IT'S GONNA BE AN ADVENTURE

After all, that's why we travel, don’t we? To experience an adventure! And this journey across Canada by train definitely is!

Starting point: Prince Rupert, a small town on the west coast close to the Alaskan border, essentially a commercial port. Thousands of containers arrive here from China and are then transported by train throughout Canada. These trains can be up to 2km long and will not stop for anyone! But we'll talk about this later.

Prince Rupert would be an interesting destination in summer time ... not at all in November! Too late to go hiking, too early for skiing, so after spending 24 hours on the Inside Passage ferry I decided to take advantage of it to rest and arrange the next few stages, as there will be no wi-fi on the train.

 

The adventure begins on Wednesday, November 1st, at 8 am. We embark on a train long two cars + the engine ... I was honestly expecting something more but it's not a very popular line…in fact there’s only 12 passengers today! The train is a bit basic, but there’s a panoramic car, and to me that’s the only thing that matters! We get comfortable and start our slow (very slow) flow into the Canadian landscape. Luckily I took some food with me as the train stops in such isolated stations in the middle of nowhere, where there’s no kind of service….honestly nothing….no cafes, nor stores, no ATM, sometimes there’s not even the station!

 

Moon, our waiter / conductor/ handyman explains us how the Canadian rail system works and informs us that the train can build up many hours delays. The Prince Rupert-Jasper train line (the one I’m on now) and Vancouver-Toronto one (the one I'm going to connect in Jasper) are 1 lane railroad wich is owned by the company that operates the "container traffic",  while the passenger train is owned by the goverment, which in this case is the company’s customer. This means that whenever there’s a freight train in transit, the passenger train must stop at the first "waiting zone" available and let the freight train to pass first. This sometimes means waiting for more than 2 hours, because the next waiting zone is already occupied by another train or it is so far away that the passenger train won’t reach it in time.

As we try to recover from the shock of the news and stupidity of the system, we realize that today we are actually lucky as the train is on time ... up to 15 kms from our first destination. This train does not travel at night, it stops at Prince George, everyone has to get off the train, sleep at the hotel and get back on the train the next day. We should arrive at Prince George at 8.00pm, but at 7.40pm, around 15kms from the arrival we stop in the middle of nowhere because we have 3 freight trains ahead of us that still have to get into the station. Waiting and waiting it’s 11.30pm and as Moon can’t get answers from the station and nothing seems to have moved, he decides that we have waited enough and calls a few cabs to get us to our hotels.

The next morning, when we arrive at the station... the train is not there! ahhahahahahahahha

They call us another cab to take us to the train which fortunately is already after the station so we can leave (almost) on time. Today we have to make a shorter  track and even if we encounter many more freight trains then yesterday, somehow we get to Jasper with just 1 hour delay. Anyways…the scenery was beautiful, the company was good, it was an adventure ... I could have not asked for a better trip.