Toronto to Jasper

Back end of a train at Sioux Lookout (pop 3,100)

From the moment I was mistaken as one of a large British tour group boarding the train to Jasper, I knew I’d have a problem having any ‘me’ time on the train. I had thought that I’d have a lot of time for introspection and would possibly be rather bored at times during the 2 ½ day journey. No chance.

For this stage of the journey I upgraded my railpass to first-class travel (on advice from people who had been there before. Thanks Harold!). The upgrade bought me a bedroom and inclusive meals (as opposed to a reclining seat and the ability to purchase light meals and snacks from the Dining Car).

Serves me right for ridiculing my huge hotel rooms in Montreal and Toronto

The train was prime people-watching and people-meeting territory and I met some real characters. Each mealtime brought a new group of people to chat to (and at! I’ve got the Sabbatical explanation off to a tee now). When not in the dining car I could be found in one of the ‘dome cars’, where a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside was available – if the windows were clean and paintball-free (a bored soul in Saskatchewan was an excellent shot):

A couple of real characters enjoying the view (stop giggling, Rob)

Obviously Canada is huge – and travelling this way gives a great feel for just how huge – but I was surprised at how glad I was to see flat prairie-land after a day of the very picturesque trees, snow and frozen lakes of northern Ontario. I had been warned that the Prairies would be the most monotonous piece of scenery, but we passed through a lot of Manitoba and Saskatchewan in the dark – so really had no time to be bored of flat land before we were back in tree-lined country on the run up to the Rockies.

Yet again, I’ve taken hundreds of photos – most of them pretty terrible quality due to being taken from a moving vehicle a number of seconds after the particular beautiful sight had been passed. I also have far too many versions of the clichéd train curving around the side of a lake shot:
one of a series of 200 clichéd shots