Trip Report: May 3 - 18, 2001
by Ted & Sylvia Blishak
Through the Pacific Northwest and Canada
by Amtrak, BC Rail and VIA Rail Canada
RETURN FROM TORONTO DAY 2
Sunday, May 13, 2001, Mother's Day
We sleep in this morning until the third and last call to breakfast about 8 AM, when I enjoy once again the delicious pancakes with genuine Canadian Maple Syrup. We are seated with a charming, elderly Australian lady who is part of a large Cosmos escorted tour on board with participants from New Zealand and Britain, too. A carnation is delivered to the ladies on board in honor of Mother's Day.
After getting a little writing done we walk back three cars to Strathcona Park, at the rear of the train, where we find the front seats in the dome unoccupied. We have really fallen in love with this Pre-Cambrian Shield Country, which goes on for miles and miles with its ancient granite rock and endless chains of blue lakes. This is our fourth day on the Shield and have decided that there is nowhere else where we have ridden a train where you can see more wilderness then this. I mean wilderness where there is nothing of man's handiwork other than the railroad itself; no buildings, no high tension towers, no radio towers, no roads, no signs, no fences, and no jet trails.
At one point along the line, our head end power goes off, and we stop a little longer at the next station while the engine crew gets it working again.
Third call to lunch brings us to our diner again to be seated with a young interior designer named Karen who had flown to Toronto from Vancouver to attend a Dupont nylon products seminar, and had decided at the last minute to utilize her weekend to enjoy her first train trip across Canada. She was raised on Vancouver Island and gave us many ideas for traveling in her home province.
We are now across the line from Ontario to Manitoba, and we can use our cell phones again. My first call is to Bell Mobility in Toronto to ask them how I can use my cell phone in Ontario. Their reply, "It should work".
No solutions from Bell Mobility.
My second call is to my office phone to pick up messages. Works fine from Manitoba. My third call is to my mother in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. All circuits are busy. It is Mother's Day.
We are approaching Winnipeg and are preparing to take our laptop into the station for a phone hookup and an e-mail download. We come to a halt outside town, then back up a mile or so. The announcement is that Train 2, the eastbound Canadian is in the station, having a faulty dining car replaced, and we will be delayed for an hour as there is only one available track in the Winnipeg Station; the main line is busy with grain freight trains going to and fro.
Sure enough, one hour later we begin moving again towards the station. I phone Yves at Winnipeg Station and he meets us at his office and lets us hook up our laptop for e-mail, and to check our web site, which is being updated by our web wizard, Ken Barrett, as we roll along.
As we reboard on Track 4, another carnation is handed out to the ladies. We reboard and leave Winnipeg at 7 PM, over two hours behind schedule, but we are in no hurry for our VIA ride to be over. We have a new onboard crew for the rest of the trip. The forested Shield country is now behind us, and we are rolling through the Canadian section of the utterly flat Great Plains, with plowed fields, high-tension wires, and roads. This is the least-interesting scenery along our route, although a farm couple in the dome is quite interested in what they are viewing. However, we will soon be enjoying cocktails, dinner, a shower, and another good night's sleep and will reach Alberta by morning.
As we are reserved for the last sitting dinner, we find a front seat in the Strathcona Park dome and open a bar tab. Our lounge attendant delivers highballs and snacks to our seat we highball across the prairie. There is a lengthy stretch of double track ribbon rail west of Winnipeg and we overtake a freight train traveling in the same direction on the left hand track. As Strathcona Park passes the freight locomotive we wave and receive an answering blast from the air horns. Later the double track narrows down to a single track to negotiate a bridge, then as it opens up to double track on the other side we are switched over to left hand running. Much later we are back on single track and have a rolling meet with an eastbound freight slowly accelerating out of its siding. We wave through the front dome window and receive a blast of air horns. I believe these freight engine crews enjoy their meets with the only passenger train on the line.
The train has even more passengers aboard after our stop at Winnipeg and the third dinner seating is nearly full. I have the pickerel, Sylvia the roast pork, both are delicious. Every evening they also offer a new selection of desserts from a dessert tray, I had the cheese plate, Sylvia the peanut cake.
The sun sets and after dinner we return to Strathcona Park, where we have the dome to ourselves as we sip Remy Martin cognac and watch the lineside signals change from green to red, their searchlights reflecting along the silvery cars ahead of us. It doesn't get any better than this.
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