“Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance
Everybody thinks it’s true”
Paul Simon
To mention crossing the Rocky Mountains by train to most travellers is probably to conjure up thoughts of the iconic ‘Rocky Mountaineer’. For those not in the know the ‘Mountaineer’ is a luxury long distance tourist train which traverses Canada from Toronto to Vancouver; broadly in the same category as the Orient Express in Europe.
Now, for my money (of which there is clearly an insufficiency!) there are two main drawbacks to the ‘Mountaineer’:
- it is eye-wateringly expensive
- on the trip across the Rockies you don’t get to sleep on the train. Passengers are shipped off to a hotel in Kamloops to re-join the next morning. Excuse me! Sleeping on the train – in motion – really is the point (for this enthusiast at least)
We travelled instead from Jasper to Vancouver on the regular ViaRail service which operates under the banner of The Canadian. Not quite as iconic perhaps, but pretty close. If you are stirred by the images of the classic stainless steel train sets that make up The Canadian you might care to check out the history and detail of the trains here.
Having boarded at the top of the morning in Jasper we spent much of the daylight part of the 24 hour journey in one of the classic domed panorama cars – the which could have been (and probably were!) designed specifically for the sweeping, dramatic landscapes of the Rockies. Then – whilst we dined in some opulence in one of the splendid restaurant cars – our day cubicle was converted into the curtained bunk berths in which we passed the hours of darkness; though not before retiring to the gorgeous curved observation car (see below) for a digestif.
Come the next morning we awoke to find ourselves rolling gently into Vancouver.
Well – that’s another item crossed off the bucket-list!
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