ViaRail "Canadian" Train Sleeper Tour

hello I've previously posted to YouTube a couple of videos showing my experiences riding Amtrak's long-distance trains recently I took a trip through Canada on via rails long-distance train called the Canadian which runs between Toronto and Vancouver this video shows several things I learned and my experiences riding that train Toronto is Union Station is located just a couple of blocks from the CN tower it has a large first-class lounge for sleeper car passengers much as Amtrak does at its stations the lounge has large comfortable seats plenty of room for everybody riding the sleeper as well as free soft drinks and other beverages while you wait boarding the Train is a fairly short distance from the first-class lounge I was in the type of sleeper known as a manner car at one end it has two common restrooms three birth areas keeps eating or sleeping to people but without walls so they don't have as much privacy then there's a common shower and six rooms which are configured as two or three passenger rooms and then four single rooms much like a roommate on Amtrak the sliding door to the room it is much like on Amtrak with a simple clasp and a security lock however the door is solid does not have a window in it so you don't get to see out into the aisle and that makes it slightly more claustrophobic and feeling there are some nice latches to keep them from sliding inadvertently the seat is wide and comfortable although instead of a fabric surface it has a more slippery surface there's a single outlet and once again you're advised to bring an outlet strip if you have more than one thing plugged in I'm always charging camera batteries my GPS my cell phone running my scanner up above the sink area is a storage area where you can put a backpack or something like that then each room it has its own little utility sink with a surface on top which can be used as a small writing area or just to keep things from falling in you've got hot and cold water it's potable water so you can drink it however on top of the sink there's also a separate spigot for filling water containers I found mine to be so highly pressurized it splattered water everywhere as with everything else in the room there are security latches on anything that moves as with the Amtrak trains you have a large window for each row met although I don't think it's quite as large as the Amtrak windows but you can still put your normal automotive GPS on the window using a suction cup and that really does help make the trip more enjoyable having a radio scanner along makes the trip more enjoyable too you can hear a lot of the chatter between the train crew go grab the owner Corral don't car there yeah I'm looking for so anything in the dump card when the train is westbound from Toronto it does an interesting thing it goes out of the downtown area west along the lake and then it reverses and goes back up the track and then curves on to a different track that leaves the downtown area in a northwesterly direction this is of course the direction it needs to go to get through Ontario and westbound through Canada the overhead storage area doesn't have a lot of room but it is large enough for a backpack and some other things and the train attendant also keeps a plastic bag up there with a couple of towels washcloths and cloths that type of thing the rooms are air-conditioned and you also have a fan at your disposal the bed is interesting instead of lowering down from the ceiling it's on a fairly heavy door that's flips down from the wall there's a heavy latch to release it it's counterbalance so you don't really feel the weight and then there's a snap latch at the bottom to keep it from bouncing back up the bed's already made the mattress is on it the sheets are tucked in and ready to go pillows already in place very simple and the attendant doesn't have to make up the room for you one pop of the latch and the counterbalance that easily rises back up for storage you have to make sure that you have the sheets tucked in there properly and when pulling it down there's a safety latch that prevents it from falling on it in diverting Lee another oddity of the beds in the room Metz is that they are not rectangular they are wider at the head end than at the foot end and this is necessary to give you some area to stand and also to clear the sink now here's with my flashlight on it shows this small amount of area next to the bed where you can stand up next to the bed it's less than a foot wide but it is adequate to stand up in and you can access the sink the toilet which is in each room is covered up by the bed while the bed is down so unless you want to use the sink you have to pretty much run down the hall to the bathroom at the far end of the car or raise the bed has just demonstrated the room has a nice reading light next to the bed you've got that fan up there there's a couple of places to hang clothes from hangers once again the small area where you can dangle your legs over the edge of the bed and stand up if you want to during the night once again the bed covers up the toilet and there's your little sink area stretching out on the bed at night it's quite comfortable but again the room is probably only six feet long so if you're tall you may have to sleep with your knees bent