VIA Rail's signature train to the east coast, the Ocean, runs three times weekly between Montreal and Halifax in each direction -- always leaving either city on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. The trip takes a total of about 22 hours, and includes crossing one time zone boundary. The length of the ride effectively cancels out most of the ill effects of jetlag, and since the overall rail experience is far more restful than flying, the train passenger comes out ahead in all departments except sheer speed.
This service is very popular with residents of the numerous towns along the route. Whether you want to go to Montreal for a big city weekend, or need to reach a medical appointment in Halifax, the train is the popular travel option for many residents of Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. There are many enroute stops, and plenty of people either joining or leaving the train at each one.
On the other hand, if you are planning the end-to-end trip as a leisure experience -- as I take it -- you need to think of it as a mini-cruise on the rails, not just as transportation. Consider the similarities: it moves at a leisurely speed, it gives you a small private bedroom with private toilet facilities, the fare includes 3 meals in a restaurant, all the service staff exert themselves to ensure you have a good time, and some entertainment is provided.
With that kind of outlook, you're less likely to be thrown into a panic tizzy if the train happens to run late for some reason. That being said, on all my half-dozen trips on the Ocean, I think the latest we've ever gotten was 25 minutes late into Montreal on one westbound journey.
It's a long train. On a previous trip, when I took this picture from the dome car at the tail end, the train had a total of 2 locomotives and 19 cars.
Today's train was even longer, but was oddly equipped with a mixed bag of Renaissance cars and older stainless steel sleepers and coaches -- as these pictures taken at Moncton station clearly show.
This service is very popular with residents of the numerous towns along the route. Whether you want to go to Montreal for a big city weekend, or need to reach a medical appointment in Halifax, the train is the popular travel option for many residents of Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. There are many enroute stops, and plenty of people either joining or leaving the train at each one.
On the other hand, if you are planning the end-to-end trip as a leisure experience -- as I take it -- you need to think of it as a mini-cruise on the rails, not just as transportation. Consider the similarities: it moves at a leisurely speed, it gives you a small private bedroom with private toilet facilities, the fare includes 3 meals in a restaurant, all the service staff exert themselves to ensure you have a good time, and some entertainment is provided.
With that kind of outlook, you're less likely to be thrown into a panic tizzy if the train happens to run late for some reason. That being said, on all my half-dozen trips on the Ocean, I think the latest we've ever gotten was 25 minutes late into Montreal on one westbound journey.
It's a long train. On a previous trip, when I took this picture from the dome car at the tail end, the train had a total of 2 locomotives and 19 cars.
Today's train was even longer, but was oddly equipped with a mixed bag of Renaissance cars and older stainless steel sleepers and coaches -- as these pictures taken at Moncton station clearly show.
The name of this train is certainly historic. The Intercolonial Railway called its brand new deluxe train the Ocean Limited in its 1904 timetable, and the train has been operating under the same name -- now shortened to Ocean -- and along the same tracks for 115 uninterrupted years. That makes it by far the oldest named train in North America. Once again, here's the map which shows the lengthy roundabout route that takes the train around the state of Maine to reach the Atlantic provinces.
With my train from Toronto arriving late into Montreal, I had only 1 hour and 10 minutes left of a 2-hour stopover before the 7:00pm departure time. I walked around for a few minutes in the art-deco concourse of the station, opened in 1943. The concourse has some impressive original murals on the upper walls. Ranged along the centre of the hall are the stairs and escalators leading downwards to the train platforms on the lower level.
Internet photo
I next headed for the Business Lounge, which is also available for use by Sleeper passengers. But I took a seat near the front of the lounge so I could keep an eye on the small service counter in the concourse just outside the lounge's entrance. At 6:10 pm, two members of the train's onboard service staff opened the counter. You have to stop at that counter to have your sleeper ticket scanned, and to get a reservation for either the first or second sitting for dinner in the dining car.
At about 6:45 pm we were called to board. Out the door of the lounge, tickets scanned again, down the escalator to platform 14, and the sleeping cars were right there. Only a few steps were needed to get to car # 30, head down the very narrow interior corridor, and find cabin # 4 near the centre of the Renaissance sleeper car.
There's no nice way to say this -- it's tiny. Now you can see why using the checked baggage service is so essential.
