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From VIA's first quarter 2018 report passenger numbers on the Canadian are down 12.7% compared to the first quarter of 2017. VIA blames this on the schedule issues, and says it is mainly in Economy class and passengers who only rode for part of the trip. Otherwise revenue is up $0.3 million (6.7%) ...

Any big value of this trip scenery-wise, or is it all about the RDC experience?

CN makes a few hundred thousand $$ for each monster-train they dispatch on their mainline. VIA, they pay what, I hear its $25k or so, give or take, for each Toronto-Vancouver trip. Not even covering the cost of the infrastructure. And even with 200 people on The Canadian (probably average load year-...

So what's the real deal here? CP gets their Calgary-Banff line fully double-tracked, paid for largely by government, and all they have to do is provide reasonable dispatch priority for a few passenger trains every day? They probably have to maintain it as well.

How full did the VIA service ever run anyways?

Hope they put enough "slop" into that schedule. Just as glad I rode The Panorama during '65 when the Winnipeg-Vancouver Roomette fare was CD$65. Funny how it left Winnipeg about 10AM and arrived Vancouver also about 6PM. Only diff; there wasn't 24 hours of additional schedule time. Who bu...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatche ... -1.4737680" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Looks like another 2 F40PH's are going to be written off.

Similarly, it wouldn't surprise me if much of the planned electrification by Ontario gets shelved / postponed. Yeah VIA has committed to continuing at least some service on the existing Corridor even if their hypothetical new corridor is built. Electrification carries enormous capital costs for whi...

Maybe the solution is to split it into 3 separate services. Vancouver-Edmonton. Edmonton-Winnipeg. Winnipeg-Toronto. Assign a set to each (2 sets to Winnipeg-Toronto), and have them run round trip 3X a week. If you want to take the train Toronto-Vancouver, there'd be mandatory overnight off-train st...

Yes my mistake, forgot they only had 4 sets for 6X weekly. If Prestige is selling that well, maybe there's a case for doing a 3rd car per set. As far as I know, if a Prestige car goes mechanical, there's literally no substitution possible and those passengers will be forcibly downgraded. The Parks u...

Where do you get that? The press release says the next two scheduled departures are May 27 and May 29. Sounds like 3X a week to me. How could they change the schedule, but still maintain a 3X weekly service? With only 5 sets of equipment? As it stands, they basically are running things flat out, wi...

So probably a 2X weekly service in the summer now. With an absolute maximum length allowed configuration .

Where was the Bistro (piano bar) car usually positioned?

There's a video on YouTube with the Bistro car. Sounds like it was a lot of fun!

Did the Rapidos decline significantly after the Turbos ran for a few years?

The fun of the Bistro car perhaps?

Technically the caption on that image wrong; that Park Car is not one of the Prestige Parks that are used on The Canadian, but is rather a normal Park car, and would be used on Train 5/6 ("The Skeena"/"Rupert Rocket"), of which there's 2 sets needed for its operation. Periodicall...