Delays Canada style! - Winnipeg, Canada
Winnipeg, Canada
Train Number 1 was announced, from Toronto headed for Vancouver (although I'm breaking my journey with a week in Jasper, in the Rocky Mountains). Boarding was almost as chaotic as a Ryanair flight! With no seat reservations permitted, the hostess tried to sit people according to where they were heading, leaving long-haul passengers with a spare seat adjacent to stretch out where possible, but with the warning that it may be necessary to disturb people during the night with new passengers joining. Thankfully for the whole journey I had my two seats together and space to stretch out. Comfort on this trans-Canadian train is comparatively high - even in mere economy class! The seats recline with leg rests - making it similar to, if not better than, airline business class (but without the free food and drink!!). After a night trying to adjust to sleeping on the train, semi-reclined, with occasional stops in remote locations & new passengers boarding, I was starting to see the merits of going sleeper class after all! But hey, I was saving myself $450! There was a complete mix of people in this train. Retired holidaymakers, young backpackers, people going from one place to another more cheaply than on a plane. By coincidence, Leigh, an Irish guy that I met in the Montreal hostel was sat in the row behind, and quickly a small group of us got to know each other and took over the lounge car for dining, playing games and having a laugh. Philippe, a Quebecois lad sat opposite me, taught a couple of us to play chess and a truly international tournament started - Canada, Quebec, UK, Germany and Ireland. I can't say I'm too sure about it - what a stupid game! The King - who surely should be able to do whatever he wants is more limited on what moves he can do compared to other pieces. If you get to the position that you're one move away from winning you have to say "check" - which is surely giving your opponent the biggest ever opportunity to avoid defeat, and takes away any element of surprise! Finally, if your opponent moves one of their pieces to put themselves in "check" you have to tell them, out of honour, and stop them from doing it. Now that, to me, is effectively the same as your opponent in football scoring an own goal, and you handing back the ball and saying "let's not count that one, have another try"!!!! Hmmm - where's the Monopoly.....!? As with long-haul flights there's the usual disruption and noise of other passengers. Five minutes before we had even pulled out of Toronto's Union station, the guy behind was reclined, fast asleep and snoring loudly and I was set for it to be a long 3.5 days!!! Waking up the first morning, the daylight revealed forest landscapes with large areas of water intermittently providing picturesque sights. Frozen lakes, small icebergs and snow dusted branches show how much colder it's been here than in Toronto. The lakes and watercourses feature beaver dams and lodges a plenty, and a few beavers casually swimming in the chilly water. Ironically, 15 hours into the journey and we hadn't made it out of the province of Ontario! The scale of this country never ceases to amaze me. It really is true what they say - the train can be stopped for boarding and disembarking in the middle of nowhere. Hunters leave the train in the most remote spots to set up camp for days or weeks to pursue their sport. It makes me think of one store that Huw showed me near Toronto - Bass Pro. This place is just unbelievable and a hunters' paradise. Not only does it sell everything you think you'd need for hunting, it also sells everything else besides. Large selections of 15' tree ladders, full-size plastic deer decoys, full size caribou cut-outs, feeders to lure your prey to the base of the tree in which you're hiding. I'm fairly ambivalent about hunting providing it is done in the most humane manner, catching species which are not endangered and the purpose is to provide food rather than just for fun. It is after all the way that nature intended and the lifestyle in ages past. However, I can't help but think that all these gadgets and tools are all a bit of a cheat. It's one thing to outwit an animal with skill, but something else to have to use all sorts of aids to con your prey and make hunting fool-proof - that's not skill, and I guess that's where it no longer truly is a sport, but instead becomes a process. Talking of feeding and the hunter gatherer instinct, i thought i was prepared by bringing apples, bananas and chocolate onto the train. Sure, there's a good restaurant car and a snack bar but over the 4 days that could get pretty pricey. My preparations were paled into insignificance by Philippe, who is not only prepared for a 4 day train journey, he's prepared for the train to break down and to have to trek the rest of the way across Canada!! Dehydrated foods, utensils, folding cutlery, flavourings and seasonings. With one flask of hot water from the snack bar this guy can knock up a meal at his seat! 10 meals of noodles over 3.5 days wasn't something I envied though!! Phil really did entertain us with discussions on the most random subjects and the language barrier between us all! How many different accents can one small group of people have!!?!! But I really enjoyed using and expanding my French language, and it has given the impetus to continue working at it further. 