The Ocean (), previously known as the Ocean Limited, is a passenger train operated by Via Rail in Canada between Montreal, Quebec, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. It is the oldest continuously operated named passenger train in North America. The Ocean schedule takes approximately 22 hours, running overnight in both directions. Together with The Canadian and Via's corridor trains, the Ocean provides a transcontinental service across Canada.
History
The Intercolonial Railway of Canada (IRC) inaugurated the Ocean Limited on July 3, 1904, as a summer-only "limited stop" service to supplement the Maritime Express. In Halifax, it connected with the Dominion Atlantic Railway's luxury train, the Flying Bluenose. During the immigration boom of the early 20th century, the Ocean Limited and other passenger trains on its route saw increased use as they provided key wintertime connections for both the Grand Trunk Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway in moving sponsored immigrants to lands in the Prairie provinces.
In 1918, the IRC was merged into the Canadian National Railways (CNR) and the Ocean Limited continued its operation much as before. During both the First and Second World Wars, the Ocean Limited provided important service to the port of Halifax.
In 1964 the Ocean received ex-Milwaukee Road Skytop Lounge lounge-sleeping cars.
CNR dropped the "Limited" from the train's name in 1966 as part of the company's adoption of bilingual names. Despite the name change references to the Ocean Limited remain commonplace.
During a landslide which affected the old IRC line near Rimouski, Quebec, in 1977, for six months CN diverted the Ocean onto another parallel line several hundred kilometres to the south, maintaining the same Halifax–Montreal schedule times.
Via Rail
In 1976, CN placed operation of its passenger services under a new division using the marketing slogan "Via". In April 1978 this division was split off as a separate Crown corporation named Via Rail Canada, taking with it all CN passenger trains and equipment. The new national passenger rail service did not begin to change train names and operations until 1979, following the October 1978 assumption of all CPR passenger trains and equipment.
The Ocean did not get renamed by Via, and in fact became supplanted on the Halifax–Moncton portion of its route in 1985 by another Via train, the Atlantic (formerly the Atlantic Limited), which saw its eastern terminus extended to Halifax from Saint John. This train also assumed the train numbers and equipment of the defunct CN passenger train Scotian, which survived only into the first few years of the Via era.
Under Via, the Ocean underwent several changes in its operation: