Caribou (passenger train)
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The Caribou, colloquially referred to as The Newfie Bullet, was a passenger train operated by Canadian National Railways (CNR) on the island of Newfoundland.
The Dominion of Newfoundland became the 10th province of Canada when it entered Confederation on March 31, 1949. At that time, CNR also took over the operations of the Newfoundland Railway, a 3'6" (42") narrow gauge railway network running across the island.
At the time that CNR took over operations, the premiere cross-island passenger train was called The Overland Limited. CNR renamed this train in 1950 to the Caribou and it maintained approximately the same 23-hour schedule from St. John's (also the eastern terminus of the railway on Newfoundland), to the systems's western terminus at the ferry terminal in Port aux Basques, from where connecting ferry services to the Canadian mainland at North Sydney, Nova Scotia were made.
It was the exceedingly long 23 hour schedule that sealed the fate of the Caribou after the Trans-Canada Highway opened across the island in 1965, allowing automobiles to transit between Port aux Basques and St. John's in 8-12 hours. CN cancelled the train in the fall of 1968 and instituted a bus service, which was marketed under the name Road Cruiser. CN maintained limited "mixed" passenger/freight train service to certain isolated communities on the island until the complete abandonment of its narrow gauge system in fall 1988.