If both beds were in use I probably wouldn't be able to sit up in bed on the lower berth without clonking my head on the underside of the upper berth. At least I didn't have to worry about that detail since I was travelling solo, as usual. Here's how it looked at bedtime.
The compact washroom contains a hand basin, a toilet, and -- high up on the wall -- an honest to goodness shower head (half the compartments in the Renaissance sleepers have showers). The hanging bags contain large bath towels, and smaller towels, washcloths, soap, and shampoo are placed ready as well. Water bottles are provided because the tap water is not suitable for drinking.
One neat detail about these Renaissance cars: they're the only sleeping cars in Canada or the USA which have key-lock doors on the compartments. Older cars in service on other routes have a deadbolt on the inside, but no way to lock the door from the outside when you leave the room.
Enough exploring for now, this train started to roll at 7:00pm sharp and the first call for dinner had already gone out. Off to the dining car, two cars forward in the centre of the train. To get there, I had to pass through a lounge area with a small bar in what is known as the "service car." Snacks and drinks can be purchased here outside of regular meal hours, and this car is the only place on the train which has Wifi access. This makes it a popular place with all seats filled at some times. This internet photo was plainly taken in the winter, when the train is far less busy.
What makes the service car really important is that it contains the galley where meals for the dining car are prepared and plated. There's another service car on the far side of the dining car, similarly equipped. It's there to serve the passengers in the coach seats farther forward. Each service car prepares meals for the adjacent half of the dining car.
The dining car has 4-seat and 2-seat tables arranged in two sections, each of which holds 24 diners at a time. I was seated at a table for 2 with a gent from New Zealand making his first visit to Canada. I was amused to learn that he was very familiar with the area around the city of Nelson, where I spent 10 days attending the Adam Chamber Music Festival a couple of years ago. He knew all about the Festival too.
As we rolled across the Victoria Bridge over the St. Lawrence river, the train had to go around the loop at the south end to bypass the St. Lambert Lock as a ship was entering the lock from the north end.
The dinner menu offered a choice of beef, chicken, fish, or pasta with an appetizer of soup or smoked salmon, warm bread rolls, and dessert. The smoked salmon and chicken were both delicious. Unlike the Business Class in the corridor, the wine here is not included in the train fare -- but the train offers a fine selection of wines, mainly from Nova Scotia, and all delicious. Meals on this train are sent aboard already cooked, and then heated, plated and served. Not quite as good as the cooked-to-order meals on the Canadian but the quality and variety of the meals on the Ocean has improved markedly since my first trip to the east coast over 10 years ago.
After dinner, I did some writing, and enjoyed one of the most spectacular sunsets I can recall seeing, clearly visible across the broad farm fields of the St. Lawrence Valley.
There are two reasons why this train doesn't go right into the Gare du Palais: [1] that would involve an extra travel time of 30 minutes each way from Sainte Foy and [2] the platforms at the Gare du Palais will only handle trains of 6 cars or so -- not nearly long enough for this one!
Somewhere around 2:00 am, far down the St. Lawrence river, our train passed the westbound train from Halifax. I have never been awake at the right time to see or hear that happening.
I had a better night's sleep than I've ever had before on a train. Maybe I was still recovering from my birthday party in Toronto 2 nights earlier! When I awoke, we were just rolling out of the station at Amqui, halfway across the Gaspe Peninsula. The time was five-something o'clock in the morning but it was already broad daylight, here at the eastern end of the Eastern Time Zone. South of Amqui, the train glided down the narrow, steep-sided valley of the Matapedia River, with some good scenic views for us early risers.
The train made another extended stop at Campbellton, New Brunswick. At this point, we got the hour time change ahead to Atlantic time. This is also the place where the dining car opened for breakfast, first come, first served. I had a cheese and spinach omelette, with sausages, grilled potatoes and onions, fruit, and toast. The alternatives were a cold continental breakfast with toast, or waffles with fruit. The coffee was hot and delicious, the meal filling, and my day was off to a good start.
East of Campbellton, the train ran along at or near the south shore of the Baie de Chaleur. We had a great view across the water towards the towering bulk of Mount Carleton in Quebec, and some interesting bits of shoreline scenery right in front of us.
