@Ron H posted:GG1,
How was the ride, and where did you embark and finish ?
Ron H
Ron,
To start we rode the Rocky Mountaineer from Vancouver to Banff with an overnight stop in Kamloops. The "tail end" car on that train is the generator car as the Rocky Mountaineer is powered by rebuilt GP40-2s. We did this specifically to see the scenery on the CP transcon and the Rockies during the day. That train was very well operated and they were constantly feeding us and giving us the history of Canada and the railroad and how the two were related. I did not know that the CP was built with a political goal to align the railroad as close to the 49th parallel as possible so that the United States would not claim British Columbia. From an engineering perspective the CP line was an inferior routing near the continental divide which originally was achieved with a 4.5% grade and later upgraded to the current spiral tunnels. Grand Trunk's (later CN's) transcontinental routing through Yellowhead Pass was much easier to engineer. The scenery was indeed spectacular in that area.
We got on the Canadian in Jasper and took it to Toronto after a tour of the ice fields in both Banff and Jasper National Parks. The ride was four days and three nights. It arrived in Jasper 8 hours late, but we made up three hours in Ontario ultimately arriving in Toronto at 7:30 pm instead of the scheduled 2:30 pm. Our hotel was the Royal York across the street so we could walk to it.
What I learned from a presentation given in the Park car dome just before our station stop in Saskatoon from one of the staff was that VIA Rail was not able to obtain priority over freight trains when it was formed in 1978 unlike Amtrak. Additionally, the legal limit for freight trains in Canada is 3 miles long. The freight trains were mostly operated with a locomotive or two on the front, one in the middle, and one on the rear. With both the CP and CN mainlines being single track mainlines with passing sidings, the freight trains are longer than a lot of the sidings although CN is working on lengthening them. Interestingly enough the passing sidings are shorter on the eastern end of the route where we made up most of our time though. There was a lot of traffic across Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. I got some fun photos of the passing freights out of the back of the dome, but they are still sitting in my SLR unlike the cell phone photos I posted to this thread.
Overall the ride was very good. The track quality was better than I expected. Even at the speed limit of 80 mph the sleepers rode well and both my wife and I managed to have restful nights. The added sound insulation in the "Prestige Class" sleepers helped with the passing freight trains. The dining car swayed a bit more when were running at full speed, but the ride was not bad.
Probably more information that you asked for, but I was impressed enough with it to want to do the ride the other direction in a few years. Even my wife who was highly skeptical of being a a train for that long really enjoyed it. Even the food was decent. Not cuisine, but good service and a different menu at every meal including the extra dinner we were served for having a late train.
