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Trip Reports by our Clients:
A CANADIAN CHRISTMAS ON VIA RAIL
Christmas 2008 Via Trip
by Fred Rea
It has been a few years since I have written one of these narrative trip reports. As in the past, I will try to follow my policy of hoping some of this interests some of the people some of the time. But, since the audience ranges from relatives to railfans, be prepared to ponder why you are hearing some of this.
Background
Since Sharon’s passing in January of 2008, I have made quite a few trips, most, but not all, involving Amtrak and/or visiting friends and relatives. But, all year I have been looking forward to my planned trip across Canada on Via (their Amtrak) from Toronto to Vancouver. I planned to be on the road over Xmas as a chance to do something really different for my first Xmas without Sharon. I have heard that Via does well coping with winter weather and the train would be much less crowded than during the very popular runs in the summer.
This train has, for years, been a three day and three night trip. But, like Amtrak, Via has added some time to the trip to allow them to overcome lateness frequently incurred by mixing freight and passenger trains on the same lines. Now it is 4 nights and 3 days. It runs three days a week in each direction. It serves two diverse functions. It is both vital transportation in some very remote areas and a comfortable land cruise through spectacular scenery. The coaches are called Comfort Class and carry mostly “shorts” railroad slang for passengers not boarding and/or de-boarding at the major stops. Comfort Class includes a dome and snack bar car but food is pay as you eat.
The sleeping cars have bedrooms for 2 or 3 people, roomettes for one, and a few old fashioned open sections with berths enclosed with heavy curtains for privacy at night. The sleeping cars are called Silver and Blue Class which includes meals in the diner and access to the Park Car, a dome and round end observation car at the rear of the train.
In the summer the train can approach 30 cars. We had only 14: A baggage car, two coaches, the Comfort Class dome, the diner, eight sleepers and the Park Car. This makes the train considerably longer than similar Amtrak runs. Three of the sleepers were dead heads, empty and being moved to the other end of the line. Even our short version frequently made three stops at stations so that baggage, coach and sleeping cars had access to short station platforms.
Last spring I contacted Ted and Sylvia of Accent on Travel, travel agents specializing in rail travel. They booked my trip in about June through the Canadian firm Brewster which got me one of the only four rooms in the Park Car. This team booked us on two Via trips and an Alaskan cruise in the late 1990s while Sharon was still able to travel. They do a wonderful job of selecting excellent lodging, air connections and ground transfers. On this trip I found them to also be a big help in supporting me when things did not go quite as planned.
The Plan
It’s really very simple:
| Monday, December 22: |
Fly from Columbus to Toronto and check into the Fairmont
Royal York Hotel adjacent to the train station. |
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| Tuesday, December 23: |
Board Train #1, the Canadian, for a 10 PM departure. |
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| Wednesday, December 24: |
Traveling through beautiful but desolate country north of
Lake Superior. |
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| Thursday, December 25: |
Arrive in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the half way point on the trip.
After a 4 hour layover, at noon continue west. |
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| Friday, December 26: |
Arrive in Edmonton, Alberta early in the morning. After a brief
layover continue west into the Canadian Rockies by evening. |
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| Saturday, December 27: |
Arrive in Vancouver about 9 AM, check into the hotel, then
a day to explore Vancouver and maybe even a bus/ferry ride for
a brief trip to Victoria. Then to bed early to get back on EST. |
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| Saturday, December 28: |
Up at 4 AM for a 5 AM departure from the hotel. But, using
EST that translates to 7 AM and is much less scary. Fly back
to Toronto, then a short hop to Columbus arriving at 7:30 PM. |
Now for what really happened
Monday
The Short flight on an Air Canada DH8 went well. It was very cold in Columbus and it was warmer in Toronto. Customs was no problem a quick look at my passport but no one bothered to even check on my prescription pills that I had carefully removed from my daily pill minders and placed back in their original labeled .pharmacy bottles.
The hotel was fantastic. It, like many other Canadian cities, was directly connected to both the RR station and a fantastic complex of underground shopping malls and overhead walkways to sports arenas, and the CN tower. The Skywalk formed a glass enclosed bridge right over the west throat of the station tracks. The evening “rush” included many arrival and departures of Push-Pull 8 to 12 car GO commuter trains and a few Via movements. It was not unusual to see two or three simultaneous train movements through the network of double slip switches. I began to realize that my image of Toronto being Canada’s New York City, changed to it being their Chicago.
