One train, four days, four time zones

Well its pouring with rain in Seattle (it always does, apparently!) and so its an ideal time to catch up on the Blog! When we last reported in we had spent a few days in Toronto, this first pictures shows us waiting for the departure of the train to Vancouver. The train didnt leave until 10pm so its long past Janes bedtime as you can see! We are sat in the sleeper class lounge, and she has taken the name to heart.

The space consists of two seats like the one we are sat on, facing one another, which fold down into a bed at night, and the curvy bit above which folds down into a slightly less comfortable bed at night time! To give you an idea of how vast Canada is, we spent the first day and a half on the train in one State - Ontario. In that time we could have travelled up and down UK three times!

Long stretches were very straight as you can see from the view out of the rear window. On the first day we were held up for three hours due to the track being washed out by flood water as a result of the thaw; however they fixed the track very quickly! Also passenger trains have to give way to freight trains as the freight trains are too long to fit into the sidings as much of the line is single track as you can see! Freight trains can be up to 2 miles long and take 5 -10 minutes to pass you.

Upstairs in the observation lounge is a great place to see what is going on - plus they give the occasional glass of free champagne so its well worth being up there. Unfortunately, everyone else knows that too.

One of the longer stop-overs was in Winnepeg - where the weather had come in a little - six inches of snow on the ground and the rivers were all flooded over the paths that ran alongside them. Behind Jane is the new pedestrian bridge they built on the historic site of the Forks. Jane is looking a little chilly - it was about -4 degrees C at the time.

One feature of the journey was the amount of spare land that each little town had - so they proceeded to cover it in lots of scrap cars - the ones shown here are all classics - in UK I am sure we would have snapped them up and restored or salvaged them - rather than letting them rot.

Heres a pic of the actual train - two engines but only about 9 actual carriages, but the second one is in case one of them breaks down or for some of the slightly steeper hills in the Rockies. This is in Jasper at the start of the Rockies. We had a brief stoppover here, and wandered the streets looking for the elk they said did the same, but clearly it was their day off.

Once we set off into the rockies we actually did see some wildlife however - a black bear; some moose (or is it mooses?) and elk (although we are still not sure what the difference is) The scenery was fantastic however, as you can see, and literally takes the breath away. We were lucky enough to be able to sit at the front of the dome car as we went through, and it was fantastic.

Anyway, four and half days later we arrived in Vancouver, but more of that in the next blog, so look out for that one soon - in the meantime,  keep those comments coming!