The train also ran right through the backyards of a number of waterfront homes. That's not as bad as it sounds because there's almost no freight traffic on this line any more, just the passenger train running 3 times a week each way.
After the stop at Bathurst, the train left the Baie de Chaleur and cut across country in a dead straight line like a ruler towards Miramichi. Looks like an express line, but there's a speed restriction on this track and the train rolled steadily forward at just 50 km/h (30 mph). It's second growth forest all the way, and the appearance of a gravel road alongside the track is about as exciting as the scenery gets. I was sitting up in the tail end dome car for a while, enjoying a midmorning snack and coffee.
The dome car on the Ocean is available to all sleeping car passengers. Free coffee, tea, cookies, and salty snack mix are on tap during all open hours, and there's also bar service after 11:00 am. Nice alternative to the crowding in the service car.
During the time we were traversing this endless straight track, the restaurant staff came around to take lunch reservations. On this trip, they started at the dome car, and then worked their way forward through the various sleeper cars.
The train crosses two broad channels of the Miramichi River with a sizable island in between. Plenty of waterfront homes along the south side of the river in particular. Following the example of my former home in Ontario, Elliot Lake, the city of Miramichi has also been reinventing itself as a retirement community.
There followed another long cross-country run on a straight track, but at better speed, from Miramichi to Moncton. The one and only stop along the way came at Rogersville. Despite the English name, Rogersville is largely an Acadian francophone community. The train runs through town right alongside the main street -- as this internet photo clearly shows.
David Morris photo via blog.traingeek.ca
Moncton is the last extended stop of the train. That was my cue to get out and take a walk up and down the platform. Depending on my choice of lunch time, this would either be just after or just before I eat lunch. This time, I took the second lunch sitting at 2:00 pm so the walk came before the meal.
The lunch menu wasn't quite as diverse as the dinner the night before. There was a good thick fish chowder for a starter, and then a choice of salmon croquettes or lasagna rolls (the first sitting crowd had eaten all the plates of the third choice, a cold lunch, which sounded suspiciously like the beef salad I had between Toronto and Montreal). Being in a mood to be bad, I not only had another glass of wine with my lunch of chowder and salmon croquettes, but also ordered the dessert -- which I certainly should not have done!
While we were waiting for lunch to arrive at our tables, the train was rolling past an eye-popping stretch of the Memramcook River, which empties into the inner end of the Bay of Fundy. You can always tell here what the state of the Bay's notoriously high tides happens to be. In this case, pretty much slack low tide.
In between the loops of the river, the flat land is actually a huge salt marsh. Here a sizable slough or pond hasn't drained out after being filled at high tide. Most of the land between the Bay of Fundy and the Northumberland Strait is made up of these marshes, and they're an essential part of the entire ecosystem of the region. Even when the water disappears, you see patches of this salt scum all over the land as the train rolls through.
From a previous trip, here's a photo to show what the same stretch of the river and marshland looks like when the tide is all the way in.
Later on, in Nova Scotia, the train passed along the shores of several lakes, dotted with a mixture of year-round and summer homes. It's obvious from this view of Folly Lake that this lake country is to Nova Scotia as the Muskoka region is to Toronto -- the weekend getaway for those well enough off to afford a second home.
The biggest lake of all is the aptly named Grand Lake.
Twenty minutes or so after running along Grand Lake, the train rolled down the western shore of Bedford Basin, inner end of Halifax Harbour.
The track then took us in a loop, all around the city, through a deep rock cutting -- and so to the station on the waterfront. We arrived as close to right on time as makes no difference, pretty impressive after a 22-hour journey with so many stops on the way.
Although I've said it many times before, it can't be said too often. I am continually impressed with the pride and extra care taken by the staff of the Ocean in making the entire trip an enjoyable experience for each one of their customers. That's actually one of the biggest reasons I enjoy taking this train so much.
After collecting my checked bag, I made my way past the construction scaffolding (the Halifax station is having its entire roof rebuilt), through an archway, and up a carpeted ramp into the lobby of the Westin Hotel Nova Scotian. A classic railway hotel dating back to the 1920s, the Nova Scotian makes an ideal stopping point at the end of the trip to the east coast.
In the next installment, some of my adventures in Halifax, one of my favourite cities in the world.
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