October 1, 2006
Halifax – Montreal 12:35p – 8:15a Next Day
ViaRail “The Ocean”
Comfort Class Sleeper Car 23, Room 7

Pictures from this trip can be found HERE


How convenient that I was able to return my Alamo rental (another Sebring) to their city office conveniently located in the Westin Hotel right next door to the ViaRail Station in downtown Halifax.

From the outside, Halifax’s CN Station looks like a classic old train station. Inside however, it’s basically a big barn. Ticket Sales and Baggage Check offices take up one side of the room while restrooms, snack machines, pay phones and a couple of seating alcoves for Sleeping Car passengers occupy the other side. Steel girders crisscross the ceiling above a few rows of old fashioned wooden pews. I was reminded of a slightly nicer version of Seattle’s King Street Station.

During peak season, three different levels of service are available aboard The Ocean. First Class is called Easterly Class. It’s an enhanced product from the everyday First Class in that it is inclusive of all meals and all the bedrooms come with showers. As always, First Class passengers have exclusive use of the Park Car at the end of the train. Economy Class is branded Comfort Class and entitles one to a reclining seat and use of the Comfort Class Bar and Lounge car. In between these two services is what’s called Comfort Sleeper Class. That’s what I’ve purchased for this trip. I’ll get the same sized bedroom that Easterly Class passengers get, but it won’t come with a shower. I’ll also eat in the same dining car as Easterly Class, but from a different menu. I do get the use of two separate Bar and Lounge cars dedicated to sleeping car passengers. Unfortunately however, I won’t get access to the Park Car. My Comfort Sleeper fare came to $250.00 USD. An Easterly Class ticket would have set me back over $630.00 USD. Overall, I just didn’t see paying out almost $400.00 more for a shower, an inclusive lunch and dinner and a chance to hang out in the Park Car.

Check-in for sleeping car passengers started one half hour before departure. I was next door buying ice for my beer and by the time I’d returned, the check in line was pretty long. As is usually the case, I was the youngest person in line – certainly the only one younger than fifty and the only one carrying a backpack. I reckon I was probably the only person in that line who’d thought to buy ice to chill his beer with. Then again, I was probably the only one who’d thought to bring my own beer along, too... Why pay $5.00 per beer in the lounge when $10.00 will get me a 6-pack of that same beer and a bag of ice.

The call to board came as I was still waiting in line behind a couple of silver haired octogenarians. Once my ticket had been verified as genuine and the appropriate stubs pulled, I gathered all my belongings - I had my big backpack, an overloaded daypack and the bag of ice - and teetered on out to the train with the rest of my fellow travelers.

I last rode The Ocean back in 2002 when it still had the old stainless steel Budd cars from the 1950s. As a rail fan, I really like riding in those older cars but on this trip I was looking forward to checking out ViaRail’s new Renaissance equipment.

Built in Europe in the mid 1990s, these new cars were to be used for the projected Nightstar service through the English Channel tunnel that never materialized. ViaRail acquired all 139 of them for the bargain basement price of just 130 million Canadian dollars. That’s about the price of one new 747 these days. They entered service with ViaRail in 2002 and finally showed up on The Ocean in 2004.

As I stepped out of the station, the tapered end of dome observation car “Assiniboine Park” loomed in front of me. Built in 1955 for the Canadian Pacific’s transcontinental streamliner “The Canadian”, this car is one of only fourteen of its type still in regular scheduled service, all of them being operated by ViaRail. The rest of them are either privately owned, sitting in museums or have been scrapped. Their graceful rounded ends hearken back to a time when passenger trains were designed to be as beautiful as they were functional. These cars certainly look nicer at the end of a train than the raw, dirty doorway of an unconnected car. ViaRail calls these cars “Park Cars” because they are all named after provincial parks around Canada. They are for the exclusive use of First Class clientele and are hugely popular with the passengers, many of whom are old enough to remember having ridden on cars like this back in the days before Amtrak and ViaRail.

The rest of the train consisted of fourteen teal, blue and yellow cars – six Sleepers, three bar/lounge Service Cars, one Diner, three Coaches and a Baggage car. Heading up the consist were two big General Electric Genesis Model P42DC locomotives. Each locomotive generated 4,250 horsepower, more than enough combined power to dispatch us into Montreal at speeds of up to 110 mph.

My ticket was for Car 23, Room 7. The first car after the Park Car was numbered 37. Uh oh, could be a long walk... I don’t want that ice to start melting. Thankfully there were only three cars in the thirties, after which came Car 23. Go figure. As I climbed the steps into my car, I was met by Gordon, the Car Attendant. He showed me to Room 7, and then took a couple of moments to explain the emergency exit procedures as well as show me how to lower the bed.

I must say I quite liked the look of these new Renaissance Car rooms. My room looked quite modern and bright with wood inlaid closet and cabinet doors, pre-molded fittings and superior lighting to the older 1950s era cars. I’d estimate the dimensions of the room at about 5 feet wide by 7 feet deep. Along one side of the room was a full-length couch that converted to a bed at night. Simply pull the back of the couch down and a ready-made bed was good to go. Above the couch was an upper bunk that folded out from the wall. A nice sized window with pull down blinds provided ample light and viewing while enroute. A small table lifted out from the wall underneath the window. As well, the middle back cushion of the couch folded down to create a small table and drink holder. Across from the couch was a small closet and two cabinets stocked with plastic cups and toilet paper. The closet was only about 8 inches wide, just enough room to hang a jacket and a couple of shirts on the three hangers provided. A doorway opened into a fairly spacious lavatory complete with toilet, sink, mirror and cabinet. The toilet was of the new airline design that uses a little water combined with lots of air and suction. No more poop on the tracks.

My only real complaint with this room is that I couldn’t find any decent place to stow my carry-on luggage. Two people traveling with a suitcase or two would be better off checking their luggage and just carrying what they needed for the journey onboard. After putting a couple cans of beer on ice, I put my pack at the far end of the couch and settled in by the window. There was no recline but I was thankful for the individual armrests that had been built into the back of the couch.

Train departures usually always get off to a rough start. The cars have settled and the tension between them relaxes as the train sits in the station. When the engine powers up, its energy moves back down the train like a domino effect, pulling the first car, then the second, then the third, etc. Thankfully, the Renaissance car designers seem to have eliminated this effect. We simply glided smoothly away from the station. I looked at my watch. It was 12:35pm. Right on time.

Aside from crossing a big bridge soon after departing Halifax, the scenery during the first couple hours of this trip is nothing special. The first call for lunch rang out at 12:45pm. During check-in, I’d been offered a chance to sign up for either the 12:45 or 2:00 seating but decided to hold off until dinner. Now I had second thoughts. Long distance train travel, in a bedroom no less, is a rare and cherished treat for me. Live it up!

The diner was located two cars up from mine, just past the Service Car. Unlike older style dining cars that have a kitchen at one end, this entire car was configured for table seating. I immediately liked the bright décor and spacious seating arrangement. On one side of the car were tables designed to seat four, two seats on each side. A dividing wall topped with stylishly etched glass separated each table. On the other side of the car were single tables designed to seat one or two.

Since I didn’t have a ticket for the first seating, I was instructed to check with the Dining Car manager for a reservation. This turned out to be a mere formality because there were never more than a dozen people seated in the diner while I was there. It was explained that lunch was a set price - $12.00, but that there was plenty of space. Would I care to get a table for lunch? I would. I was seated at one of the larger tables and presented with a menu.


LUNCHEON / DINNER MENU

Appetizer
The evening meal is served with your choice of a house salad or the Maritime Fish Chowder

MAIN COURSE

Grilled Atlantic Salmon
A fillet of grilled Atlantic salmon, topped with fish velouté, served on a bed of fettuccini with sautéed vegetables

Agnoletti
Tender raviolis stuffed with mushroom and leak, served with strips of grilled chicken, and topped with Alfredo and Marinara sauces

DESSERT
Sweet Sensation



While the entrée choices looked nice, I was surprised to see that there were only two. I was even more surprised to learn that this is the exact same menu for dinner, but for the higher price of $16.00 one is entitled to the appetizer choices. The Easterly Class menu entrees included seafood, lamb and a vegetarian choice. Otherwise, I didn’t see a lot of difference.

Worst of all, despite the fact that the ViaRail website claims that meals are “prepared on the spot by one of our chefs”, on this train all of the meals were pre-made entrees much as you’d find in the freezer section of your local supermarket. They were simply reheated in a microwave located back in the Service Car. So that’s why there was no kitchen…

One of the nicest parts of traveling by train is heading up to the dining car to enjoy a nice cooked meal. Entire books have been written on the subject, complete with recipes of favorite meals from famous trains like Santa Fe’s Super Chief or the Union Pacific’s City of Los Angeles. Don’t confuse railroad fare with airline food. Railroad meals were prepared in a fully stocked onboard kitchen and created from fresh items restocked at service stops along the route. More than a few travelers used to claim that the entrée or dessert they’d enjoyed in their restaurant on wheels was better than anything they’d ever been served in a traditional restaurant. Readers born after 1970 are unlikely to have ever experienced anything like this, as progressive reductions in operating budget have reduced the quality, quantity and presentation of the meals on many trains, especially in America.

I chose the Grilled Atlantic Salmon for my entrée. I was presented an approximately 5oz portion of salmon placed atop a mixture of egg noodles (not fettuccini) and green beans with flecks of pimientos. The entire entrée was served in a bowl rather than on a plate and in both size and flavor was very much like a Lean Cuisine or Marie Callender’s type frozen entrée. It was tasty enough but otherwise disappointing given the standard that had once been set. Dessert was a small but tasty cup of maple custard atop a half-inch portion of cake. I did like the coffee and the service was friendly and attentive. Still, if I were an Easterly Class passenger having paid $400.00 more for my trip, I would have been very disappointed.

After lunch I returned to my room for a couple of hours. It was a cloudy day and the scenery between Halifax, Truro and Moncton wasn’t particularly inspiring. We looked to be making good time though, rolling along at about 60 mph. I plugged in my laptop, popped open an ice cold Molson and put in some time on this report.

At about 5:30 I headed up to the small lounge in the Service Car. On a wall mounted TV, a hideous sea creature was menacing an attractive Hollywood starlet. She screamed as I walked by towards the food and drink service bar. The movie soundtrack was in French. Even the roars from the sea monster sounded vaguely Gallic. I took four years of Spanish and two years of French in high school. At the time of my graduation I was reasonably conversant in French. Unfortunately, living in the western half of North America allowed little chance to converse in French and, as the saying goes – if you don’t use it, you lose it. Everyone sitting in the lounge was either watching the movie or speaking French, so I decided to continue on and have a look at the rest of the train.

The Economy Class cars looked pretty comfortable for a daylong journey. However, I wouldn’t have cared to overnight in those seats. There didn’t look to be quite as much space or recline as found on the coach seats in the older stainless steel cars. In the Economy Class lounge, the scene was fairly lively. Both English and French were being spoken and people looked to be having a pretty good time. I ordered a beer and ended up chatting with a couple from Alberta who’d been touring Nova Scotia for the past two weeks. Their trip included some sea kayaking and an overnight camping trip up in the Highlands. Nice trip! I bought the next round of beer – actually I discreetly poured from a couple of extra cans in my daypack – and we had a fine old time as darkness began to descend upon the hills and valleys of New Brunswick. They disembarked at Rogersville, a small community just west of Moncton, and I headed back to my end of the train to look into dinner options.

Regardless of class served, all the Service Cars are designed the same. At one end is the service area where the usual variety of snacks, drinks and cold sandwiches can be ordered off a wall mounted menu. Hot items such as hamburgers and pasta entrees are also available. Comfortable lounge type seating with couches, chairs and tables takes up the middle of the car. Just beyond that is a stand-up bar, as in a place to congregate around though no liquor is sold from there.

One of the passengers walked by with a pasta dish that looked and smelled pretty good. For sure it looked a lot more filling than the salmon entrée I’d had for lunch. Pasta it is, then. Although two or three different pasta entrees are usually stocked, all that was left was the Chicken Pesto. It was excellent and at only $5.00 it offered far better value than the $16.00 dinner ever would. Unless and until ViaRail installs real kitchens on its Renaissance fleet, I’ll likely never eat in a Renaissance Dining Car again.

I spent the rest of the evening reading and putting in a bit more work on this report. I suspect that for some putting in the time to write these reports ranks pretty low on a list of enjoyable activities, and this occasionally reflects in the lack of depth and detail evident in some reports. Then there are geeks like me who actually writing them, especially during times like now, when I’m sitting at gate 52 at EWR with an hour to go before my flight’s due to depart. Try though I may, I’ve never been able to write about all this as it happens. Either I’m busy enjoying the here and now and/or the level of detail that I include is so excessive that I’d never be able to write it all down as it happens anyway. Still, on a trip like this there are plenty of opportunities while sitting on planes, trains or boats to put in the required amount of work.

I awoke the next morning just as we were pulling into St. Hyacinthe. It was 7:10am and The Ocean was running right on time. Montreal was only about an hour away, and upon arrival I had yet another train to catch – Amtrak’s southbound Adirondack to New York City.

Overall, I enjoyed this ride on The Ocean. The Renaissance Cars are attractive and well appointed, in addition to providing a very smooth ride. My standard bedroom was comfortable and the onboard staff was always friendly and capable. The dining car situation is a real disappointment for one so enamored of the old service standards, but reasonably priced and flavorful meal options were available in the Service Cars. Would I ride this train again? Yes.


October 2, 2006
Montreal – New York 9:50a – 7:20p
Amtrak “The Adirondack” Coach Class

I really liked the main hall in Montreal’s Central Station. It featured a nice variety of shops and restaurants as well as a nice lounge for ViaRail’s First Class passengers. By the time I’d detrained from The Ocean and made my way upstairs into the main hall, it was 8:30am and the New York bound Adirondack would be boarding in just forty-five minutes. Rather than take advantage of a traditional breakfast in the full service restaurant, I headed over to McDonald’s for an Oeuf McMuffin. Two of them actually, with a big cup of coffee and a copy of the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper. Aside from enjoying Canada’s take on world affairs, I was particularly interested in yesterday’s NFL scores as well as finding out who won the AL Central. How bout them Twins? Go, A’s!

Amtrak’s Adirondack is an all coach train. There are no assigned seats amongst the three or four coaches, so it would behoove those like myself who appreciate a good window seat to be prompt when the call to board is issued. In fact, be early because the line starts forming about ten to fifteen minutes before boarding is announced. By the time I arrived, the line to board was already about fifty people deep.

Once boarding was announced, we all headed down to the train in an orderly fashion. Today’s train consisted of four coaches and a cafe/lounge car. As I stepped aboard the third coach down – one of two designated for New York City bound passengers – I was immediately impressed by the modern and uncluttered look of the new retrofitted car interiors. The seats were wide and comfortable with decent recline and legroom. I was particularly happy to see 110-volt outlets located along the wall at each row of seats. I’d be able to use my laptop longer than its two-hour battery life. Overhead storage space was ample and the windows appeared to be clean, something especially appreciated this time of year when fall colors are the main attraction along the route. I stored my backpack on the large shelves located at the back of the car and selected a seat with a good amount of window beside it. At some seats you’ve got the edge of a window right in your main field of vision, so it’s nice to find a seat with a clear, unfettered view.

The last time I rode this train was in October of 1984. Due to track repair work, we were unable to use the tracks immediately south of Montreal and so ended up getting bussed to Westport, New York. As such, the 112 miles between Montreal and Westport will be new territory for me. I’m always up for checking out new scenery along Amtrak’s national route system because there’s not much territory that I haven’t already covered. During the eighties I rode every single long distance train that operated in America. Long distance means anything over 300 miles. So yes, I haven’t ridden trains like the Wolverine between Chicago and Pontiac, Michigan or the Kansas City Mule between Kansas City and St. Louis, but hopefully I’ll find time to knock those off in the next ten years provided Amtrak’s still around in ten years. More on that in a moment, though.

Because Central Station is located underground, diesel engines are not allowed to run while the train is sitting in the station. The train was plugged into standby power while passengers were boarding but at 9:45am the power was shut off and the train remained dark until we’d cleared the station shortly after an on time departure.

Montreal is located on an island at the junction of the St.Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers. On the way out of the city, we crossed the St. Lawrence on the century old Victoria Bridge and turned south towards the border. Southern Quebec is not particularly scenic, being comprised mainly of flat farmland. Now seemed like a good time to head back to the Café Car for a cup of coffee. There were plenty of tables available, so I took a seat and perused the Adirondack schedule. We had almost ten hours of travel and some of the prettiest scenery in North America yet to come.

At about 11:30 an announcement was made that we were approaching the U.S. border and the Café Car would be closed during Customs inspection. We passed through the border town of Rouses Point and came to a stop in front of the station. Four customs inspectors boarded the train. Two of them worked from the front of the train back while the other two worked forward from the rear. The whole process took about twenty minutes and soon we were on our way again.

