Leaving on a jet train

Ready two minutes early I did the final pat down for essentials.  Passport, wallet, phone.  Phone.  Where is my phone.  Rummage through front pocket of backpack.  Then main pocket.  Look around.  Check floor around bed.  Groan as I have to mess up the bed I tried to tidy up before I left.  Go through bed, not there.  Finally found it above the sink in the bathroom.  Luckily because I'm me I had built some extra minutes into my time frame so still made it to the UP train in time.  But wowee I came close to leaving my phone behind.  And not the first time I've left it in a bathroom either.  I left it in the Museum bathroom in Ottawa too. Luckily I realised quite quickly and as I went back to find it saw someone handing a phone to the front desk.  You'd think I'd have learnt about phones and bathrooms.  

So the train journey.  I've split this into a few parts.  Photos will be spread through randomly - most are a bit rough but with a moving train and dirty windows what are you going to do.

Walking on trains

"I got this, I am striding along, I have hit the rhythm".  Train speeds up or goes over a bump "I don't got this *falls into wall.  Tries to straighten.  Falls into other wall* I feel drunk"  and occasionally "this must be what a baby horse using it's legs for the first time feels like".  Then you get off the train  "why is the world moving" (it's not - train legs, it's a thing).

Sunday

We stopped for our first freight train part way through day one.  I say stopped, we stopped, reversed for some way and then stopped again.  I counted the carriages on this one, 185 I got to.  It'll be the only one I count.

There's a view outside my window at the moment that I can't get an accurate photo of, so I'm going to make an attempt to describe it (watch out she's about to try and get poetic).  Right alongside the train are trees, I think they're fir trees but I could be wrong.  Whatever they are they're, well furry looking, well covered in light but vibrant green, with the occasional dash of orange in some and darker shades of green from time to time, maybe from the light.  Every now and then there is a birch tree, stark white and bare.  Then beyond that, sometimes out of view, a river travelling along with us.  Sometimes the river is in full view and it stretches out wide, as wide as a football field.  The sky is grey and the air misty with rain (between that and the moving train you can see why a photo is difficult).  Occasionally the river drifts away and the trees take a back seat to rocks, big and small, dark grey and orangy-brown, shiny from the rain.  It's the kind of view I hoped for on this train and there's currently no one else in the car with me so it's nice and peaceful.

And now some clumps of snow, holding out against the spring. 

I've finished my third book of the trip, The Milkman.  It was very good but I'll have to read it again some time.  The prose is quite different, it's the kind of book where you have to get into the cadence of it, which proved a bit difficult in planes where the person next to me hummed and cracked his fingers, and on a train while getting used to the screeches and other people chatting around me.  By the end I was in the rhythm of it but I didn't take in parts in the beginning and middle.  

Monday

An alright sleep last night, not the best not the worst.  The light and the occasional screeching from where the cars join were the most disruptive part.  I'm in an upper berth, which means top bunk, which means the rockiest part of the train.  I don't mind the rocking though, except when it swung the hammock holding my belongings into the wall which woke me up.  I overheard a Via Rail person yesterday telling someone there are parts of the track which the freight trains push down as they're so heavy.  We however are not as heavy so we bounce over them.  We bounced over a few things in the night as the train rocketed across the country side.  It feels like at night especially, when they get some clear track they really go for it to try and get back some of the time lost waiting for freight trains.  The passenger trains are shorter than the freight and take lower priority, and the track is single for a lot of it.  So when we meet it's us that have to move to the side track to wait.  Which is why these trains are so often late. The woman across from me who gets off this evening said that last time she caught it it was 12 hours late.  Fingers crossed we're not that late into Jasper or Vancouver.  It might be a bit sad to spend my whole birthday stuck in a train.

The berth's are in open space, no doors to close on the outside world, but I'm finding it ok.  The curtains at night button closed so it feels private enough for me.  I'm sharing this space with 4 others.  The people that work on this train really have to work for their pay.  Or attendant joked that when she heard she'd be making beds this was not what she had in mind.  The berths involve dropping the two seats, pulling down the overhead compartment, getting a bar across the top clipped in and then two poles from each end locked into place which has required two people on berth 1 and 2.  Then they hook the curtains up and make the lower bed.  Then in the morning they pack it all away again.  It takes up a decent portion of their day.  

