Travelling the full route of VIA Rail's legendary Canadian from Vancouver to Toronto or vice versa is an experience that everybody should try to give themselves once in a lifetime, if not more often.
This post is to share some things you need to know before you go.
[1] The Train
This screenshot from a video shared on Instagram shows the entire length of the train setting out from Vancouver on its journey. This is the same consist of the train I travelled on, as I saw it in Hornepayne (see below). I think we had extra sleepers before Edmonton, but didn't get an exact count. At any rate, picture it now at over double this length with two more dome cars and a Panorama car spliced in, and you'll have the 28-car consist of the train in the summer of 2016 when I first rode across Canada.
What you see here in order behind the two locomotives: 1 baggage car, 1 coach (Economy Class), 1 Skyline dome car (Economy/Sleeper Class), 5 Manor sleeper cars (Sleeper Class), 1 Skyline dome car (Sleeper Class), 1 dining car, 1 Prestige Class car, and one Prestige Class/Park dome car.
The Canadian setting out on its journey.
From video clip on IG: @viarailthecanadian
Although the Canadian now operates almost entirely on the tracks of Canadian National Railway (CN), the beautiful classic stainless steel cars were originally purchased by Canadian Pacific Railway and the name "The Canadian" was introduced when the new trains were put into service in 1955. It was also the first time that the entire route was operated with diesel locomotives instead of steam, and the timetable was trimmed by some 18 hours as a result. This was the company's flagship service, and all other rail traffic on the CPR yielded to the Canadian.
Take a look at that date of "1955" and reflect. These trains are now one year shy of being seventy years old. Many of the major North American railways purchased similar stainless steel "streamliner" train equipment from the Budd car company for their flagship passenger trains. VIA Rail's Canadian is the only passenger train still in existence operated entirely with this classic rolling stock and including traditional sleeping cars, dining cars and scenic dome cars. That means that you are almost certain to meet at least a few train buffs during your trip, as they come from all parts of the globe for the experience of climbing aboard these museum pieces to take the world's second-longest continuous train trip.
They'll have to hurry. These cars are rapidly nearing the end of the line. The morning after my arrival into Toronto, I saw a detailed TV news report about the struggle VIA's mechanical and maintenance staff undergo to keep these relics of a bygone age on the rails. Every year, cars have to be retired from service as they are no longer repairable. VIA's engineering shops routinely have to manufacture replacement parts from scratch as there are simply no parts available, anywhere. At some point, new equipment will have to be purchased or the service will have to be shut down entirely and that point is not far in the future. The clock is ticking.
It's not just the cars, either. The dining car service preserves the traditional elegance of bygone days, with cooked-on-board meals served up on ceramic dishware with proper cutlery and glassware, all presented on linen tablecloths with linen napkins. You won't find this kind of upscale dining car service on any other point-to-point passenger service in North America -- only on special (and expensive) excursion trains.
On the whole, the cars do preserve the look of the 1950s, the decade in which they were built. As one of the staff said on the last night of the trip, "Just look at this clear Lucite railing with a light shining up inside it from the base -- pure Buck Rogers!"
That railing is one of the few features of this train which I can still recall from a trip to Regina in Saskatchewan to visit my mother's family when I was all of six years old. The staircase leads up to the world-renowned "scenic dome" which was the wonder of Canadian train travel when it was brand new, and still fills up with eager sightseers on every trip, seven decades later. The 24 seats really were packed when we went through the mountains. Less so, as here, when we were in Northern Ontario.
But the cars have also been considerably modernized in terms of heating and plumbing, and the furniture has been mostly refurbished and reupholstered. Newer additions include a public shower in each sleeping car, and a new electrical flush system with retention tanks for all the toilets.
[2] About That Internet
In one respect, the trains have not been modernized. There is no internet. None. Rien. Nada. Nichts. Niente. Ni sam bith. It's not such a big deal in the prairies or southern Ontario, but in the mountains of British Columbia and in the bush of northern Ontario, you can be signally lacking any kind of a signal for hours on end. My advice: for a real change of pace in your life, park the phone and look out the window. The ability to unplug is one of the biggest assets of this train.