The Royal York hotel had quite a few restaurants, but only the main dining room was open during the holidays. The food and service were superb!
Then it was back to the room to reload my pill minders for the coming week.……and to discover I had forgotten to bring my bottle of my BP med, atenolol. A quick call to my brother-in-law John confirmed my suspicion, it would not be good to suddenly go off of it for a week.
Tuesday
At last, the big day. First, a relaxed tour of Toronto, then a nice dinner and into a seat in a dome for a quiet ride through the suburbs until I tucked into my quiet bed to be rocked to sleep. Little did I know this was not to be!
First the pill problem. A check with the concierge told me there were several pharmacies in the mall complex. So I was off to explore the Canadian Health care system….as it applies to Americans. The pharmacy said a faxed or phoned prescription from the US would NOT work, I needed to get one from a Canadian MD. As I wondered how in the Hell I would do that, she pointed out there were walk in clinics about every block in the malls. The first one was closed for the week, the second was booked up until, MAYBE, late in afternoon. The third said have a seat, you should be seeing a doc in about 15 minutes! That is what happened. He asked a few questions, checked my BP (it was fine) and wrote me script. I managed to get the whole deal done in under an hour! The Dr explained that my visit was the sort of thing their system does well. In the US it would have probably been a taxi to a hospital ER, or an urgent care clinic in the suburbs. Probably an all day deal. So the first glitch was minor. But, I was ticked that all of it was because of advice to put the pills in original bottles to go through customs. The man barely looked at me much less my bag or sack of pill bottles. But, had I not done it, I would have probably looked guilty and been pulled aside and busted.
Now for the more interesting events of the day. I had a nice long ride on their subway system underground downtown and on the surface in the suburbs. They also have an extensive streetcar system, new cars that sorta look like PCC cars. The problem was that they are STREET cars. So one waits on the curb until one shows up. After waiting in the cold for about 20 minutes for one heading out of the downtown, I gave up.
While I was not due to show up at the train station until 9 PM, about 3 PM I decided to go to a window and pickup some timetables. Then I asked how full would my train be. He said full, the computer will not let him sell any more tickets. I expressed surprise, so he did some checking and said he could not sell any tickets because it had been CANCELLED. Passengers would be loaded on busses, taken to the airport, and put on a plane to Winnipeg. Be at the station to board the busses at 8:30 PM. He said there was a derailment between Toronto and Winnipeg. A quick call to Accent on Travel and Brewster revealed they had not yet been notified of the change.
I decided it would be wise to get to the Silver and Blue lounge as much before 8:30 as I could. I met a group of 30 people from England as I checked out of the hotel. They were just learning about the switch to busses and an airplane to Winnipeg. We also realized this would mean two nights in the Winnipeg hotel and a full day in that city. They were not happy. Since Via seemed to be taking care of us I relaxed and decided to enjoy the adventure. This group became my group of traveling companions. They did not know each other. They all had just answered and advertisement offering Christmas in a train across Canada. I fit right in, except, they frequently said they liked to hear my accent.
Supper was Chinese fast food from the mall and then off to the S&B lounge at 7:30. It was already packed, standing room only. When even standing room ran out, a woman said we could board the busses early. We went out and found 3 busses waiting. After getting on all 3, we learned that only the one in the rear was for us. So much confusion as people and luggage more than filled the bus.
The Brits brought up the old grammatical question, does one say two spoon full’s or two spoons full. The answer depends on the number of spoons……or in our case, busses. It was to be three bus full’s, one bus, three trips. As the bus departed about 9:30 we learned the trip to the airport was about a half hour in no traffic and good weather. It was snowing very hard and the roads were very slick. After some confusion because the driver was given bad info, he found our door and we began checking in.
