So far I have met Germans, Uruguayans, Luxembourgers, Swiss, a Chinese-German dual national and Japanese on this trip. Not to mention Canadians and Americans. These include Jim and Jean from Tallahassee, Florida on their 40th anniversary trip, James the artist on board from Hamilton, and a professor in tourism development from Kamloops who was wearing a rail-trail t-shirt from Otago in New Zealand. It had a clever logo of a bike with smoke coming out of the handlebars as if it were a steam engine.
Winnipeg went by in the dark. I awoke as the train left the Qu’Appelle Valley which was a pity as it is beautiful. There was a herd of bison next to the track at one point.
The train stopped at Melville where we allowed off for a few minutes with admonition not to get too far. “Remember, the next train is only in a few days!”
We have made up some time as we were only a bit more than three hours late leaving Melville. For some of us, this is no bad thing as getting off the Train in Jasper at 6:30 AM was seen as less than desirable! I hope that the stop in Saskatoon will not significantly cut as I want to pop into the station there to snag any useful Saskatchewan tourism brochures available.
At one point, the Canadian was running beside a lesser provincial highway. I used the opportunity to see what the paved shoulder situation was. It looked pretty good though it wasn’t a stretch I would be using. However, it might be representative of Saskatchewan’s highway standards.
Later:
Saskatoon Station is a sad place, a shadow of former times including the remains of old platforms from the days when it was a junction point. I went inside looking for tourism info and found only a rack of Saskatoon pamphlets and two lonely vending machines aside from Via Rail counters and empty concession booths.
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