[3] The Accommodations
There are several classes of service on the Canadian. You can travel in Economy Class, in a seat in a coach. These seats have much more legroom than on VIA's shorter day-route trains, and can recline a long way, as well as coming with a separate footstool which also serves as a leg rest. Meals are not included in Economy tickets. Food and drinks can be purchased at the cafe in the Skyline dome car.
In Sleeper Class, you have choices of upper and lower berths in the classic configuration, bedrooms for one, or bedrooms for two. There are public washrooms at the end of the car, and each sleeper car has a single shower, installed in a space formerly occupied by one set of upper and lower open berths. Bedrooms for one or two have private washbasin and toilet facilities. Meals are included for all Sleeper Class passengers in the dining car. Alcoholic beverages come at an extra charge. A group of sleeper cars has its own dining car and its own Skyline dome car. In the summer peak season, the train will consist of several such groups of cars in Sleeper Class.
All Sleeper Class accommodations include the services of a sleeping car attendant. The attendant can help you with luggage, tells you the available time for each stop, makes up the beds each evening and restores the room to daytime configuration each morning, cleans up and empties out the garbage, and more.
The upper and lower berth sections give you the luxury of the widest beds in Sleeper Class -- at the cost of privacy, since only a curtain separates you from the corridor and the all-seeing eyes of the universe.
A bedroom for one was formerly called a roomette. When the bed is in place, it's resting on the toilet cover and you have to step out into the corridor to get out of bed. There is a lockable sliding door, but there are also zippered curtains outside for when you perform this manoeuvre to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Here's a floor plan of the usual Manor sleeping car, showing the locations of the different accommodations. VIA Rail's new booking function on its website lets you use this plan to select your preferred location as you are making your reservation.
.png)
Here's a look at my room, which was a bedroom for two. VIA doesn't match roommates as some of the world's rail systems do, so I had the entire bedroom to myself, just as if I had booked a double cabin on a cruise ship. Helpful hint: my room was about 20 cm wider than normal because the booking agent assigned me to Cabin F. It's wider. Not sure why it's wider, but those few extra centimetres go a long way to reducing the cramped, crowded feeling. The extra width is between the door and the wall in this photo. It's a handy space for my carry-on bag, which would be more "in the way" in a narrower, normal room like Cabins A, B, C, D, or E. Notice that the plan above accurately shows Cabin F as slightly wider than the others. Moral: take Cabin F, if it's available. By the way, I had to reserve through a telephone booking agent because I was paying for this trip with my VIA Preference reward points.
The washbasin is under a hinged white cover. The door to the right leads to the private toilet.
These armchairs are very comfortable for sitting and watching the world go by. The panels behind separate Cabin F from Cabin E. They can be opened in daytime to create a double cabin if desired. This facility has to be booked by phone, in advance.
At night, the bed folds down out of the wall.
If needed, the upper berth drops straight down out of the ceiling. On the dark wall at right, you can see the "bumpers" on which it rests, which gives you an idea of the headroom for the lower bed.
This picture shows exactly why you can't just shove your bags under the bed as you could on a cruise ship. That space is already taken.
Finally, there is Prestige Class. For this service, an entire car was gutted and rebuilt with half a dozen private bedrooms, each one with a double bed, a private washroom, a shower, a mini fridge -- and butler service. Prestige passengers also have complete access to the famous rounded-off Park dome car at the tail end of the train. In summer, the Park car is exclusive to Prestige Class. During the off season, the Park car may also be available for limited access to Sleeper Class passengers, depending on how many Prestige cabins are booked.
The cost? I ran a search for a date in November 2024 just to give an impression of the Sleeper Class and Prestige Class fares (off-season). These amounts are per person for 2 adults sharing, one way, and include all meals. Fares are 175%--200% of these amounts for a solo traveller in a cabin for 2 or Prestige cabin.
.jpg)
Finally, if you want to travel on the Canadian in summer or early fall, you need to plan a whole year ahead. Much of the capacity during the summer and fall colour seasons is block-booked by tour companies, and space for individuals like us is more limited -- and disappears quickly.