Many, including me, were surprised at the lack of Via visible personnel. However at the airport we began seeing a Via man in a uniform. His name was Gary and he was the on board service chief that would have been on our train. He spent a lot of time talking to us as we waited for the airline to begin our check-in. In all phases of this we were a last minute surprise group of about 200. He explained that out train would have been a train that was supposed to have arrived in Winnipeg on Tuesday at 9 AM. But, Because of the huge mess on the West Coast, it arrived in Winnipeg 20 hours late, with no chance to get to Toronto before it was due to head west. So Via, wisely, held the equipment in Winnipeg to wait for its scheduled departure on Thursday at noon. Gary then showed up with a big box of assorted sandwiches. There was a feeding frenzy. We later learned he had gotten them because some of the diabetic passengers said they had to get some food. Luckily I think the diabetics got their before a few a few of the rest of us finished them off. By then I guessed it would be 2 AM before we walked into our hotel rooms. Several complained that I was too pessimistic. And it turned out I was very wrong.
Wednesday (Christmas Eve day)
It was a charter airline, only one clerk, so checking in was very slow. Then only one security check in line. The Brits complained about having to take off their shoes until I reminded them that it was required because one of their people tried to set fire to a sneaker. We had a long wait in the boarding area until the remaining bus loads arrived and checked in.
It was past 1AM until all 183 were on board. It was an Airbus A320, a very nice plane. While the boarding continued, Gary came down the aisle with a big box of fresh doughnuts. We later learned he had just happened to hitch a ride back to Winnipeg with us. He was not even on duty but his service was outstanding! I suspect he bought the food with his own money. He did a wonderful job of changing a lynch mod into a relaxed group of very tired friends. How? Not really the food. It was by letting us understand what was happening and why, and by patiently listening to those who wanted to rant and complain.
Then I really lost track of time.
My bed time ride in a dome then a bed by a window, became a view out the window of an airplane. I could see the ice on the wing so I was glad when they announced there would be a delay for deicing. That took forever. Then another wait in a slow moving take off queue. We could see the parade of plows make a pass down the runway between every two or three planes. I was afraid we would need re-deicing, and even that the airport would be closed. I later learned that Via had argued for permission for a departure well past the airports normal curfew. But there had been a long takeoff queue so we were not the only departure to keep the populated neighborhoods awake. We later learned that the continuing snow caused the airport to close before some of those behind us got off the ground. The sub-0-F temperature and wind complicated the problems.
The 2.5 hour flight was uneventful.
When we arrived in Winnipeg there were plenty of Via people to help us and answer questions. Other than another flight arriving at the same time, the airport was deserted. The bus trip to the hotel was much smoother loading and unloading people and baggage. The hotel was very efficient checking us in. We filed past the desk, gave our name and were handed a key and a packet of meal tickets. They obviously had the passenger list well before we got there. We were told people with the same name were put together in a room. They warned us that they knew that would cause some problems. It did, but only for a very small number of people and it was easily fixed.
One bru-ha-ha really pissed a lot of us off. A guy in the Brit group announced that they had been promised 4 star hotels on the tour. Now this was the Raddison in Winnipeg, not the Royal York in Toronto. We all shouted that we were lucky not to be sleeping in an airport boarding area or on a bus. Then he said his group was Silver and Blue class where were the Comfort Class people being housed? He did not like that he was being treated the same as they were. I think if they had hauled off the few coach passengers to a Motel 6 he would have been happier.
Finally, as I hit the bed I noticed the alarm clock said 5:15 CST, that is 6:15 EST. Boy was my 2 AM estimate off. Up about noon and off to brunch. The meal tickets were generous: Breakfast $11, Lunch $15 and dinner $25. Gary said the amounts were based on Via dining car prices. They were very compatible with the hotel restaurant prices.
The hotel food was very good. The staff had been called in from vacation to serve the 200 un-expected guests. The rest of the day was spent exploring the hotel and the city. I was on the 19th floor and the view was spectacular. It was a bright clear day and very cold. Well below 0F.
The terrain is very flat. The hotel was one of the highest buildings in town. The city is about the size of Columbus >500K in town about a million when you include suburbs. No sign of rail transit, but lots of busses. The streets and sidewalks were hard packed snow. Snow is crunchy and not at all slippery at those temperatures. They have extensive interconnection by heated elevated walkways serving hotels, arenas, the library and a big indoor shopping mall. The hotel was about 30 stories. Lobby on the ground floor. About 8 floors of indoor parking, the restaurant on 10 my room on 19 and pools (swimming and whirlpool) saunas and an exercise room near the top. A very nice place.
