The day after CN Rail announced it was temporarily laying off 450 workers in its Eastern Canada operations, VIA Rail says it’s temporarily laying off 875 employees.

(Nick Brancaccio/Windsor Star)

It’s the first time in VIA’s 42-year history that it’s had to interrupt most of its passenger service because of the anti-natural gas pipeline blockades.

One-hundred-seventy-five employees will be laid off at least four days while 700 will be off at least two weeks, to start.

VIA has received permission from CN Rail, which owns the lines on which VIA trains run, to resume partial service tomorrow on the Quebec City-Montreal-Ottawa corridor and to resume regular service in southwestern Ontario between Toronto, Niagara Falls, London, Windsor and Sarnia.

As of Tuesday, the rail blockades have led to the cancellation of 532 regularly scheduled VIA passenger trains.