Canadian passenger trains do not, on any level, function like European trains.
My first experience with long-haul train travel was the Eurostar route from London to Brussels. Second experience was the TGV from Brussels to Paris. Third train trip was Paris back to London. I came away loving train travel.
Train travel in Canada is a bit of a novelty—usually more expensive and far less efficient than flight. Even knowing this, a train ride from Halifax to Ottawa seemed like a good idea. It would take longer by about 20 hours (including connection wait times), but I would get to see a part of the country I had never seen. Plus trains are just far more comfortable than planes. More leg room, more wandering away from your seat.
That was my thinking aproximately 36.5 hours ago. Since then, I have spent 28 hours either on a train or in train stations in eastern Canada. What I failed to understand before I boarded is that passenger trains in Canada must surrender any shared portion of track needed for frieght trains. Which can add 3 hours to a trip that is already scheduled for 1 day and 22 minutes. Which I suppose would have been less gruelling if we had initially doubled our ticket price to have a berth for the night. We didn’t consider that a necessary expense at the time. Still wouldn’t. There will have to be drastic changes to the rail system in that part of the country before I consider taking that route again.
My country is beautiful. Impressive, grand, and dignified. But her humans miss the mark on long-haul ground transportation. Someone send me a bullet train to speed against the sunset.
i LOVE train travel, so this is a bit sad.
Our one experience with Via was a holiday trip home from Vancouver to Edmonton. The train was delayed so they bussed us to Kamloops in the middle of the night (after a three hour delay in the Vancouver station) where we finally boarded in a sleepy stupor and awoke somewhere en route. Overall about 24 hours, but not a way to travel if you’re in a hurry.
Even with your account of it, I hope I’ll get to use the train next time I come to Canada. Every time I have looked before, it was prohibitively expensive and that has always been the deciding factor… and sadly probably will be again.
Ariel – If you book early or sometimes last minute, you can get some reasonably good deals (i.e., cheaper than airfare). Now that I have a little distance from it, I’m glad I did it. And I will probably at some point take the train from Edmonton to Vancouver (with Brad’s experience as a cautionary note), once I start to get a little hungry for travel punishment again. I like being other places, but I’m not great with the journey.
Brad – Solidarity, brother!
Vesper – I still prefer trains to planes or cars, but other countries are eons ahead of North America when it comes to efficiency.
I wonder how your experience compares with my own on the Trans-Siberian railway… FOUR DAYS straight, from Khabarovsk to Krasnoyarsk, then three days from Krasnoyarsk to Moscow a few weeks later… four bunks to a compartment, a samovar at the end of each car, and the availability of virtually any kind of merchandise, from pickles and sausage to guns and ammo, out of the window at every station… Did you have to punch out any thieves to get on the train with all your luggage?
Please tell me that in light of that, Canadian rail travel as at least a couple of things right…
Travis – I did not have to punch out anyone on my trip. They even checked our baggage from Halifax to Montreal. So Canada has something on Russia.