Thursday (Christmas Day)
Finally, maybe I’ll get on a train today! We were to meet, with our bags, in the lobby at 8:30 to head to the Via station for a noon departure. Only then did I realize how close we were to the station. In warm weather a short, few block, walk. The station was a bit old and a bit worn but more than adequate. It serves the passing each way of our train three days a week, and the departure and return of the three days a week of a train north to Churchill, on Hudson Bay. Some of the unused platform tracks host the Manitoba RR Museum. But it is not open in December
The station had every thing we wanted except for one thing….a train. So we spent several more hours getting to know each other even better and exchange our “while we were in Winnipeg stories”.
It turned out they broke the train up so it would fit in the yards. Now, recoupled air hoses were leaking. Rock hard air hose gaskets. A bit of heat fixed that, but it took time. Then they had to pull the train some place to be turned. So it arrived for boarding about 1 PM. Then another hour delay. The Park car attendant had loaded one of two Park cars with food and booze the day before. When he got on the train in the station he discovered they had attached the other Park Car. So we waited while trucks loaded with essentials arrived and there loads were transferred. I planted myself in the front right side seat of the dome as soon as I got on. A wise move.
By the time we started to move (2PM) I had memorized the Winnipeg skyline. Also I got to know an English lady that sat next to me. She seemed very knowledgeable about trains. She said she was not a fan, but her brother is. He was very active with the group that built the brand new, from scratch, full sized steam locomotive, Tornado. See the recent issue of Trains magazine. She also rattled off stories of gobs of British steam locos she has ridden behind, or in. She referred to all of them by the nautical her or she. A group of us formed a team to agree to trade off on the front seats but eject anyone that sits there and reads or talks without looking ahead. We had to do it often.
For the rest of the day, it was a delight to watch endless miles, (oops, KM) of prairie with single track and passing sidings (Brits call them loops) and see the signal aspects and understand why we were stopped. Many sidings are too short for modern freights so we often were the ones to go in the hole. The signals were very entertaining. Many passengers marveled at how the engineer would approach green lights and, luckily, get through them just as they turned red. I would note an amber indication and predict we would be see approaching a red one soon.
It got dark about 5 PM but I was still awake to see Saskatoon SK from my bed.
Friday (Boxing Day)
I got up as soon as the sun came up and got a nice view of Edmonton. I had forgotten that Edmonton has a nice light rail system. It has a rather new station with either stub tracks, or a branch. There was a wye on the main with the station on the end of it. So we went past the junction, then backed in, laid over for about an hour, then headed on west. There is plenty of padding in the schedule so we were frequently an hour or so late but would arrive at the next major stop on time or early.
The attendant had told me to be in the dome by Edson for a good view of the Rockies. I went up well before that and by Edson the Rockies were not in sight but the dome was full. By Jasper we were well into the big time scenery. It is spectacular but you soon become numb to it.
Saturday
As we approached Vancouver I noticed ice building up on the windshield of the dome. Also, the adjacent freeway traffic was heavy and very slow. It was a single track railroad. Almost all the passing sidings had freight trains in them. I noticed the cabs were empty and the track in front of and behind them were covered in deep snow. His was not good.
Then we stopped for a long time, only to back up a bit, then pull forward again. Had been on time, but now were getting late. Time in the dome explained the situation. We were stopped at a red block signal. That blocked a highway grade crossing. So every 10 or 20 minutes we backed up to allow the traffic to clear, then pulled forward so the engineer could again see the signal. We then learned of several more complications. The crew was about to time out. They are only allowed to work so many hours. As in the US, when they hit that limit they stop, no matter where they are, and wait for a new crew show up. Sure enough, after some time a van showed up and we could witness the crew change. The train was on a long wide curve so we could see the story unfold from the Park Car dome. My scanner and seeing what was going on made the wait much more tolerable.
Finally we finally started to move but as we did an announcement was made. Due to track problems we would be getting off and riding busses the rest of the way to Vancouver. Via #2, the westbound version of our train had derailed. A minor derailment, but its passengers were being flown to Winnipeg. Also, most of the switches were frozen. They don’t have switch heaters in Vancouver. So nothing was moving on the railroad.
