Really, this post should be entitled "Saskatoon to Toronto." That's because I was already in bed shortly after we arrived in Edmonton, and I woke up in Saskatoon early the next morning, just as the train was about to back into the Saskatoon station (shown here as we were leaving).
Edmonton, like Saskatoon, has a modern station in the outskirts, just off the main line. In Edmonton, trains from both directions back into the station and then come out forwards. In Saskatoon, it's the eastbound train that backs in. Westbound goes in forward and then has to back out. Clear as mud, yes?
There are two main types of freight trains on this route, both of typically super length with multiple locomotives. One is shown here -- an endless stream of shipping containers on the way to or from the Port of Vancouver, Canada's largest Pacific marine gateway.
The other kind is an equally long parade of hopper cars, laden with grain (in season) or with potash (the other main export of Saskatchewan and Manitoba). All in good time.
Every Canadian grows up learning that the Prairies are flat as a pancake. Many of us have heard the jokes about it being so flat that you could stand on a gopher hill and see all the way to China. Bad news, folks -- they lied.
Yes, the Prairie provinces are predominantly flat -- well, flattish. But there are hills, and valleys, and the land does rise and fall. Actually, there are two main rises, like two giant steps, as you make your way from Ontario towards the mountains. Each is marked by a series of named groups of hills, many of which are the homes of provincial parks.
In a landscape like this, it's easy for lakes to form that have water flowing in but no outlet. Such a lake is known as a "slough" (pronounced "slew") and there are thousands in some areas, many of them visible from the train. Since a slough is a dead end, like the Great Salt Lake in Utah, the water is salty. However, there are also fresh-water lakes and reservoirs. This is the reservoir at Bradwell.
We also learned that the Prairies are farm country. This is true -- and one of the fascinations of the train ride is the moving map of the different appearance of the farms at different seasons. Some of the patterns left in winter by the combined hands of farmer and nature rise to the level of art.
This is the fast stretch of the trip. The tracks are mostly straight and well-maintained, and the speed limit is higher than on the mountain stretches. The train rolls quickly and smoothly forward, and I definitely got my best night's sleep of the trip between Edmonton and Saskatoon.
The one compulsory stop between Saskatoon and Winnipeg, for the locomotive crew change, is Melville SK, a small city of some 4000 people. Just enough time for a short, quick walk along the platform, as far as the station building and back, before it was time to climb back aboard.
The most dramatic man-made sight along the route is the Mosaic K2 potash mine and processing plant close by the tracks, near Esterhazy SK, with its enormous and growing slag heap. Here you can see the long lines of hopper cars waiting for their export runs. Potash is basically an easy name for water-soluble potassium salts, and the output of the numerous potash mines in the Prairies is exported worldwide as fertilizer. It's obviously big business. Mosaic already has its K1 and K2 mines, and in a couple of years will open the nearby K3 which will be the biggest potash mine in the world.
As the train nears the Manitoba border, not far east of the mine, the track comes out suddenly and with no warning on the brink of the broad Assiniboine Valley, with another potash mine clearly visible on the prairies across the valley. Since the valley is far bigger than the river that flows through it, geologists deduce that this valley was originally carved by a much bigger outflow river from the melting continental glaciers during the closing stages of the last Ice Age.
On my trip west at age 6, we stayed in my uncle Gordon's cottage on Katepwa Lake in the Qu'Appelle Valley, a branch of the Assiniboine Valley. I remember being completely baffled when we climbed the hill behind the cottage -- and the hill didn't go down the other side. The top was flat farmland, with a barn in the distance. My whole experience with hills to that date was in southern Ontario, where hills are almost always a case of "what goes up must come down."
The train runs down a long gentle grade to the valley floor and rolls along there for a while through the farm country along the river.
The train does not actually cross the Assiniboine River, although it passes near several of the many loops and curves of the meandering stream.
After a while, the train climbs back up and out of the valley on the same side which it descended. Somehow, it seems pointless to me for the railway builders to have gone to all that trouble instead of staying up on top and detouring around. On the way back up, the track crosses a long trestle over a side creek valley, with views on both sides
After that, the farmland is really flat and level, all the way to Winnipeg. One place where the train always seems to make the "optional" request stop is Rivers, MB. It makes sense when you look at the map and see that Rivers is just a short distance north of the sizable city of Brandon. In the glory days of rail travel, the railway ran a shuttle bus service from Rivers to Brandon and back.