Dinner tonight was a really good Canadian trout with Canadian hemp crust (which didn't get me buzzed like the man from Milwaukee joked it would). We had a slightly longer stop in Winnipeg (Anna Pacquin), off the train for about 45 mins, and conveniently there's a cute little market place 5 mins walk from the station so we all straggled our way over there.  I got suitably distracted by snacks.  My excuse is that they do breakfast, brunch and then dinner on this train, no lunch, and tomorrow I'm in the late sitting for dinner so won't get food till 8pm.  So I need something extra to keep me going through the tough day of sitting and reading and staring at landscapes.  Today was the first substantial change in scenery (quick side note, they're cleaning the windows god bless them, though it seems only on the other side of the train.  Oh well win some loose some).  The change happened about the same time as we changed provinces.  We crossed in to Manitoba around 7ish and the landscape suddenly flattened out.  Now it's long flat horizons.  

Markets in Winnipeg

Humanitarian museum Winnipeg - no time to visit.  This time. 

Cory the woman in the same berth are got off the train this afternoon in a tiny place with a boarded up train station.  She was the only person getting off and they had to stop the front part first to get her bags off, then roll the train forward to let her off.  She seemed very happy to be off the train and reunited with her dog and her husband (understandably so).  I must admit I was a little jealous as the train pulled away and I saw the pretty area she was staying in, with lakes on either side and cute houses dotted about the lake edge in the forest, all with their own jetty's.

Tuesday

So Manitoba came and went.  After spending all of Monday, and most of Tuesday travelling across Ontario, we arrived in Manitoba around 7pm last night.  We had our stop in Winnipeg, left there just before 10, went to bed and woke up in Saskatchewan.  We also once again woke up in a new time zone.  Our third of the trip.  I'll stay in this time zone for a few days though, the next change won't be till we cross into BC.  We've stopped for about an hour in Saskatoon.  I got off and wandered the length of the train for 15 mins for a stretch of the legs and some fresh air.  Doesn't seem like there's much to see in Saskatoon, at least not from the train station, so I got back on the train and finished my book instead.  The book was called Cold Skies and is Canadian.  It was good, an easy read.  Part mystery part community.  Not sure I liked the ending, but I guess he needed to set it up for the next one.  

Baggage tractor, check out the wheels on the carriages.

Refueling our double locomotive.

My carriage.  My seat is the far window.

The other thing about the landscape as we get further West is the trees are getting greener - the buds have developed into leaves in Manitoba and Saskatchewan and now Alberta (yep we've changed provinces again).

I haven't seen as much wildlife as I thought I might.  Just a few birds mostly.  However today I saw a couple of deer and an animal I think may have been a wolf.  If it was it was sadly a departed wolf.  Looked rather immobile lying on the train tracks.  

Now we're stopped, waiting I guess for another freight train.  Everyone has been hoping we'll get into Jasper a bit late as we're supposed to arrive about 6.30am.  Looks like we'll definitely be late now, after having made up time a couple of times over the trip and being on time much of the day.  We were supposed to arrive in Edmonton about 7.50pm.  It's now 9.30pm and I think we're still an hour or more away.  Apparently someone jumped on to a freight train so they had to sort that out and we're waiting till that goes past.  Though we've seen one train go past and we're still waiting so who knows.  The sad part is we'll still probably have to be early anyway as we won't know how much time they'll make up overnight.  

Wednesday

So we did have to get up early, and we were late.  But the views coming into the national park were worth it.

The people I have met.

There's a tour group of Australians and Americans and a lot of English on the train it seems.  Haven't come across any kiwis yet.  I'd say about 90% of the people in the sleeper classes on this train are between 55-80.  I definitely stand out as one of the handful of younger ones. 

I'm in a berth area which has three sections.  Behind is a father and his adult son heading back to Saskatoon (the father is from Northern Ireland originally).  Across from me is Cory and Greg (not a pair).  Greg is from Cornwell (oh English. Nope Ontario) and Cory lives north of Toronto and is heading to some family place in Minaki.  Cory just lost her father poor thing.  I think she'll be glad to get off the train and to her husband and dogs.  Greg is quiet - we'll do alright together as we smile and exchange occasional words, helping interpret the announcements etc, but otherwise leave each other in peace. So far there's no one in the lower berth on my side which is nice, means I have the seats to myself and no one else to work around for requesting the beds be brought down or put away.  

The first night at dinner I sat with the same woman from California that mum and I sat with for dinner on the train to Halifax.  Still don't know her name.  She's with her sister now, they're both very sweet, she didn't remember me at all though.  She asked if I was travelling alone and when I said yes (for this part of the trip anyway) she said "that's a bit sad, taking the train on your own".  A different kind of person to me obviously who rather enjoys the tranquility of reading and staring our windows.  Breakfast on Monday I sat with three English people.  Steve and Angela(?) from somewhere outside Cambridge and Sarah from Bristol.  Sarah reminded me of Emma Chambers, the actress who played Alice in Vicar of Dibley.  They were lovely and chatty.  Steve said they'd traveled Australia and NZ before and preferred NZ.  Apparently we're nicer. I also sat next to a Finish born Australian in the dome car for a bit, made for a curious accent.  She told me a story about living back in Finland, they'd go out in the Autumn and mark the Christmas tree they wanted and then come back Christmas eve and cut it down (even though they weren't supposed to take them, everyone did apparently).

My companions for dinner on Monday were a really lovely young Welsh couple and an older guy from Milwaukee Wisconsin (I managed to refrain from saying that I knew of Milwaukee because of Hanson, but only just).  The Welsh couple were from Swansea and have been here two months with another month to go.   We chatted more on the final morning coming into Jasper, they're really awesome, and we're now friends on facebook so if they ever travel as far as NZ I can give them tips and ideas (also realised that they may now see this..hello!   Hope you don't mind).  

Here's an Agatha Christie character for ya, yesterday at brunch I sat with two Canadian women who I sat with again today, Heather and I think Carol (when I learn the names I forget them so quickly).  They're both aged care workers, I'd guess in their late 50s, early 60s and fun to talk to.  They're not the Agatha Christie character, but they reminded me of the guy we sat with yesterday.  He was a slim shortish quietly spoken man. Sweet enough, seems like he liked to build his knowledge bank so he asked plenty of questions, but some of them a little odd.  The one that confused me the most was when he asked if NZ had seasons.  I was sure I'd misheard him.  He also asked if we had our own currency.  He seems to have made friends with an English guy that's an almost permanent fixture in the dome car.  The English guy was really friendly - he showed me cute pictures of his (redheaded) granddaughter.  I overheard him say to another passenger that one of his daughter's was murdered at 9 years old in 1986.  I've just googled it to see if it's a case I've heard of (being a true crime podcast addict) and sure enough it's been covered on one of my favorite podcasts.  A truly tragic case.

Tuesday's other brunch companion was a very nice young Vancouverite called Max who had been in Toronto visiting family and is returning home.  He was pretty knowledgeable and was very keen on exploring his own country as well as or before going overseas.  He's been sick with chronic fatigue the last few years so hasn't finished Uni yet, but it seems he must have spent his years reading , his general knowledge about Canada was pretty impressive.

Breakfast today I was sat with a young French man called Vincent who has been living in Quebec (province) for 6 years.  He's travelling with his mum, though she wasn't at breakfast.  We took a while to get talking but once we did we chatted happily enough.  It doesn't sound like he'll be moving back to France anytime soon.   

Last dinner on this train Tuesday night - have you ever listened to a German man who mumbles trying to have a conversation with a couple from South Carolina?  I have.  It was slow and occasionally fruitless.  We managed but it was one of those meals where you were relieved when the food arrived as it gave you something to do.  The couple from South Carolina were very sweet, very Southern and very well traveled.   They've been to South Africa, South America, Europe 3 times (though never the UK), the Caribbean.  She said her next trip is to Cuba.  Listening to them added a few places to my bucket list, most of all the Carolina's.  The German had traveled a lot too, South Africa (many times), China, Japan were the ones he mentioned.