the room is adequately tall to stand up in I should note here that pretty much all the way through Canada on the Canadian I found that the quality of the tracks was subpar the worst rails I've seen on any Amtrak route in the US are generally better than pretty much the whole track going out from Toronto to Vancouver so you'd get a lot of John Singh around and it's more of a rocking to sleep motion than you would get on Amtrak which is just generally a bit quieter and smoother this is your car they're infectious box woman's we're trying to find the lady with the dog yeah I mean I like to find her thank you one thing that I thought was a real pain with the design of these rooms is that the curtain is a semi-rigid pulldown structure instead of just a normal curtain that goes across and it hits the GPS in the morning when you're ready to get up you just tuck your sheets back in there's a little area around the edge that you can tuck them into and that makes it fold up a lot nicer it takes just a few seconds to do it relieve the corner security clasp and the counterweight at bed comes up pretty easily and the scene just unfolds below it now I found that the first time I did it I hadn't tucked the sheet in quite enough and it was binding so a quick bit of retouching and then it would close properly my necessity pencil over come on over yes the lady at the station that she was she's running in to the station to get four or five feet of rope she's on her way to drop it up to me right now over okay that's awesome okay they're still trying to figure out how to deal with that one dog back in the baggage car okay so here's a bit of a tour of the layout of the train I'm walking forward through the sleeper car past the four row Mets and then the hallway jogs to the left to clear the full-size rooms again this is almost identical to Amtrak's layouts at the far end of this hallway is the shower then you jog to the right again and you're into the area of the berths now since it's still early in the morning some of the berths are closed with their little curtains and they're in bunk bed mode at this time so there's one person sleeping above another in each berth area let me continue past the two bathrooms and into the vestibule area between the two cars unlike Amtrak these are not sliding doors you have to open the manually now pass the room it's in the next car jog to the left past the full-size bedrooms and these always just as with Amtrak are just wide enough for one person if you have two people coming and up as a direction somebody has to back up into a doorway or some other wide area now these berths are unused so they're in daytime configuration instead of a bunk bed configuration once again through a vestibule into the next car and through another set of roommates here comes a fellow who's decided to back up into the next available white spot one more vestibule and this should be the lounge car there were three sleeper cars sharing a lounge car in the middle of the lounge car is a staircase up to the elevated dome area which is for exclusive use by the passengers and the sleeper car is associated with that lounge car I never found all the seats to be full on my four-day trip most of the railroads between Toronto and Vancouver which is apparently a single track instead of the double track more commonly found in the States as a result the Canadian train has to pull over quite frequently onto sidings to allow freight trains to go by these are very long freight trains stacked with double-decker containers and I was told that this is a lot of stuff from ships coming from China and other areas and they put them on trains and take them across the continent rather than take the boats around the south end especially if they won't fit through the Panama Canal I found that I spent almost all of my time in the dome above the lounge you get a nice view you can see forward it's fun to watch the train sneaking in front of you and you definitely get nice views of the beautiful terrain especially this first part in Ontario just one gorgeous Lake after another with Christine woods forests on the train that I was on and I believe this is typical there are two sets of three sleepers and one lounge car each and those two sets share a common dining car in between them the dining car is well staffed and the service is excellent the meals were fine I think much better than those on Amtrak although I'm not complaining about Amtrak's meals either and the camaraderie as with other train travel is almost always very good here's a walk back from the lounge car to the sleeper in my case I had the sleeper car farthest from the lounge to keep track of which car you're in it's important to remember that each of these cars each of these sleeper cars has its own name and they're all given the name of something or another manner and when you enter a car the doorway says the name of the car you're leaving and then as you go through the vestibule the doorway into the next car says the name of that car in addition there's a plaque on the wall just about where I'm ready to turn here in this video you might get a glimpse of it right there on the left that has the name of the car and also the reasoning for that name it can get quite dark in some parts of the car especially at night or early in the morning