South of the border the route becomes much more scenic as the tracks run along Lake Champlain for many miles. Often, the tracks ran atop rock ledges overlooking the lake, though at other times we were right down near water level. Fall colors were still a week or two away from their peak, though even now the mix of early autumn colors was very pretty.

A few miles south of Ticonderoga, we stopped on a siding and waited over twenty minutes for a freight train to pass. Waiting for freights is an unfortunate part of Amtrak’s operation and is the primary reason why so many of its trains run late. When Amtrak – the government owned and operated National Railroad Passenger Corporation – took over rail passenger services in 1970, the railroads retained the rights to control the flow of traffic over their rails. Since freight is where the profits lie, the host railroads make Amtrak trains yield to most freight trains.

By the time we pulled into Albany it was 6:40pm. I hadn’t been paying attention to the time, but somehow we’d ended up running over an hour and a half late. When we weren’t stopped on sidings, we must have been ordered to run at slower speeds. I’d been so taken with the scenery that I must not have noticed. In any event, we didn’t arrive into New York’s Penn Station until 9:20pm, almost two hours behind schedule. I’d missed my 8:30 connection to Newark Airport and the next Amtrak departure wasn’t until after 10:00pm. I had a rental car awaiting me at EWR but the car rental office closed at 11:00pm. Thankfully New Jersey Transit trains operate regularly along the same route and I was able to catch a 9:35pm departure that got me into Newark with time to spare.


NEW YORK / NEW JERSEY / PENNSYLVANIA

When I first started putting this trip together, I’d wanted to spend a couple of days in New York City. I’d stayed in the city twice before, once at a hostel and once at a budget hotel. This time I wanted to do it in style. At a halfway decent hotel. Preferably one with a nice midtown location. Now I know that in midtown Manhattan, even the lower end hotel rooms are not inexpensive. Still, I figured I’d be able to work out something via Priceline. At biddingfortravel.com I’d even heard of Priceline users getting rooms in the city for less than $100.00 per night. Alas, I was not to be one of them.

I started out bidding $110.00 per night for two midweek nights in a three star hotel. Pretty darned cheap. But you never know. The response came back: We’re sorry, but Priceline was unable to find you a room for $110.00 per night. Please change or consider increasing your bid and try again. Ultimately, I went up to $150.00 per night for a three star midtown location and still got rejected. Maybe I should have bid the Bowery. I mean, Priceline claims they’ll save you up to 40 to 50% off your hotel room, so bidding $150.00 per night I should be looking at rooms priced in the $200.00 to $300.00 per night range. Still, there was nothing available. Who knows – maybe the city is very popular this time of year. All I know is that by my standards – which are admittedly in an entirely different realm than most folks – $150.00 per night for a hotel room is a lot of money, way more than I’ve ever spent before for the privilege of a bed in a private room. Thus far on this trip the total amount I’ve spent for five nights in what I consider perfectly clean and comfortable motels comes to $183.00. As much as I’d like to spend a couple of days in the Big Apple, $150.00 per night via Priceline is the most I’ll pay. Since I don’t know anyone in the city and don’t want to stay off Manhattan, I reckon I won’t be staying in New York City on this trip.

So - with two days in the area until my flight back down to Florida, what should I do? I considered a mileage run out of Newark but couldn’t find anything decent. I did however find an amazing routing on an American roundtrip fare between Newark and Miami. Get this: I was able to book and price EWR-BOS-ORD-STL-DCA-MIA and back via ORD for just $118.00 base fare, $171.00 all in. Noted AA mileage runner CMK10 would have been proud of me. I probably could have worked in a longer itinerary for the way back but I had to get back to Newark in time for my 3:40pm departure down to Ft. Lauderdale. Unfortunately, the overall cost per earned mile of $0.0166 did not meet my threshold of $0.015 or lower so I nixed that plan. Amazing routing, though.

What I ended up doing was renting a car out of Newark and heading west into the Poconos, then north along the Delaware Water Gap. The fall colors, the winding road and gorgeous autumn weather combined to make for a most enjoyable journey. I then turned east on US 6 and headed into Westchester County where I spent some time in the towns of Katonah and Bedford before making my way back down to Newark. I camped out both nights and got showers in truck stops along the Interstate. My over all expenditures were a fraction of what I’d have spent for two days in the city. Even so, I’ve not given up on my attempts to spend a couple of days in New York someday. Based on the bids that I’ve seen at biddingfortravel.com, that $150.00 a night may well be enough. It just wasn’t enough for this particular time.