Canada Trip Epilogue 1- Trains

A word or two about ViaRail and long trips on trains in general

On this trip I spent over 200 hours riding on trains. This experience was not as rewarding as I had fantasized it would be. It was very irritating and uncomfortable. I swear I must have been cursed with terrible train partners. That, or there's just something about people on trains.

On the first leg of my trip a plague of teenage girls descended upon my car and spent the entire first night giggling and cavorting and just generally preventing sleep. Next, on the way to Churchill, someone has brought an honest-to-god baby aboard. It should probably be illegal to bring a baby on a 40 hour train ride, although I guess such a law would seem silly because who would want to do this in the first place? The woman in front of me, that’s who! Well, let’s be fair. It’s not quite a baby, more like a toddler, but is that really an upgrade? I guess if you’re a parent, it must be very rewarding to see your child progress from the writhing and crying stage to the flailing and yelling stage (which they will remain in until age 22).  Anyway, this baby spent the whole night yelling about something (gaabee?) and I’m pretty sure it went through a stage where it was just yelling the word shit over and over. You got that right kid. The mother kept shushing it in these urgent, quiet tones, as if the baby would eventually pick up on the social cues or something and say ‘oh, pardon, I have no idea what I was thinking yelling like that for hours’.  I have to say, although it was the shouting that woke me up, what made me lose the most sleep was the existential crisis it triggered about whether I really do want children. Don’t get me wrong, I love kids. I work with kids. I just don’t really love babies, and if I ever have one, I promise not to bring it on a train.

Aside from the dramatic Candian Rockies on the first day, the ride itself was not very eventful. We kept passing by the remains of telephone poles, which had been disused for years, in various stages of sinking into the muck. Some are held up by other poles, tripod-style. It reminds me of that bit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail about swamp castle. So we built another telephone pole! It fell over, burned down, and then sank into the swamp. It really makes you wonder what exactly people are doing out here, that they’d colonize someplace so nakedly inhospitable to them. Is the need to expand so great that we just do it thoughtlessly, without any regard to whether or not it’s actually a good idea? The railroad, by the way, is also sinking into the swamp. An American company does the rail maintenance for viarail, laying down new track as needed. Evidently, they do not do this job very well. Before I came on this trip, it didn’t really occur to me that a train could experience ‘turbulence’, and now I know both that it can and why. Turns out it’s america’s fault. I like to imagine that when the train’s pace slows inexplicably, that it’s because we’re approaching a particularly faulty section of rail, and we have to, like, creep carefully over it, like an explorer on an old rope bridge.

More than anything else, the train is slow. Aside from the aforementioned swamp, there are plenty of other issues that can cause endless delay. Sometimes it's too hot and the train must creep along at 10 miles per hour to avoid warping the track. Sometimes a freight train breaks down in front of you and you just sit still for hours. Sometimes it just seems as if something is wrong with the train as it sits in the station with no one apparently doing anything to make it leave on time or fix it. Mostly, however, the problem is that the railroads themselves are owned by the freight companies. This ends up meaning that the freight trains have priority and that passenger trains must essentially pull over and wait for them to pass, no matter how long that might take. In some places it means sitting on a side track for 2 hours. Capitalism, everyone!

The coach class, which I am of course a part of, is forbidden from interacting with our betters during non-dining hours. We are not even allowed to use the showers, which sit in the nearly-deserted upper class cars largely unused.  And the website explicitly lied about the train’s wifi capacity (it has none).  There is a weird, enforced class divide where the coach passengers actually end up poorly fed and smelly by the time they reach their destination. Didn’t want to pay the extra? This is what you deserve, you Poor. For every dollar they invest on, like, train improvements, and such, ViaRail can expect to make 70 cents back. I learned this from a fellow traveler, but he seemed well informed, so I kind of just believe it. Plus it would explain why it feels like as little effort has been put into this train as possible. Capitalism, everyone! Oh wait, that's the punchline I used last paragraph. Guess it's still true.

Above all else the train is about enduring. You have not truly experienced what it means to be delayed until you arrive at a destination 10 hours late. I don't think I will ever be impatient on an airline flight again.