as the the section with the births is not illuminated and this would be my room I didn't zip up the external curtain looks like the car attendant must have done that here it's a little awkward unzip but with one hand and into the room but once a day the train will pull into a station somewhere for an extended refueling stop the locomotives get refueled the crew often changes although maybe not all of the crew at the same time some of the crew stays on for almost the whole trip now this particular stop was in Ontario at a town called Warren Payne very small town and it's an unprepared station just gravel alongside the tracks pretty dusty and noisy but everybody was encouraged to get out and walk the length of the train stretch their legs they're smokers they can get a little good long smoke and while I'm on that point just as with Amtrak no smoking of any kind is located is permitted anywhere on the train including the vestibules so the refueling stops are a good place for smokers to ghetto and take care of that here you can see some crew members changing new engineers for the locomotives and the stop was about 40 minutes long in this case so there's ample opportunity to take a leisurely stroll as mentioned before when returning to your car from any station stop or you can exit the train you can either look out for your car attendant who you'd recognize by that point or you can pay attention to the name of your sleeper car which is also marked on the outside of the car just as it is on the doorways and the plaque inside my particular car was Elgin Manor and there it is prominently displayed on the side of the car partially due to the length of the ride and also due to the need for frequent stops to let freight trains pass the trip is three and a half day extended duration trip by the end or the middle of the second full day the train finally passes out of Ontario into Manitoba and the landscape becomes much flatter and really less picturesque my trip we ran into some thunderstorms into the eastern edge of Manitoba the dome car is a great place to catch those views now we're passing through the area around Esther housing Manitoba where there are some large potash mines you can see the tailings piles quite some distance away [Music] rather big thank you [Music] that's all tailings I think brother to say that what they have Yeah right [Music] how can I cope last time I got as far as my yes now by the morning of the third full day finally crossed into Alberta and this is crossing the being a river near Entwistle toast looks good at midday on the third full day of the trip if you're heading west the train finally passes Breughel Lake just on the eastern outskirts or rather just outside the eastern outskirts of Jasper National Park and you finally get views of the mountains this mountain is known as folding Mountain and it's right on the border of Jasper National Park the eastern border the train track runs through a tunnel which marks the eastern border of Jasper National Park and right after coming out of the tunnel the track is then along Jasper Lake which offers several wonderful views of some very prominent picturesque mountains in the near distance as you might expect with a national park there's lots of wildlife my train passed by a grizzly bear just standing there patiently waiting for the train to pass very much like a commuter with a four think that he the front windows of the domes on the lounge cars do accumulate quite a few bugs depending on the season and visibility gets a little poor at least for photography so by the time you get to Jasper they finally come out with a cherry picker and do a pretty decent job of cleaning the front windows they don't touch the side windows if my trip was any indication of their normal practice [Music] once passed jasper national park the westbound train continues through more of the Canadian Rockies these are very picturesque mountains although I'm unsure of the elevation they don't seem as large as the Rockies in the in the US it's still very attractive and nice viewing going through company just saying guys if you [Music] other yeah [Music] by early afternoon on the third full day heading west train is finally into British Columbia and passes from pyramid Falls finally the last day of the trip heading west you awaken in western British Columbia approaching Vancouver this is nursery and the suspension bridge here is the highway one bridge along the Fraser River the tracks finally go over a swing bridge alongside the highway highway one a bridge and you're into the actual part of the land that the City of Vancouver is located on finally it mid-morning of the last day the train pulls into Vancouver station hope you've enjoyed the video and found it useful

Channel: youtuuba

Views: 746,302

Rating: 4.6016598 out of 5

Keywords: ViaRail, Canadian, Toronto (City/Town/Village), Vancouver (City/Town/Village), CN Tower (Tourist Attraction), Ontario (Canadian Province), Manitoba (Canadian Province), Saskatchewan (Canadian Province), Alberta (Canadian Province), British Columbia (Canadian Province), Hornpayne, Sleeping Car (Transit Service Type), Train (Transit Vehicle Type), Tourism (Interest), Canada (Country)

Id: -oB2tGM_35k

Length: 31min 49sec (1909 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 24 2014