Our ride on the Ocean

. . . is now up on my rail travel blog, for those of you who are lovers of steel wheel on flanged rail.

Fleeing to Canada, 3rd try

I'm off to Canada again tomorrow—my third visit there this summer. This time the trip has nothing to do with research into a prospective Steve Martinez novel, but it does have a bit to do with rail travel.

The first leg is Chicago-Montreal by air, a mode of travel I dislike intensely for all the usual reasons, but getting there by train would require two days on undistinguished Amtrak single-level trains and an overnight in scenic Albany, N.Y.  So unappetizing is this trip that Amtrak won't let you book it as a single ticket online; you have to book two separate tickets.)

The second leg, however, is by train—Montreal-Halifax aboard VIA Rail's historic Ocean. I decided to splurge and book a deluxe bedroom in the Park car, the first-class stainless steel dome-observation carriage named for a national park that brings up the markers on all of VIA's storied name trains. (Returning will be in an ordinary sleeper room.) There will, of course, be a full report on my TrainWeb blog.

The Ocean has been running six days a week, but with the conservative Canadian government's stark economies, is being cut back to three days starting in October. This despite increasing ridership each year, particularly from European tourists. Is the reduction in service a false economy or not? Time will tell, but the sad fact about train travel is that once a service disappears or is cut back, it never returns.

Another aspect of this trip is that between Ocean rides I'll be spending ten days on an inexpensive Caravan Tours guided tour of Nova Scotia. This will be the first ever such tour I've ever taken (if one doesn't count travel industry junkets) and it will be interesting to see if I, a profoundly deaf traveler, can get along with the other tourists on the bus (as many as 28 of them, Caravan says). I have hopes, for Caravan tours usually score well on TripAdvisor.

Onward . . .

This one's for the foamers

A "foamer" is railroadese for the intense train buff who drools and bubbles at the lips when discussing his favorite subject. Foamers who get in the way of professional railroaders are called "ferns," short for "fucking rail nuts." They are also sometimes known as "flims," for "fans living with Mother."

Not that I am anything more than your ordinary garden-variety train lover, he said loftily, dabbing his mouth with a hanky.

My latest dispatch as an official TrainWeb Field Reporter, made during the recent train travel photography and writing workshop co-taught with Carl Morrison at La Plata, Missouri, is here.

Think of it (if at all) as a lesson in using photographs to provide the narrative of a travel story.

Agawa Canyon

The Agawa Canyon Tour Train during its 90-minute layover in the Ontario gorge.

The report on my trip last week to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and the Agawa Canyon Tour Train is now online at my train travel blog.

The gist: It's a great ride, but probably not for the Disneyland-and-Wisconsin Dells crowd.

Off to the Agawa Canyon

Courtesy of the Algoma Central Ry. Click on the map for larger version.

In a few days I'm driving the 5 1/2 hours across the Upper Peninsula from Ontonagon to the Soo to ride a train -- the Agawa Canyon Tour Train of the Algoma Central Railway.

The train runs 114 winding miles northward from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., through the thickly forested Canadian Shield to Agawa Canyon, said to be one of the most spectacular rubbernecking sites in Ontario. It's an all-day trip, leaving at 8 a.m. and returning about 6 p.m. The train stops at the waterfall-bedecked canyon for 1 1/2 hours so that passengers can debark to hike and lollygag, then heads back to the Soo.

I'm making the trip wearing my field reporter's cap for Trainweb.org, and will be an on-board guest of Canadian National Railways, owner of the Algoma Central.

Past reviews of the journey on TripAdvisor.com have been all over the map. Some people hated it, some loved it, and many were indifferent. The two 2011 reviews so far posted on TripAdvisor, however, are four- and five-star, leading me to think that the winter refurbishment of the train has been a success. Many of the coaches have been replaced by rebuilt cars from the recently defunct Rio Grande Ski Train, which once carried skiers from Denver to Winter Park.

One of the new attractions of the train is a GPS-driven on-board narration (in five languages) of the tour that tells you exactly what you're seeing as you see it. Out of curiosity I asked the CN marketing people if they provided a printed script of the narration for the deaf and hearing-impaired -- and they do. They emailed me a link to the script for printing out, and I'll be carrying it on the train.

Full report to come.

Glories of the Alaska Railroad

The extravagantly photogenic Alaska Railroad is heaven for the amateur photographer who is also a train buff, and the following shots, captured on our recent Holland-America Line cruise tour, will help explain why. They were taken on two of the landlocked railroad's best trains, the Denali Star from Fairbanks 344 miles south to Anchorage, and the Cruise Train 114 miles east and south from Ted Stevens Airport in Anchorage to Seward.


Alaska Railroad powers its passenger trains with 4,000-horsepower SD70MACs built in the mid-1990s, keeping the paint on all its equipment fresh and shiny. On June 19, 2010, Nos. 4319 and 4328 hauled the railroad's flagship Denali Star from Fairbanks to Anchorage. Here it pulls into the Denali National Park station.


Aboard the Denali Star, "Gold Star" first-class passengers ride in luxury bilevel dome coaches that feature upper-level open-air observation platforms (look to the rear of the car). A dining room and galley is on the first level.


