Midnight

The Midnight's late-night companion, the Fast Freight, at Digby in the early morning of August 26, 1956.

"The Midnight" was the popular nickname for Train No. 99, the DAR's long running overnight mixed train from Halifax to Yarmouth. It left Halifax in the evening with freight, express, coach and sleeping cars, arriving at Annapolis Valley towns about midnight and arriving in Yarmouth early in the morning. It ran opposite Train No. 100, the Yarmouth to Halifax Fast Freight. For many in the valley the Midnight was an evocative symbol of sleepy late-night mysteries. Homes next to stations like Berwick would often find polite but confused passengers from "The Midnight" knocking on their doors in the wee hours asking for directions and taxis in the still and deserted streets of valley towns.(1)

Allen Gibson wrote in his nostalgic book Train Time: "The last train of the day was Number 99, Yarmouth-bound from Halifax. Familiarly known as "The Midnight", it arrived at or about the witching hour when the old town clock atop the post office was striking its twelve nocturnal notes. Student days at Acadia often found one studying late, the passage of time forgotten in the pursuit of of knowledge or, as more likely, in some last and harried effort to finish an assignment. The sound of "The Midnight" blowing for the station was a reminder of bedtime and, often sleep came to the distant rhythm of the engine's exhaust as the train hammered up the grade out of Port Williams."(2)

References

(1) Personal conversation, Mary Louise Conlin, Berwick

(2) M. Allen Gibson, Train Time, Windsor: Lancelot Press (1973) page 21, 25.