Winnipeg is the spot where the entire service crew of the coaches, dining car, dome cars, and sleepers changes over. It's not far off from being the halfway point in travel time. It's also the one really long stop of the entire trip, as it's the logical spot to fill up the supplies of food, drink, bedding, and towels, as well as the more frequent refuelling and water tank top-ups. Even though it was after dinner, I got out for a good long walk, several turns up and down the platform. While I was doing that, a maintenance crew was working on an electrical problem which had cropped up during the run from Rivers to Winnipeg. We left about an hour late, or so I was told -- I was already asleep. During the night, we rolled into Ontario.
Geology.com base map
In the morning, I woke up as the train approached Sioux Lookout, the next chance for a quick walk outdoors. Sioux Lookout, with both a land airport and a sizable seaplane base, is one of the two jumping off spots for all kinds of air travel into the remote northern half of Ontario. The other is Red Lake, to the northwest of Sioux Lookout, similarly equipped. These two towns mark the literal "end of the road."
Although the day that follows is a lengthy ride through the apparently endless forests of northern Ontario, there are all kinds of interesting little views that open up from time to time, if you keep your camera at the ready -- often a lake or river.
This was the only time when I went up to sit in the dome car.
I didn't want to hog a dome seat, especially in the mountains, when I'd done the trip several times already, while most of my fellow passengers were first-timers. But here in Northern Ontario, and still early in the day, there were plenty of free seats. It's a great place to watch the train coiling and uncoiling like a snake ahead of you...
and behind you.
It's also the best possible place to watch as the train rolls through one of the many rock cuts which had to be blasted out along the line. The hard granite of northern Ontario ate up enormous amounts of blasting powder for the builders of all three major transcontinental railways.
A little later, I was still in the dome when we stopped by a pristine stretch of woodland while waiting for a passing freight train.
The next major stop, in the late afternoon, is Hornepayne. Here, you can usually count on a good forty or fifty minutes time for a lengthy leg stretch. There's a convenience store nearby, and I've never forgotten my first trip when one of my fellow passengers actually managed to find an electric shaver there to replace his, which had chosen a very inconvenient moment to give up the ghost. Once again, I walked the entire length of the train and back twice, and it was a bigger effort than in Winnipeg's indoor station. Here, we encountered above freezing temperatures for the first time, so the snow was softening under foot. Thanks to the long curving platform, Hornepayne was the one and only place where I could see the entire train from end to end at one time.
The final dinner of the trip always seems to induce a festive mood, but this one was exceptional. It all began when one of the two dinner menus at my table proved to have the old wine list inside the cover -- the same exact list of wines, but all priced at $10 instead of $12 a glass. I showed the three other people seated with me, and we were all giggling as we talked about what might happen. When the chief steward came along, I asked for a $10 glass, showing him the menu. I forget what reply he gave, but from then on it was just one laugh after another. When he brought my wine, he said, "That's not right up to the rim, it's a ten-dollar pour." And so on, and so on. Even the next day at breakfast time, we were still cracking jokes about that ten-dollar glass of wine.The festive mood extended to a couple of rounds of nightcaps in the lounge area of the dome car. No one seemed in a hurry to go off to bed as the trip neared its close.
On the final morning, I woke up not far north of Parry Sound, ON, on the eastern shore of Georgian Bay. Here is another place where the two competing national railways pool their traffic on almost-parallel lines. As a result, it's only the passengers on the westbound Canadian who get to ride across the iconic trestle above Parry Sound harbour. But we got some sweet views on our serpentine route around the town centre, beautifully lit by the rising sun. The two routes again require the use of two different stations.
And then, a few hours later, we were arriving into Toronto. The inbound Canadian passes through some industrial and suburban areas before crossing one of the city's main arteries, the Don Valley Parkway.
Shortly afterwards, the line descends into the Don River valley, passing through some of the multiple ravine parklands which are among Toronto's most valuable natural assets.
The track glides close by the cultural centre in the old Brickworks.
Next, the train passes under the massive high level bridge on Bloor Street, the Prince Edward Viaduct.
And finally, we rolled into Union Station and came to our last stop at 12:05 pm, a full 2 hours and 24 minutes ahead of schedule! There followed the usual last goodbyes at the baggage belt, and then I headed off up the ramp for one final shot in the station, under the impressive vault of the Great Hall.
One more post will follow this one, with all the nuts-and-bolts details you will need to know if you plan to travel on the Canadian.
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