This is The Canadian, a sleeper train which is hauled by three giant diesel locos from Toronto on Lake Ontario for four days westwards, across the Canadian shield, across the prairies, and across the Rockies, until it reaches Vancouver on the Pacific coast. It's an epic journey across a stunning continent, and we've done various sections of it on several occasions, but this picture is from the first time we did it, in 2006, when we realised the comfort of the cabin and the excellence of the food, when we experienced for the first time....
....the stunning scenery which could be enjoyed from the vantage of the observation dome, when the full vastness of the country became evident, when, after almost 24 hours of travel from Toronto....
....we were still in Ontario and the temperature, which had been 20C on the day we left, had now dropped below zero. It's a breathtaking journey but it was made even more special by some of the people we met, of which....
....this man is an example. The first picture in this post was a typical tourist snap taken at one of the many stops the train makes as it wends its way slowly across the landscape, but as we turned to walk back along the train the driver - I beg his pardon, the 'engineer' as he is called in Canada - leaned out of his cab and invited us to climb up the steep ladder so he could show us the controls. In Britain this would have been unthinkable, perhaps even a disciplinary offence, but in Canada this is something it took time for us to comprehend - Canadian courtesy. What he told us of his work was fascinating, the sort of insight into a life which I so enjoy, and I am deeply grateful to him for his kindness.
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