Postcard from Canada

Backing out of McGregor, Sask.

UPDATED 5:30 PM CST

I dreamed last night that the ground was uneven when I tried to walk. Then I was in an airplane and discovered we were flying below the level of buildings we approached. We'll crash for sure, I tried to yell. You have the strangest dreams on a train rattling through the night.

I'm on day three of a five-day trip aboard VIA Rail's Canadian. I thought some of you might want to live vicariously, so here's an update. The trip is going splendidly. We are quite late, of course -- currently almost four hours behind time out here in eastern Saskatchewan.

As is usually the case with the eastbound Canadian, we ran pretty close to schedule from Vancouver, B.C., on Friday night to Jasper, Alta., late on Saturday afternoon. But the closer we got to Edmonton, Alta., that evening, the tougher it got to make progress.

Edmonton is an important Canadian National Railway hub, and CN is bursting with business across Canada this spring. A mix of grain, containers, potash, lumber, automobiles, fracking sand, drilling pipe, and crude oil spawns one train after another, and to almost all of them the Canadian defers. This makes for a lot of delays on a very relaxed schedule, but it also makes for an interesting trip. Never a dull moment, in other words. We are forever speeding up, slowing down, passing flashing yellow and red-over-yellow signals as we step in and out of sidings.

Let me give you an example. We approached Saskatoon, Sask., behind intermodal train 116 and waited for 20 minutes for it to make a setout or pickup. Then we pulled past the VIA station and backed. While our locomotives refueled, 116 left town. A few minutes later, so did we, and within a few miles VIA train 2 began picking up yellow signals. The dispatcher had numerous opportunities to let us around 116, but still we followed that trail of approach signals for 83 miles and 135 minutes. Finally we pulled into a siding behind 116, where we are still waiting 45 minutes later for whatever westbound train is headed towards us. I figure we've lost 85 minutes and counting so far. When the westbound train (or trains) get by, we'll back out and finally pass train 116. Off we'll go until the next encounter, which probably won't take long. This is frustrating to impatient people, no doubt, but it's one reason I love to ride this train.

Passing intermodal train 116 at McGregor.

The meals are excellent, and so is the company. What are the odds, do you think, that last night three readers of Trains Magazine would enter the dining car separately and be seated at the same table. But there we were, Fred and his new friends Cathy Hart of Michigan and Robert Liming of South Carolina. Anyway, I ordered rack of lamb last night and roast beef with Yorkshire pudding for Sunday brunch today. Tonight and tomorrow I don't know, because the menu changes with each meal. For dining car food, dished up by a single fellow in the kitchen, it's quite good.

Well, I've got to get back to the dome in the observation car. Lots more trains to see, you know. After we swap engineers in Melville, Sask., the train enters Manitoba and we pass some wonderfully hilly landscapes in the late afternoon. If we ever get to Melville.

So to end this: Having wonderful time. Wish you were here! -- Fred W. Frailey

UPDATE: Our wait ended after 55 minutes and we jumped ahead of train 116. But within a dozen miles we got behind another eastbound freight, a slow one; goodness knows where it had been hiding. We've been sitting in Jasmin, Sask., for 40 minutes, during which time two westbound manifest trains came by. We seem to be waiting for a third and maybe more westbounds. And then the Canadian must still get around the freight in front of it, and we've just told that other train has mechanical problems that keep it (and the Canadian from proceeding. To put it another way, in two and a half hours we have advanced 64 miles. And to put this in perspective, CN is bursting at the seams with business. Farmers are angry at the railroads, so the government has ordered them to double the rate of grain loadings within the next month -- as if the railroads had nothing else to handle. In this frenzied environment, the Canadian counts for little. VIA gives little to CN and so its train moves at the pleasure of the freight railroad. I can live with that. I am going to shake up a martini and ponder all this in rapt wonderment. FF