Comments on: Railfans & Travellers alike have got a lot to be excited about right now, as VIA’s first Siemens-built trainset has been completed and is currently enroute to Montreal for testing. Here it is passing Oshawa in some sweet morning light being transported by a CN SD70M-2. The ID for this train was interestingly P698, a rarely used passenger train symbol rather than an extra freight symbol, I wonder why that is.

By: cpcnguy

cpcnguy — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 16:11:40 +0000

Passenger equipment, on CN, whether revenue or just equipment moves, is designated with a symbol “P”. Extra trains, defined as a train outside of the normal train scheduling (I use the word schedule tongue in cheek), such as if there was extra traffic designated on Q148 XX XX (Chicago to Montreal traffic), justifying another train, it would get designated X148 XX XX (the “x’s” indicate origin of train and date). These designations are more of a rule of thumb and aren’t always followed, depending on where the train originates and how it is entered into the system. Test trains for example, have been input as both a “W” (work train) and “P” (passenger train) on occasion.

By: trainsintoronto

trainsintoronto — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 18:48:03 +0000

For context to the caption, historically when CN has run moves similar to this, such as when they ran a single Siemens car to MTL, they gave it an X symbol followed by a number. Maybe this one was different as it was a full passenger trainset that seemed to be under HEP(?) because the coaches had green lights on. A mystery for sure!