I’ve been taking coast-to-coast Amtrak trips from Boston to The PNW, but because of Airplane Anderson’s cuts on Amtrak, I’ve decided to live a decades-old dream of riding the Canadian. So, I’m planning to take it from Toronto to Vancouver in early May but have several questions. If I can swing it, I’d like to get a Prestige room for myself and my wife, and if things work out OK, we’ll be joined by another couple who will be staying in a cabin for two. It’s obvious we’ll be in different cars and may have a different standing as far as access goes. My questions are:
(1) It’s my understand that there will be two diners, and I’m assuming one is for coach and the other for sleepers. The question my friend asked is whether we can eat together. I think it’s a no brainer and we will be able to, so if I’m wrong, please clue me in.
(2) I’ve read somewhere that the Park car can, at times, be restricted to Prestige class only. If that’s the case, can they join us as our guests?
It has been several years since my wife and I traveled between Vancouver and Toronto, so the practices may have changed. Then, the first class cars were arranged in blocks as follows: three sleepers, a dome lounge, a diner, and three sleepers, and passengers in those six sleepers ate in the diner in the center. There were as many blocks as were needed. The Park car was one of the six in the last block.
A “cabin for two” for two is a “cabin for two,” whether it is a bedroom or compartment, and there is no difference in pricing, even though a compartment is a little longer than a bedroom.
The most effective way to get your questions answered is to call VIA or send them a note with the questions. They will respond, especially if you have booked your trip, and you can give them the booking number.
For four people in their 70s and with mobility issues your best option is to fly. For the price you are paying for a Prestige Class sleeper and a double bedroom you can buy four first class tickets on Air Canada. Not only will you be more comfortable, you’ll get there the same day you leave, have very good food and service, have a choice of flight times and not have to worry about arriving horribly late thereby taking up some of your vacation time. And remember, in Prestige Class you’ll have a double bed but in the double bedroom someone will have to sleep in the upper level bunk bed which is not easy to negotiate on a moving train.
Of course you will miss the scenery which is beautiful but, if that is emportant, fly to Calgary or Edmonton and rent a full size car and drive to Vancouver. You’ll have the freedom to stop where you want for as long as you want and enjoy the outdoors. A couple of days in Banff, Lake Louise and/or Jasper can be a wonderful addition to you trip. Plus you can put your car on a ferry and visit Victoria which is a wonderful city. Harder to do without car but I believe there is a bus option.
If driving isn’t your thing then look into Rocky Mountaineer. It isn’t for the “feint of wallet” but if you are considering a Prestige Class bedroom then money must not be an object. Same great scenery but you don’t take the chance of missing it because of lateness and passing through in the dead of night. Plus you sleep in a hotel bed and take a shower that aren’t moving although you can probably do that on The Canadian while sitting on a siding for 9 hours somewhere east of Winnipeg as has happened to some friends of mine awhile back.
I have taken both the Canadian and Super Continental back in the mid-70s prior to Via. They were great trips but as I get older I find overnight train travel is not as comfortable as it once was and enjoy the ease, comfort and convenience of
My situation is probably a lot different than you envision as there is more to the story than just money, time, or convenience. My concern was that if it’s 17 cars to the diner and 17 cars back, that might be somewhat of an issue when traveling at speed. My wife and I are expats that are retired in Italy, and have been for the past 15 years. Neither of us drive anymore since public transport here is very good, so neither of us even have a driver’s license…they expired more than a decade ago, besides driving is a chore and no fun at all.
Flying is even worse, as you have to endure cramped seats, poor food, no elbow room, no scenery, and the blasted security checks. Neither is any kind of an option we would even consider. The Canadian has been a decades long dream of mine, kinda like taking the Venice-Simplon Orient Express, which is considerably shorter…unless you travel to Istanbul. And ya, we’re just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Venice, so hopping on the Orient Express to London is an easy trip, but where is the rest of my family? Not anywhere close, not even in the same hemisphere.
