A railway station is the perfect setting for a farewell song, and the video for singer Emm Gryner’s Math Wiz is proving the perfect vehicle for her community’s plea to have Via Rail service restored.

Trains to many southwestern Ontario locations were cut last year in what Via called “right-sizing” of its service. But communities who depended on passenger trains say they haven’t given up on having those trips restored.

Gryner has lent her voice and her video from an upcoming album called Music for Scholars to the fight that continues months after cuts to Stratford, Sarnia and Niagara service as well as some national Via runs.

The video was made on the tracks near the St. Marys train station.

When the Stratford-area town’s ‘Save-VIA’ committee asked its local celebrity to speak to visiting VIA officials, Gryner couldn’t attend so she decided to make a video message.

Then it occurred to her that the music, with the idle rail tracks featured, would make the point better than a speech.

“The St. Marys rail station is very picturesque. So are those tracks and the huge train bridge. It’s something I really love, living in a town with the train. I thought of the video as writing a letter to these trains, as though they are lost loves,” she said.

Gryner, 37, who moved to St. Marys from Montreal about 10 years ago, lives with her partner and children, ages 3 and 9 months. She travels regularly to Toronto to work and perform, and she likes to take the kids with her since the performances occupy a brief interval in many of those trips.

Until last year, they used Via. It was faster and it gave her busy toddler room to move.

“Sometimes strapping them into a car seat for extended periods of time just seems inhumane,” said Gryner.

The drive on Highway 401 can mean a six-hour round trip. The train is better for the children, a better choice for the environment and safer, she said.

“Before they cut the trains, there were two morning trains and two in the evening coming back. To be honest, it’s a huge selling point of why we moved here, to have that convenience,” she said.

“Everyone’s pretty much afraid they’re just going to phase it right out,” said Gryner.

The remaining train trip doesn’t leave until after 8 a.m. and arrives in Toronto too late for early morning meetings, she said.

The return trip doesn’t leave Toronto until 8:36 p.m.

In the music video Gryner sings , “Minus, minus, take away the finest love and leave me with the sadness.” It ends on a message that reads, “Bring back the trains.”

Even before the local Via committee has begun its letter-writing campaign to federal and provincial officials, Math Wiz has gathered 830 YouTube hits in three days, said Chris West, a car dealer who used to regularly take the train to Toronto for business but now finds the schedule doesn’t suit him either.

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He fears people won’t move to his pretty town, preferring destinations along the 401 where they will feel more connected.

In its letter to federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, the St. Marys group blames the Via cuts on a lack of government funds.

“With the reduction or elimination of passenger rail service, the federal government is cutting off service to the public and is cutting off rural communities. Those of us that chose rural communities, such as St. Marys and Stratford, never signed up to be cut off from the rest of our great country, nor voted to be cut off from the rest of Canada,” it says.