[4] The Timetable
There is a published schedule, but you must travel prepared for the reality that the timetable is engraved in jello. The Canadian operates entirely on tracks owned by a major freight railway, and the management naturally wants its money-making cargo to get the right of way. At times, the train may sit on a siding for an hour or more while one, two, even three freight trains pass by. This happens because a large portion of the entire route is on a single track, with regular passing loops. It's also a sad reality that the passing loops built in the early 1900s are nowhere near big enough for today's mega-trains with 150 or more freight cars interspersed with several helper locomotives -- which means that the passenger train has to be the one to pull over.
Although the published schedule has a lot of leeway time built in, it's still entirely possible for the train to be running late by many hours. To deal with this problem, VIA has considerably lengthened the schedule, building in larger amounts of recovery time at each stage of the trip. In practice, we were often running anywhere from one to four hours late, but almost always arrived at the next major stop on time or early.
Since the train has to make a rapid turnaround in Toronto, at the eastern end of the trip, departing for the return west at 9:55am the morning after its arrival, it's also possible that the Toronto departure time may be affected by a very late arrival of the inbound train from Vancouver.
VIA gives you fair warning when you book. You can see the warning on the price chart shown above. Call before heading for the station to see if the train will be leaving on time. Also, and this is very important, do not reserve connecting travel on your day of arrival. Give yourself a night's leeway. Word to the wise.
On VIA's website, you can look up the expected times of the train and adjust your plans accordingly. On my departure from Vancouver, this page was showing the expected times as far east as Nakina in Northern Ontario, which we wouldn't reach until three days later.
For completeness, I am including here a summary of the Winter 2023-2024 timetable in both directions, showing only the main or compulsory stops. The longer stops allow for emptying the retention tanks from the toilets, topping up water supplies, dropping off garbage from the kitchen, replenishing food and drinks, and so on. Locomotive crew changes take place at those stops as well. Winnipeg, the midway point, is a maintenance location where essential repairs can be made. Our train pulled into Winnipeg over 2 hours early, but then departed about 90 minutes late while some repairs were made to the electrical system.
There are many other possible stops. From Vancouver to Winnipeg, and from Capreol to Toronto, the extra stops must be reserved forty minutes before your train departs from the nearest before your chosen station of Vancouver, Kamloops, Jasper, Edmonton, Winnipeg, or Toronto, as appropriate. Between Winnipeg and Capreol, the train runs through bush country where many isolated settlements are accessible only by train. Here you can stand at any one of the designated stopping points and flag the train down.
[5] Smoke Breaks
If you're a smoker, or if you simply like a good brisk walk in the fresh air (me), the stops showing both arrival and departure times are your cue. Your car attendant will advise you of the actual length of the stop as you get off the train, since stops may be lengthened or shortened according to how far ahead or behind the schedule the train is running. Keep your boarding pass throughout the trip. If you leave the station area to look around in Jasper or Winnipeg, you will need to show the pass to re-enter the platform and board the train. That may also be true in Edmonton and Saskatoon.
[6] The Meals
The Canadian's catering and dining car service is legendary -- and rightly so. Here are a few photos to help illustrate some of what you can expect.
First, a series of sample menus. The menus all change every day. Even the omelette of the day and the pancakes of the day at breakfast are different each morning. So are the soups offered at lunch and dinner, and the salads of the day at lunch and dinner. Apologies for the slight blurring -- it's a challenge when the train lurches over a switch just as you are tapping the shutter button on your phone.
On this lunch menu, each main course included a side salad of the day.
And what do the results look like? Here are a few examples. Chicken pot pie with salad of the day.
Rack of lamb, crusted with dijon mustard and served with rosemary-mint sauce.
Beef tenderloin with red wine sauce.
The key lime pie which was offered at dessert one night was as good as any I've ever had in Florida. I had already taken the first bite off the tip because, of course, I had to sample the food to ensure that it was good enough to be shown to my loyal readers!
There
were two desserts every night. One was always the same fiendishly rich
and sweet triple chocolate fudge cake. Obviously a popular choice. Different desserts were offered at lunch time. Among those, the apple crumble was a standout.
The wine list includes a selection of Ontario and British Columbia wines. This list was used consistently by the dining car as well as for the bar service in the Skyline dome car. Bar tabs can be paid with cash or cards, unlike the Corridor trains which now require cards.
