run somewhere requiring more capacity than a single car. The Rolls power units appeared to do all that was required however there was at times a shortage of air which indicated that if such a service was to be considered then a second compressor was a must. The weekend was lots of fun, & great food!

I resigned from Rolls Royce in 1964 & joined MLW. Some 25 years later having been laid off a friend at CN called me to see if I was interested in a job he had available. Over lunch he explained it was on Budd RDCs ' he was most surprised at my amused reaction & to cut the story short I joined Via Rail, working on Budd Cars exclusively for 2 years, on modification programs, overhauls & specifications. One never knows how past experiences can benefit one's career!