The Gold Star coach's observation platform. As many as ten photographers can squeeze along the rail of one side. Hang on to your hat, though; it gets windy at speed up there.


Private double-deck dome coaches even more luxurious than the Denali Star's are towed behind the Alaska Railroad cars. Holland-America's McKinley Explorers are reputedly the largest and heaviest passenger carriages ever built.


The McKinley Explorer cars' open-air photo platforms are on the first level and also serve as an entry vestibule to board and detrain passengers.


Interior of a McKinley Explorer's upper-level dome. For seated passengers, the sight lines from this car are unbeatable. A steward serves drinks above and full meals are "available for purchase" (in the cruise line's coy term) in the dining room below.


The front of the Denali Star climbing into the mountains.


Looking to the rear from our McKinley Explorer coach. There were five of them on the June 19 southbound, plus a smaller Princess Cruises carriage on the rear.


The Star parallels the gorge of the Nenana River for much of the trip.


Several times we spotted rafters on the river, milky from glacial silt.


The Alaska Range in the distance counterpoints the thick boreal forest and winding Susitna River.


Inside the single-level Gold Star coach of the Cruise Train before it departed Ted Stevens Airport at Anchorage for Seward on June 20.


From Anchorage the Cruise Train follows Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet for many picturesque miles.


Our coach was the first behind the engine, also a SD70MAC.


Glaciers abounded on the line.


As the train rolled farther into the Chugash Mountains, snowfields appeared. That's a view to the rear of the train; the Cruise Train has locomotives on both ends because it cannot be turned at either Seward or Ted Stevens Airport.


The passing train spooked this trio of black bear cubs. We didn't spot the mother.


At Seward the Cruise Train rolled right up to the quay, where Holland-America's MS Statendam awaited.

From ship to train and the mountains

This one's for train lovers. The rest of you have neither the sophistication or thoughtfulness to appreciate the following post, so please depart for more mundane jollies elsewhere.


Looking back from the open vestibule of the last car of the 12:15 p.m. White Pass & Yukon train as it climbs up the valley of the Klondike River from Skagway, Alaska, to Fraser, B.C.

There is no more glorious place to behold the mountains and gorges of North America than the open platform of the last coach of a narrow-gauge railway train. Only the engineer has a better view.

A couple of weeks ago I rode behind the drumhead on the rear car of one of the world's biggest little railroads, the White Pass & Yukon Railway from Skagway on the coast of Alaska to Carcross in northern British Columbia.

It was born during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898-99 to carry gold seekers and their freight deep into the Yukon, and today it is devoted to thrilling cruise-line passengers who land at Skagway and nearby Haines.

Its rails are just 3 feet apart instead of the 4 feet 8 1/2 inches of standard railroads. Narrow-gauge lines can't carry as much tonnage as the big boys, but they're decidedly cheaper to blast through the solid rock of mountainsides. Their locomotives and cars are much smaller, easier to get around tight curves.

Best of all, the WP&Y does not forbid passengers to congregate on the open platforms of its replica shorty coaches. This makes getting good photos a lot easier than battling window reflections from inside the cars. Is it dangerous? Not particularly; the trains never go much faster than 30 miles an hour, so steep and winding is the line.

Here are some shots from my recent trip to Alaska with Holland-America:

This coach is parked by the station in downtown Skagway, but the line extends to sidings at the docks where trains wait for incoming cruise-ship passengers.


A conductor rides the step into Skagway station while shooing an overeager passenger back into his coach.


Shovelnose General Electric locomotive No. 90 was among the first WP&Y diesels, arriving on the property in 1954. Originally rated at 890 horsepower, it was rebuilt and re-engined to 1,400 h.p. in the 1990s. Three of them are required to haul a 15-car train.


This 1,200 h.p. Alco/Montreal Locomotive Works engine is one of several built in 1969, some of them sold to the Colombian national railroad after the WP&Y closed down in 1988, but was bought back in 1999 to serve the ever-increasing hordes of Inside Passage cruise passengers.


WP&Y's most modern locomotive is this 1,200-horsepower model built in 1991 by Bombardier near Montreal. It was being used in switching service when the photo was taken.


The oldest piece of equipment on the WP&Y is No. 1, a rotary snowplow built in 1898 and retired in 1962, then restored to service in 1995. Since the railroad is a essentially a summer tourist operation, the rotary is not used much these days.


One of the railroad's newest cars, the coach Lake McClintock, was built in 2005 to help meet tourist demand. Here its train is backing into a siding on the cruise-ship dock at Skagway while a conductor mans the air brake to stop the train at its appointed spot.

Photographers congregate on car platforms as the train winds around a curved bridge over the Klondike River gorge.

Another train follows far below, about three miles behind ours high up on a mountainside. The WP&Y runs three trains simultaneously, staggering their departures to keep a safe interval between them.

This high trestle is built right in front of the entrance to a tunnel . . .

. . . and here the train rumbles over the trestle and plunges into the tunnel.

After clearing Canadian immigration at Fraser, B.C., 27 miles up the line from Skagway, most passengers boarded buses for the return trip. The rest went on to Carcross, B.C.