[7] Helpful Hints
[1] When they say to bring only small luggage in the sleeper, they aren't kidding. There's no room for big, bulky bags -- and the checked baggage service in the baggage car is free, unlike the airlines. Also note: you can't unpack. No drawers. No cupboards. No open shelves or stylish wire or wicker baskets for clothes storage. You are living out of that small bag for four nights. There's a narrow little closet in a bedroom for two which can hold two coats, and a small cubbyhole above the toilet compartment which can just manage my laptop case, but that is all. In a bedroom for one, it's just an open coat hanger.
[2] Living for 4 nights out of a single small bag sounds impossible to you? VIA makes it easy. Unlike a cruise ship, the dress code on this train is casual at all times, even at dinner in the dining car. And trust me, we are talking jeans, t-shirts, and comfort clothes here. Definitely not dressy! But do bring a sweater or hoodie in case the train gets chilly.
[3] Your sleeping car attendant will make up your room for the day when you head out for breakfast. In the evening, the attendant will ask what time you would like your beds turned down. Hang the card on the room number next to your door, showing the appropriate message.
[4] There are separate water taps for drinkable and non-drinkable
water. Check before refilling your water bottle, and make sure you are
using the right tap.
[5] An interesting quirk in your room -- the sinks drain directly onto the tracks. Push the plug down to close the drain and cut off the noise from the undercarriage. When the cars were new, the toilets also directly drained onto the tracks, as did all trains in those bygone days. Old-timers like myself will recall the notice: "Do not flush while train is standing in station." Today, the Canadian is fitted with electrically-flushed toilets and retention tanks. I wonder how many kids would have taken short cuts by running down the tracks if they'd known?
[6] Another little quirk. At major stops throughout the trip, the water tanks (both types of water) will be refilled. After that operation, each tap will belch a bit of air when you first run it. Be prepared.
[7] There is no key. Your bedroom door can only be locked from the inside when you are in the room.
[8] In the single shower room of each sleeper car, there are two latches on the inside of the door. Use both. One locks the door while the other displays the red "do not enter" sign. Word to the wise: if everyone decides to shower on the same day, the water can run out. Happened to me on the final morning. Come prepared to clean yourself with a sponge bath in your hand basin -- which, of course, was what everyone did when the trains were first introduced (remember that the shower is a fairly recent addition, made about twenty years ago).
[9] Dining car reservations for the first night are taken in the VIA Lounge in Vancouver or Toronto before you board. During the trip, the chief dining car steward will do reservations for the next day each night during dinner. No, you can't reserve the same time in advance for the entire trip (I've tried). Breakfast is open seating, while reservations are taken for lunch and dinner. Note that the times of first, second, and third sittings for lunch and dinner will vary with the schedule, and may get changed on the fly depending on whether the train is ahead or behind. We only had third sittings for dinner between Vancouver and Jasper. So many passengers left at Jasper and Edmonton that we went through the rest of the trip on two sittings. On certain days, depending on the schedule, a single open-seating brunch may replace both breakfast and lunch. On our trip, it was the final day when we were running early and expecting to arrive in Toronto by noon. Brunch was offered on that day from 0930 to 1115.
[10] In the corridors, learn to walk with your elbows up. You'll quickly find out why.
[11] It pays to pay attention to the activity coordinator in your dome car, who is in charge of bar service there, but also acts as the social director. Notices hand-written on the white board in multi-coloured markers are your social bulletin. You may get free concerts, free wine and beer tastings, quick history and culture lessons, a free departure champagne reception on leaving Vancouver or Toronto and maybe leaving Jasper (westbound) as well, and more.
[12] Seats in the upstairs scenic dome can not be reserved (there are only 24). Strictly first-come, first-served. If you try to reserve seats for your entire party, you will be politely dissuaded by the attendant. This isn't the pool deck on a cruise ship!
[13] Photographer advice. The dome windows are tinted and your pictures may be too. Adjust your camera as needed. I've gotten better results through the plain glass windows downstairs in the lounge or cafe area, or in my room.
[14] Coffee, tea, juice, and water are on tap and free in the dome car at all times. Packaged salty snacks and cookies are generally available too. In the mornings, the attendant puts out packaged muffins and croissants, with jam and butter. This is your alternative if you don't want a full cooked breakfast in the dining car. Like the dining car plated breakfast, the light continental breakfast in the dome car is available from 6:30 AM each morning. The dome car is the place to go if you get stuck with the late lunch and dinner sittings and you're getting peckish ahead of time. The activity coordinator in the dome car runs a full bar service from 11:00 AM to 11:00 PM every day.