We have relatives on both American coasts…in Maine and in California. We’ve been flying trans-Atlantic to Boston, spending time in Maine, then taking Amtrak directly to Frisco or to Frisco via Seattle. That worked great until Airplane Anderson cut the food out and replaced it with rubber chicken and a plastic box, then sold off the Pacific Parlour cars that served a wonderful slow-cooked, bone-in leg of lamb. That’s all gone….so Canada here we come. And ya, I trave
Not to argue a point, but Anderson only did what Congress directed him to do. Congress was the entity that demanded that the food service, by the end of 2020, could not lose money. There was no way a full-service dining car could break even without charging $40 for a hot dog.
GN Fan, unless VIA has made a major change in how the cars are coupled, you have to go through no more than three cars to reach a diner, with each diner serving the passengers in no more than six sleepers, with three on one side and a dome lounge and three on the other side. If you have accommodations in the Park car, you would go through three cars.
According to the FY20-FY25 Service Line Plan, Amtrak expects to reduce its direct contribution food and beverage losses from $54.7 million in FY20 to $42.8 million in FY25.
By FY25 the company plans to recover 80 percent of the cost of its food and beverage offerings before state contributions. After state contributions it expects the recovery factor to be 88 percent.
The company proposes to zero out the food and beverage losses and breakeven with undefined cost management and revenue generative initiatives along with ticket revenue allocations. Sounds like there is some smoke and mirrors in management’s plans.
According to several prior IG reports, approximately 90 percent of Amtrak’s loss on food and beverages is attributable to the long-distance trains.
Congresssmen don’t care at all about how Amtrak runs its trains.
At least when people vent about trains in this forum they might get an intelligent response from someone who knows something about the topic.
Ever write your Congressman and receive, weeks later, a form letter that barely addresses the subject you wrote about?
And why is it out of the question for Anderson to inform Congress that their mandate to make dining cars profit centers for Amtrak is simply not achieveable or desirable without jeopardizing Congress’ mandate to operate a national passenger rail system?
Because depending on your letter and clarity they presume the same of you.
Far better to target a Congress person on the specific subcommittee of transportation that has staff that meets with Amtrak regularly. Even better still find the Amtrak State person in your state that monitors the Amtrak contracts and works with Amtrak on corridor improvements. Can tell you from personal experience not all of them know as much as the readers of this Forum about Amtraks past failures or past internal politics and they would benefit from some outside input. Best method of communication is to pick up the phone and call and you usually will be put in touch with a member of the Congress members staff that actually attends Amtrak Executive meetings and can take your issue to a specific Amtrak Executive as well as communicate their response back to you.
Tell that to the lady who represents the five people that wanted to use their Hoverounds on Amtrak earlier this year. She has a decidedly different opinion, and since she is actually in Congress I think it deserves more weight than yours.
You seem to assume “Congress” is monolithic and rational, and that it really cares that its ‘mandate to stop losses’ specifically relates to food service, as opposed to pinching some pennies from relatively unpopular line-items that might be used for more “nationally-important” programs or priorities.
In addition, there are often poor consequences for agency line and staff personnel who ‘talk back’ to Congresspeople or tell them stuff they’d rather not hear. I don’t know if Wick Moorman’s apparently sudden decline in favor involved any frank discussions with politicians, but I certainly wouldn’t be surprised.
Anderson, in my opinion, is doing something very clever – he is finding relatively high-profile Scrooge-like things that the mandate implicitly calls for, like cancelling toys for tots, restricting access by private-car owners, and the various forms of cutting back food services … and then sitting back to await the groundswell of pressure and influence of various sorts on Congress to do something about it. This is really the only way the mandate will … or even could … be adapted over time to address any problem that can’t be made ‘self-supporting’ by deadline time.
I’ll grant you that writing or e-mailing a representative’s
Which still begs the question since Congress has no say about VIA or the operation of the Canadian. Congress and Anderson will never fix anything on The Canadian (and I doubt they will fix anything on Amtrak).
If Congress didn’t care about how Amtrak runs its trains, why did they bother to pass a mandate about dining not losing money?
By the way, Congress did not pass a mandate that dining cars must be “profit centers”, just eliminate all finacial losses on dining carservice by the end of 2020.