Amtrak & VIA Rail's International Limited

Amtrak and VIA Rail are the United States and Canada's national passenger rail providers respectively. They both have unique looks and trains, so it would be quite unusual if they operated together, right? Well at one point, there was a collaborative Amtrak and VIA Rail train that saw both railroad's equipment being used on it! In this video, I go over the history of Amtrak and VIA Rail's International Limited train and discuss what's left of it today.

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:22 The Grand Trunk Era
1:35 The Blue Water Limited
2:47 The International Limited
6:58 The Modern Era
9:27 Credits

Music Used:
Kirby 64 The Crystal Shards - Theater Index
Kirby and the Forgotten Land - Waddle Dee's Weapons Shop
Super Paper Mario - Mr. L Green Thunder
A Hat in Time - Oh Its You
Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga - Hoohoo Village
Super Mario 64 Beta - Bob-Omb Battlefield
Deltarune - Spamton
Yume Nikki - Martian Underground
Undertale - It's Raining Somewhere Else
Sonic Heroes - Battle City Area
Super Mario World - Map 2 Overworld

Links:

[LongIslandCityLayout]

It's incredibly unfortunate that the International was discontinued. Of course partly because of all the bureaucratic BS with the border crossings. Hopefully we'll be able to find some better way to pre-screen passengers so there isn't so much of a time-waste. I'd love to see it run again.

[DiamondMaster]

VIA did retain the 85 and 88 numbers for a while up until the pandemic. It ran from sarnia to Toronto but then it was cut back to London. It ran with an F40 and 2 Budd coaches for a good majority of its run time until its final days with an lrc and Budd coach

[mr.buddah]

Nice video., Missed a few points but very informative. Also at 6: 45 you have me candidly in one of the photos from train web.

To this day I still miss the international. I used to ride it every other month between Chicago and Toronto. It definitely suffered from the long route Amtrak and via both gave it. It would have done much better going through Detroit'/vwindsor if a connection was made to the Sania station through the GM factory. At the time of its cancellation I was actually in talks with David Gunn himself who would personally write me and said the option I put forward was great. Unfortunately, the freight railroads and the governments of US and Canada did not want to fund it. He was at the time a great raill advocate. However, once he left all hopes of returning a international crossing were tossed to the wind.

[rockinghamrailvids]

Glad I could provide some of the footage for this video, nice work!

[Pensyfan]

Great to see a video on the origin story of the channel's numbersake train. I would hope that Amtrak provides some sort of connecting cross border service sometime in the future, as well as increased frequencies on both routes since they seem to be relatively popular.

[everdc]

Side Note:Amtrak's Niagara Rainbow, known as the Empire State Express before 1976. It was an American passenger train service operated by Amtrak between New York City and Detroit via Buffalo with 2 stops in Southwestern Ontario in Canada. The service ran between October 31, 1974, and January 31, 1979 on the CASO. The 2 Canadain stops were Windsor&St Thomas.

[casey]

I’m slightly surprised you didn’t mention the Maple Leaf, which still runs as a joint Amtrak-VIA Rail train from Toronto to New York City. Though always run using entirely Amtrak equipment, it’s fully staffed by VIA crew from Toronto to Niagara Falls, complete with VIA uniforms, VIA radio call signs, bilingual announcements, and VIA cafe car products. After the border, it’s a fully Amtrak crew with English announcements and Amtrak cafe products.

[Crazeejay]

Great video! Thanks for using a few of my clips! 👍

[Token_Nerd]

Yay the best corridor Amtrak route. What I never ever understood was why Amtrak never extended the blue water under the St. Clair tunnel and harmonized all border checks in Sarnia, keeping the connection to the VIA corridor service. This route would be an insanely good night train route. It's too bad people at Amtrak and VIA haven't been able to come up with a creative solution to the corridor's challenges (on-train pre-clearance in a particular car?)

[japanesetrainandtravel]

This is a trip I wish I had completed! Living in Brampton back in 90s, my GO Train would be held up regularly by the outbound Amtrak train hauled by a Dash 8 at the time. One early morning, I had to use this train from Union to Brampton and really enjoyed the comfort levels on the superliner economy coaches

[stinkyroadhog]

If a better solution existed for border crossing such as pre clearance, i think this train in one form or another could totally come back. As it stands there are still the Cascades, Maple Leaf and Adirondack trains for US/Canada train travel

[harrisonofcolorado]

I wonder if we could see the same type of mixed equipment consists if Amtrak implemented the proposed Chicago to Toronto route.

[haroldalexis]

What a bummer. The USA & CANADA need this service once again. It was nice to see all these equipments of engines & coaches coupled together. Gives me model railroading ideas. 😃

[lyonaif]

We use to rail fan in East Lansing. On Sundays you could catch 364 to Durand, watch trains in Durand for a couple of hours and then catch 367 back to East Lansing. We got to know the crews really well so they usually would just let us ride for free. Those were the good old days.

[cashstrains]

Its pretty cool how different railways from different countries can come together and run together in harmony

[WTafterburner]

You should do a video discussing the maple leaf and or the Empire Service one time. And if you need photo video ETC I should have plenty. Love the video man!

[erbewayne]

I went thru the the st. Clair tunnel on a field trip in grade school which was a event done by the schools each year 60 + years ago. Still remember seeing the water around the ties.

[Chiracingfan]

You know it’s a good day when Amtrakguy365 uploads

[emjeebutterz]

I really hope we get the Chicago-Detroit-Toronto service. I think it could attract ridership now, especially when routed through Detroit. I've heard about people driving across the border to take the VIA service from Windsor to get to Toronto.

[GamingRailfanner]

This is actually my interesting, VIA and Amtrak working together

(The international also passed through my city at one point)