Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Amtrak operates some 2,100 separate trains every week and
offers sleeping-car service on a dozen overnight trains every day.
VIA operates fewer trains because of the long, narrow area it
serves and a much smaller population (about 500 trains a week,
most running along sections of the 725-mile corridor between
Windsor and Quebec City). Just four of those are overnight
trains with sleeping-car accommodations. But don't let those
comparisons give you the idea that VIA trains don't have some-
thing very special to offer. On the contrary, those trains will
take you through some of the most varied and magnificent scen-
ery anywhere in the world, most especially VIA Rail's trans-
continental train, the Canadian, which takes passengers on a
glorious trip that should be on everyone's list of top-ten train
rides in the world.
The Canadian Rail Epic
The story of Canada's transcontinental railway has grown to
something of epic proportions in that country, and with good
reason. There are many obvious similarities with the United
States's transcontinental railroad, but there is one very significant
difference: In the United States, people settled the West and the
railroad followed. In Canada, the train came first. The idea was
to link settlements on the far-off Pacific Coast with the growing
cities of the East and, by doing so, encourage people to settle
in the vast areas in between. Actually, British Columbia forced
the issue by refusing to join the Canadian Federation until 1872,
when its leaders secured the promise that a transcontinental rail-
road would be built within ten years.
And so indeed it was. In 1881, the Canadian Pacific Railway
began construction of the railroad, and it was finished just four
years later, a tribute to the honest and able people who financed,
designed, and built it. It passed through some extremely difficult
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