If you're lucky, you may get a dome car coordinator like JoJo, who was on one
of my previous trips. She must have been sneaking extra coffee into the brew basket because
her morning brew-up tasted fabulous. The proof? If you got to JoJo's dome
car early enough, you'd find all the service crew from the various other
cars dropping in to get their morning fix of caffeine from her coffee urn before going off to work. They knew.
[15] Direction. All bedrooms for two face the same side of the train. On the eastbound run, those windows are on the south side. On the westbound train, the bedrooms for two face north. Two of the three upper berth/lower berth sections face the same way, as do two of the four bedrooms for one. That little oddity is because there simply isn't enough downtime in Toronto for the entire train to be pulled apart and the cars all switched individually into reverse position. The train gets turned around as a whole by leaving Toronto on a different track, forming a complete loop around the city. Here's the entire weird manoeuvre, including the spot north of the city where the outbound VIA # 1 has to back up around a curve to get onto the main bypass track and continue the loop.
[16] Tipping. VIA offers no guidance, saying that it is entirely at your discretion. There's just one trick to watch out for. The entire passenger service crew changes over in Winnipeg, since they work the train from Winnipeg to either end of the line and then back again. If you want to tip any of the service people in the first half of the trip, you need to do it before the train reaches Winnipeg.
[8] What's to See?
VIA prepares a leaflet route guide in your accommodation to highlight key places and sights on your trip. I'm including here a series of photos of the four panels of the leaflet, just to give you an idea. I've covered this stuff in more detail in the previous two posts.
The extra-large dome car shown on this first page is the Panorama car, a much newer vehicle which may be added to the train in summer between Edmonton and Vancouver to provide more dome seating on the trip through the mountains. The advantage of the Panorama over the classic dome is that these windows are only tinted on top and the curve down to the sides, leaving ample clear glass for photography.
[9] The Experience
Think of a Sleeper Class trip on the Canadian as
a cruise on a train. You can expect a leisurely travel experience, great meals, excellent service, entertainment, travel information as
you ride, and an overall relaxing time. Of course, there are also
significant differences due to the difference in the environment
aboard.
I can't say enough about the excellence of the service aboard the Canadian. Deon and Tony, the sleeping car attendants, Jennifer and Meg, the Activity Coordinators in the Skyline dome car, all the staff in the dining car -- everyone was friendly, helpful, and ready to go the extra mile whenever needed.
Overall, though, the best part of this experience for me is the chance to meet all kinds of interesting people from many different places. The dining car is the main reason. The chief steward there will make a point of seating you with different people at every single lunch and dinner. On this trip, I met and visited with:
[a] a couple of university students from Vancouver.
[b] a semi-retired couple from Nanaimo.
[c] a student from Hamburg (Germany).
[d] a train nerd from England.
[e] a train nerd from Detroit.
[f] a young Indian man, recently immigrated to Canada, on a family visit.
[g] a couple on a surprise birthday trip for her, from North Wales.
[h] several older travellers who will only travel by train, not by air.
And so on. You get the idea. It was far more rewarding than when I took the train in the summer because the passenger list in summer was much more homogeneous: primarily American and Canadian tourists, with several cars full of organized tour parties. For a top-notch people experience, the winter is the time.
Of course, this is an experience that you will never, ever get on an airliner or on a car trip.
And you should have seen how hard we were all laughing at dinner and in the lounge of the dome car on the final night, all because of the $10 glass of wine to which I already referred in the last instalment. That's a story that would take at least one glass just to tell you in full, between further fits of the giggles!
[10] East or West?
Tough one to answer. Eastbound fitted my schedule on this occasion, but on the whole I'd rather go the other way. You gain an hour at each time change. Going east, we had to change time an hour ahead, twice in one day on the Prairies which meant that the meal schedule for that day got drastically compressed.
Either way, though, you should go -- and go soon, if you want to experience the ride in its current historic version. I certainly want to take the trip one more time before these grand old silver streamliners pass away forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment