Winter 2012
E x c u r s i o n s
An American Rail Advocate’s Perspective on Intercity Rail in Canada
By Malcolm Kenton
All photos by Malcolm Kenton
VIA Rai’s stately Stratford, Ont., station
Malcolm Kenton is the Outreach & Engagement Director for the National Association of
Railroad Passengers. His views here do not
necessarily reflect those of his employer.
www.railmagazine.org
NARP strongly supports the expansion and
improvement of intercity passenger train
service in Canada. Years ago, we provided
a financial grant to our sister organization
then called Transport 2000 Canada. Today, we
support Transport Action Canada, and their
National Dream Renewed campaign to save
and expand VIA Rail Canada’s services.
I will relate the following personal observations based on my own travels on VIA Rail. I
have ridden the Montreal-Halifax Ocean and
the Toronto-Vancouver Canadian each once,
for their entire lengths. I have also ridden
VIA’s Corridor multiple times: three times
between Toronto and Montreal, once between
Montreal and Quebec City, once between
Toronto and Windsor, once between Toronto
and Sarnia, and once between Toronto and
Niagara Falls – before that run was discontinued as a stand-alone VIA train – Amtrak’s
Maple Leaf, which VIA operates on the Canadian side, is the only intercity train currently
on that route.
VIA’s Corridor services are in many ways
better than your average short-distance
Amtrak train. Between Toronto and Montreal
they travel at 90 miles-per-hour most of the
way, and trains with Bombardier-built Light,
CONTENTS
Previous Page
Passengers board VIA’s British-built Renaissance equipment used
on the Ocean at Moncton, New Brunswick.
Rapid, Comfortable (LRC) equipment go up to
100 MPH, which is faster than most Amtrak
runs outside the Northeast Corridor. I find
VIA’s coach seats more comfortable than Amtrak’s. VIA’s trains also have bigger windows
and more stylish interiors, and their on-board
WiFi is the fastest and most reliable I’ve ever
experienced on a moving vehicle. I wrote a
comparison of VIA and Amtrak short-distance
services for Passenger Train Journal in 2011.
VIA also offers Business Class (formerly
called VIA 1 Class) on most Corridor trains,
which is more like First Class on Acela Ex-
43
Next Page
Dome cars on VIA’s Canadian offer spectacular views of the
Canadian Rockies.
www.railmagazine.org
press than Business Class on other Amtrak
corridor trains: you get a complete meal
served at your seat, included in the extra fare.
I’ve experienced Business Class once (between
Montreal and Quebec City), and the food and
wine were very good.
VIA’s long-distance services offer – in some
ways – a higher-quality travel experience
than Amtrak’s. The beds on both Renaissance (British-built cars generally used on the
Ocean) and Budd-built stainless steel (used
on the Canadian, as well as the WinnipegChurchill and Jasper-Prince Rupert trains)
are more comfortable than Amtrak’s (either
Viewliner or Superliner). The Canadian offers
amenities not found on Amtrak, such as dome
cars and a round-end rear observation car, but
also more consciously serves a high-end tourist market than Amtrak’s long-distance trains
do. However, compared to the Canadian, you
will find a much more diverse clientele making many more kinds of trips on an Amtrak
long-distance train. It also offers more classes
of sleeper service: open-section berths (where
a curtain separates your bed from the hallway), single-bed roomettes and double-bed
bedrooms. The berths share nearby men’s and
women’s bathrooms and a shower room. The
roomettes have their own sink and toilet and
the bedrooms have private bathrooms with
showers. The food on the Canadian is topnotch and is included in your Sleeper Plus
class fare.
The biggest disadvantage of the Canadian,
however, is its very poor timekeeping and
very slow schedule. The Toronto-Vancouver
run was once made in three nights; it now
CONTENTS
Previous Page
Unlike most Amtrak trains, VIA Rail provides direct food and
beverage service to riders’ seats.
takes four. The host Canadian National Railway (CN) will find every opportunity it can to
put the Canadian in a siding and let freight
trains pass. While Amtrak enjoys a statutory
right of access to the US freight rail network
on an incremental cost basis and railroads are
incentivized to run Amtrak trains on-time,
VIA enjoys no such benefits in Canada. VIA
must negotiate its own timetables and payment schedule with CN (Canadian Pacific, the
only other major railroad in Canada, generally
refuses to let VIA trains use its tracks) and
CN is under no obligation to run VIA trains
on-time.
I found the Ocean to be very pleasant, despite lacking the dome cars and the food being more mediocre, more like Amtrak’s dining
car fare. The Renaissance sleepers offer twobed rooms with private bathrooms –some with
a shower and some without, and Renaissance
coach seating is in a 2-and-1 configuration
due to the cars’ narrowness. It has better on-
44
Next Page
time performance than the Canadian. Its route
on a short-line railroad through northern New
Brunswick is a very slow plod, but it runs
at up to 90 mph on the CN main line along
the St. Lawrence River valley in Quebec. The
Ocean serves as basic transportation for more
people than the Canadian usually does, and
intercity public transportation services in the
Maritime provinces are few and far between.
As you may know, budget cuts by Prime
Minister Stephen Harper’s government late
last summer forced VIA to cut the Ocean’s
frequency from six days a week (every day
except Tuesday) to three days a week (Tuesday, Friday and Sunday end-point departures; matching up with the Montreal-Gaspe
service, which was already tri-weekly), and
to cut the Canadian in the winter from three
days a week to two (it remains tri-weekly in
the summer). Other government-supported
remote-area services run even less frequently:
the Montreal-Jonquiere and Montreal-Senneterre trains run three days a week, as do the
Sudbury-White River trains and the JasperPrince Rupert trains. The Winnipeg-Churchill
trains only run two days a week.
Now, the Canadian government is threatening to cut VIA’s funding even further, raising
doubts as to whether the Ocean or Canadian
will survive at all in their current states. VIA
has added trains and renovated stations on
the Corridor, but it is overall a capital-starved
railroad in need of more organized and persistent advocacy. Nevertheless, it manages to
provide a very high quality of service, and has
done a remarkable job keeping 60-year-old
Budd cars in top shape.
www.railmagazine.org
Many trips on VIA’s Quebec City-MontrealOttawa-Toronto-Niagara Falls/Sarnia/
Windsor corridor trains (above) are often
sold-out. Both trainsets used for the
transcontinental Canadian (right) feature a
parlor car at the point.
CONTENTS
Previous Page
45
Next Page