17 hours into the journey (still in Ontario!) the train manager announces, "the thriving metropolis that we are soon to arrive at is Hornpayne. You have about 30 minutes to get off the train and if you feel like supporting the local economy it has two shops, but don't go too far as the next train passes through here in 4 days time"!! It was nice to get off for some fresh air - and the light snow reminded me of my trip to the Alps earlier this year, with my travel buddy Helen. Coincidentally when I put on my ski jacket I found the piste map in the pocket from our trip to Tignes - so it felt like a little bit of Helen was with me! Trackside wooden pylons along the route are like a scene from some kind of disaster movie and instantly make me think back to a previous employment [someone phone the Fountains "Near Miss Helpline"]! Some of these wires are propping up fully grown fallen trees, there are pylons leaning at 40 degree angles to the ground. Others are fallen completely and cables lay submerged in ponds of water. One can only hope (and assume) these are not electricity cables!! The pitch blackness of night descended, not a single solitary light to be seen anywhere in the distance on either side. It's a sight I don't think I've ever seen in my life (or not seen, technically speaking, as it's dark and you can't see a thing!). I awoke to see the train pulling into a thriving metropolis. No, really, it was a thriving metropolis. This place had skyscrapers, freeways and lights galore. It was Winnipeg - our rest stop where we have a few hours to explore the City before continuing onwards to the Rockies. But alas, this thriving metropolis has opening hours! The train had arrived over an hour early and the station was closed and unmanned so we were not able to disembark the train until our scheduled arrival time!!! But eventually it allowed time to get off and visit the Pancake House for breakfast. Although for Leigh, it was tricky to define meal times - this non-stop eating machine went from dry cereal to ham rolls, to Kitkats, to burgers, to breakfast sandwich, to restaurant car dinner in one continuous 4 day feast!! Winnipeg, being the halfway point from Toronto to Vancouver is the changeover point for the crew, plus additional passengers joined the train of course. The train manager was replaced by a comedic musician, Fabian (YouTube VIA RAIL SINGING WAITER to see him perform!), whose safety briefing included instructions on breaking the window. "You take this little hammer and smack it on the window. The window will shatter but will stay in place so you need to give it a karate kick like this [cut to him doing his best karate kick move in the aisle, "hi-yaaah!!"]. But if we have to escape through windows rather than doors, things are looking real bad folks!"! So much of the route is single track, and it's very clear who takes priority. It's the freight trains. We were forever stopping to let freight trains pass us, and the first 3 days of running ahead of time soon developed into an 8 hour delay by the time I got off!! As Eric, our Canadian friend, said during one if these stops amongst miles of flat prairie land, "oh come on, just frickin' build two tracks - it's not like we don't have the space"! This route used to have more than one passenger train a day, it now has 2 trains a week (3 in summer). It got me wondering, is that demise solely down to efficiency of air travel or could it be air travel capitalising on the inefficiency of the railways - the rail network scoring its very own own goal! If passenger services were of more importance, and services were more reliable, more people may use them. In truth many of the delays are due to a backlog of traffic due to last week's freight train crash & fire (Canada seems to have these regularly!). So the network is in chaos. As a result at Edmonton, crew manager Fabian explains that we are currently a 20 coach train and we are picking up a stranded empty train of 18 coaches and tagging it onto our train. Then at Jasper it is picking up another 4 coaches - making it one of the longest passenger trains in Canadian history!!!! Getting off at Jasper and seeing this 42 coach, 5 engine monster was an incredible sight! I'm sure European Health & Safety would have something to say about this!! Stepping off the train, for quite some hours afterwards it feels like the ground is moving, so accustomed was I to the shaking of the carriage. And I'll be hearing that horn in my sleep! 3.5 days of honking at every nearby road, track or level crossing! But what a phenomenal experience, travelling 5000km East to West on land. It just would not have been the same experience by air. An appreciation of the size of Canada, and the different landscapes cannot be achieved any other way. And that aside, the loooooooong journey and growing delays (which just became the subject of amusement) resulted in some great company and friendships. Eric's sense of humour and Philippe's crazy 'Frenchness' together resulted in hours of laughter. Look forward to catching up with you guys again soon!! Obviously I can't rate this experience in the same way as I have the cities, however, what I would say is that it is an incredible experience. For those who can't stand the idea of 4-5 days on a train then I suggest you fly to Edmonton and board the train there to Vancouver. A sleeper car would be nice, but for me, it would have resulted in a more isolated experience amongst a very different group of people from the fun-loving, young, pi*s-taking buddies that I spent the trip with.