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Pre-clearance of cross-border rail passengers advances
What about the scheduled one hour or more wait at Niagara Falls, N.Y. border crossing for returning passengers from Toronto on AMTRK’S Maple Leaf ?
Our experience was that the U.S. Border Agents came on-board like ’ storm troopers ’ and showed very little, if any friendliness or courtesy towards the passengers, what so ever. Very negative experience !!
Bureaucratic bumbling and foot-dragging at its finest, while getting foto-ops and publicity! We’ll never get the Montrealer back if the politicos don’t get their act together. The delays of the Adirondack and Maple Leaf border on criminal, especially where the DHS is concerned. We might even get back MI-ON (Chicago-Toronto, etc.), MN-MB, and QC-ME-NB trains) if they get off dead-center. I call the DHS “Border Na*is”, but that ain’t PC. “Storm Troopers” will have to do.
This is good news but it is sad that the Maple Leaf, which connects the largest Canadian city with the largest American city, will not be affected. Years ago, before Via Rail or Amtrak existed, there were many trains that crossed the border and made intermediate stops in both countries. The CPR Atlantic Limited even crossed the border twice in the course of a one-way journey, as did a CNR train between Thunder Bay and Winnipeg that ran through Minnesota.The customs and immigration officers boarded the train in one country, did their business, and then got off in the other country. Why can Europeans run hundreds of cross-border trains, some of them between countries that were at war with one another within living memory, while in North America we endure so many hassles that most of the rail passenger service has disappeared?
Bureaucratic BS at its best (worst!) - Building Mountains Out of Molehills for your Traveling Convenience. )-: . American officials ought to take a trip to Europe and see how it should be done. I’ve traveled internationally any number of times in Europe and it’s never a hassle. Likewise, I’ve traveled on all the American-Canadian cross-border trains in the days before all this idiocy started and it was never a hassle. Just show your passport when the customs agents came through the train and you were done.
Right on, Donald Woodworth. In fact Canadians and Americans didn’t even need passports to visit one another’s country, and most of us didn’t even have passports. A driver’s license would suffice.
And there isn’t even bus service between Winnipeg and anywhere in the US
Ways also need to be looked at so that passengers at intermediate stops within Canada and US who want to go to the other country can be accommodated. Having agents who ride with a train is how I remember it being done when I rode with my family into and out of Canada when I was a kid.
It’s not complicated - unless you’re the government …or a railroad.
Remember the CP then VIA Atlantic thru Maine?
Inspectors boarded eastbound at Jackman and westbound at Vanceboro.
The trains met at Moosehead (west of Greenville) and the inspectors changed trains to return.
At each US station,only one door was opened to control access and inspection was done enroute.
BTW, not a lot of people got on or off in the middle of the night in the Maine wilderness.
The Montrealer southbound used to board INS and Customs at East Alburgh (there was a little shack there for them) and then run very slooooowly to St. Albans where the inspectors got off (sometimes with “turnbacks” who would then be taken back to the border by the Border Patrol).
I rode the B&M/MEC/CPR/CNR “Gull” many times. The border crossing at Vanceboro, ME was painless, as the next stop, McAdam, NB was a ‘meal station’ and dog-walking point. Even with my mother being an ex-pat Canadian, her naturalization papers presented no problem. As a kid, my birth certificate sufficed, if they even asked.
The D&H crossing, NY-QC, ON-MI CNR/GT, and the Soo/CPR ND-SK of the “Soo-Dominion” was not a problem. Did that, alone, as a teenager. Even got to ride the cab of the CPR Pacific, Portal, ND to North Portal, SK!
Clueless bureaucracy is wunnerful!