They had a lot of busses and the loading went very smoothly. They had one spot for the transfer. The train pulled up, one car at a time. When a bus was full it left and another pulled up. When a train car was empty, the train pulled up one car. No confusion like we had during the transfers in Toronto and Winnipeg.
The cab ride to my hotel was an experience. It was the day after traditional Boxing Day. But Friday was a disaster and no one in the city could move. They have no idea how to react to a foot of snow. Boxing Day is for them, like our Black Friday. All the stores have huge sales. So the stores stayed closed Friday and had their sales on Saturday.
Mobs of people and the curb lanes were blocked by mounds of snow and the sidewalks were terrible. No one has snow shovels. It was almost suicidal to walk on the refrozen slush., bumpy and slippery. But, from the cab, I could tell it was shop-till-you-drop day.
The hotel was the very nice Empire Landmark. It was 42 stories high and I was on the 32nd floor with a fantastic view of the harbor. More modern than the classic Royal York in Toronto.
My idea of a bus/ferry trip to Victoria was out of the question. But, I headed off to sample their rail transit system. It is an automated system using linear induction motors. These two technologies are very much pushing the state of the art. It was struggle to walk a block to a 7/11 to buy an all day transit pass. Then on to a trackless trolley for a mile or so to the SkyTrain station. A few years ago I rode the new trackless trolleys in Dayton OH, but these seem even newer. Built in Europe, they are Czech I suspect. One thing the East Europeans did well was transit vehicles. Just avoid their cars. These electric busses were very quiet, no air pollution, and very quick to accelerate.
The SkyTrain runs underground in the city, surface and elevated in the suburbs. But, they don’t do well in snow. The station was in the basement of a big old downtown department store. A real, prosperous classic store, long gone in most US cities. The station was jammed with people and the PA was repeating a warning that many lines were closed and others were experiencing long delays. I gave up. With no desire to end up with a sprained ankle or broken arm I retreated to the hotel and ate dinner at the hotel.
I was one of very few diners in the rotating resurant and got a seat by the windows. The meal was good and the scenery fascinating. The waitress said, as I left, I needed to stay another 20 minutes. I had not completed a full rotation. It was my first meal in a rotating resurant. I was convinced it was moving counterclockwise. She had insisted, no, it was moving the other way. Eventually I realized she was right. I completely ignored two facts. She had worked there for years and damned straight knew which way it turned. And, the windows with the mullions did not rotate. This meant, over the short term, watching an object out side made it very uncannily like your motion was the in the other direction. Now, if you don’t understand this I can explain it better in another two three pages. But, I will spare you that.
Then an early bed time on EST. For An 8:15 EST (5:15 PST) cab pickup.
Sunday
Arriving at the airport about 5:45 for my 8:00 flight was a shock. When I walked into the airport the place was packed and there were long lines any place you could speak to some one. The airport had just opened and the crowds had spent several days hoping to get out of town. I nailed some one in some sort of uniform regarding which line to queue up in. When I said I already had a reservation, he said “Oh. No problem, just go to a computer kiosk and put your passport in the indicated slot.” I did. Out came two boarding passes, a baggage tag and a claim check. No waiting for the security line. The longest line I had was at Starbucks
The A330 left on time. The rest of the trip home was as planned and uneventful. A slight delay in Toronto waiting for a pilot made my arrival in Columbus about an hour late. No big deal.
Summary
It was a wonderful trip. Sure, I lost half my time in a dome but I now know more than I did before about the joys of Winnipeg in the winter. Actually, it was fun. I have a strong appetite for adventure, and at my age I take it where and whenever I have the chance. I now have plans to take some more Canadian trips and one of them may include my missing experience, Toronto to Winnipeg, probably not in the winter, but maybe this coming fall.
Currently booked near term plans are a ride on Amtrak’s Texas Eagle to Tucson and a week with Sharon’s sister and her husband the last week of January. The last week in March Steve, Holly and I plan to take Amtrak’s California Zephyr to Oakland, and then spend a week in Monterey before flying home.
Soon to be booked is in April out to Santa Cruz for a day in the cab of a Roaring Camp and Big Trees RR shay type steam locomotive in their “Engineer For A Day” program. Then in May I hope to finally get to Edinburgh to visit my long time friend Jim Murray, sample the beverage that made his country famous, and ride their trains!
Fred Rea
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