Caption: Canadian Pacific’s flagship passenger train No. 1 had FP7A CP 1416 leading and GP9 CP 8517 second on Thursday 1972-11-30 westward from Calgary. In the distance, Budd RDC-2 CP 9113 off No. 302 had been my transport from South Edmonton (departing in a snowstorm) that morning, and No. 1 provided my coach seat to Vancouver, including a cab ride (with head office permission) with engineer Floyd Yeats from Banff to Field.

As Calgary departure time approached, I was closely observing my pocket watch, and was disappointed when movement did not start on the 1600 schedule, only to realize moments later that we had indeed departed, so smoothly I had not noticed!

On arrival in Vancouver, No. 1 was precisely one hour late, that is, until I realized my watch was still on Mountain Standard Time, so we were exactly on time. At that point, I was on layoff from Victoria roundhouse, but that trip absolutely confirmed the adherence to on-time operation that was the expected daily performance then.