Take a ride on Rail Travel Tour's North Pole Express from Winnipeg

All aboard the NORTH POLE EXPRESS! The Winnipeg Railway Museum and Rail Travel Tours are offering for the first time a fundraising day trip for kids and their parents, grandparents or guardians to enjoy a memorable train journey during the holiday season.

This full day trip scheduled for Sunday, December 13, 2015 will feature a morning tour of the Winnipeg Railway Museum, lunch, and a two hour train trip on a VIA Rail Canada train to Gladstone, Manitoba, which will be transformed into the North Pole!  Thanks to the Gladstone Chamber of Commerce, travellers will visit with Santa Claus, enjoy crafts, games and other experiences before they return by motor coach to Winnipeg later that afternoon.

The tour of the Winnipeg Railway Museum will feature holiday decorations as part of the event. The train trip will feature hot chocolate,  a holiday singalong, a souvenir ticket and other activities on the train while travelling to Gladstone.  Those that take part on the trip will receive a family membership to the Winnipeg Railway Museum so they can visit this great attraction as many times as they want over the next year.

The price of the trip for one child from the ages of 2 -12 is $85 (plus GST) and must be accompanied by a parent, grandparent or guardian. For everyone 13 years of age and up, the cost is $95 each (plus GST).  There is no charge for children two years of age and under who are travelling with a parent and not taking up a seat.  There are only 50 spaces available, and they'll go quick, so book now! For reservations or more details call Rail Travel Tours at 204-897-9551.

Churchill by rail: Part 10 - Back to Winnipeg!

 Our train makes a stop in beautiful downtown Kamsack, Saskatchewan.

By Paul Ullrich

After breakfast, we went back to the dome car, where I assumed my role as the unofficial conductor. I like to know where I am at all times, and that's not easy to do in the endless boreal forest of northern Manitoba. But I was armed with my Via Rail timetable, the Canadian Rail Travel Guide by Daryl Adair (that name sounds familiar) and my 1985 edition of Bill Coo's Scenic Rail Guide to Western Canada.

Bill Coo's Scenic Rail Guide to Western Canada is still a valuable resource for the rail traveler, but it has been out of print for 30 years, and it's a bit dated. For instance, it states that between mile 1214 and Gillam, you should watch for Indians carrying their children in moss bags.

Yeah, right. These days they're using baby carriers that the bought from The Northern Store like everyone else.

Using the mileposts with the two books and the timetable, I was able to calculate exactly where we were, and if we were on time or not. My fellow passengers, who also wanted to know where we were, helped me along, spotting mileposts along the way. We arrived late in Thompson, with barely enough time to leave the train and stretch our legs before we departed.

Via Rail had supplied the train with a lovely park car, but not with a park car attendant, so we were on our own in the back of the train with nothing but a carafe of coffee that the staff had left us.  But we discovered that the park car had untapped resources that made the trip a bit more tolerable. One of the staff opened up one of the cabinets in the park car and found some more coffee cup lids! A case of cookies was also discovered in another cabinet.

I went to be in my unshaded lower berth again, but this time I had a sleep mask, which was graciously given to me by one of the other passengers in our car. I woke up shortly after midnight to find that we were in The Pas, right on time. I woke up a few hours later to discover that we were still in The Pas. I woke up a bit after six, and we were still in The Pas!

I washed up and shaved in the bathroom, still in The Pas. The light wasn't working, and the air conditioner was on full blast. As the train wasn't in motion, I was able to fill up the sink almost to the brim. When the train was moving, the best you could do was a couple of inches of water. Any more than that and the movement of the train caused the water to spill. 

We went for breakfast, still in The Pas. As we ate, the train from Winnipeg rolled in, six hour late. This is why our train was held up in The Pas for so long. We finally got moving around 8:00.

There was much excitement in the Park car when we reached Saskatchewan, and the first field of canola was spotted. After several days of boreal forest, muskeg and The Barrens, it was a welcome sight. But if you're the type that gets excited over seeing a field of canola, then you've been in the prairies way too long!

We started out 5 1/2 hours late leaving The Pas. As we trundled through the prairies, we lost more and more time. I became the constant bearer of bad news as the rest of our group asked me how we were doing. When we had lunch, we found that the menu selection had become even smaller. We were back paralleling the highway again, and automobiles continued to zip past us.

We weren't supposed to have dinner on the train, as it was supposed to have arrived in Winnipeg at 4:45 PM. But the crew managed to rustle us up a meal. There were only two selections on the menu, but we were just grateful to be fed. We arrived in Dauphin seven hours late, but the train stayed there long enough for us to go outside for the first time since we left Thompson.

It was announced that we wouldn't arrive in Winnipeg until 1:00 AM, eight hours and 15 minutes late. But the railfans didn't mind, because that meant more time on the train!

We made the best of it by holding a little reception in the park for our two gracious and hard working tour guides, Robert and Deborah. We watched a beautiful, lingering sunset as the sun dipped near Riding Mountain National Park. We watched the moon rise and the stars come out as we approached Gladstone. The lights of Portage La Prairie were a welcoming sight, as it meant that we were almost home!

We pulled into Winnipeg exactly at 1:00 AM. Robert called for cabs as soon as we arrived, and when we exited the station there were about a dozen taxis waiting for us to take us home.

We arrived home safe and sound, but then we came down with colds, and so did a few others from our group. A friend of mine who lived in Thompson explained that we all must've contacted a "northern bug", and now that we've had it, we'd be now be immune.

A friend of mine took the train to Churchill last week. Her train was exactly 28 minutes late arriving in Churchill. The trip back was without incident. She even had warm, sunny weather and she didn't catch a cold!

Some people have all the luck!

Passengers take a much needed 20 minute break in Dauphin.

There's nothing more beautiful than a prairie sunset. This one was taken at Glenella.

Churchill by rail - Part one

 A superb view of the prairie taken from the dome car on the train to Churchill. 

By Paul Ullrich

This year my wife Margaret and I decided to go whale watching in Churchill, a destination on our bucket list. Being a railfan, I had always wanted to travel there by train. I also wanted to see what northern Manitoba was like, as the farthest north either Margaret and I had ever been in the province was Duck Mountain Provincial Park.

We signed up for the History and belugas of Churchill group tour offered by Rail Travel Tours, which is run by long time WMRC member Daryl Adair. We opted for the upper and lower berths on the train. Not only are they the least expensive sleeping option, but they have the biggest beds, and they're more sociable than being locked away in a room, or in a roomette.

There was a horrendous rainstorm on the morning of our departure, which was so bad that we had our doubts about even getting to Union Station. But 15 minutes before were about to leave, the rain stopped! We were grateful for that, but what we didn't know was that the rain was going to play a significant part in our adventure to Churchill.

We arrived at the station in time to have our luggage checked and to join Daryl's tour of the Winnipeg Railway Museum. Daryl gave a very enjoyable and thorough tour. He's a long time member of the museum, and he knew every piece of rolling stock in the museum inside and out.

The only problem was the heat. Remember that morning's rain? After that downpour, the temperature climbed rapidly, and with all of that extra added humidity, the museum turned into a sauna. It was well before noon when our tour ended, but by the time it was finished we were all dripping with sweat.

When we got back downstairs to the station, we found that the train was running late, as it didn't arrive in Winnipeg until 7:00 that morning (over 14 hours late) and the crew needed more time to get the train ready. Lunch in the car's diner was cancelled, but Via supplied us with a lunch from the snack bar in the station's main foyer.

The train was ready for boarding quicker than anticipated, and we boarded right after we ate. Before we left, Daryl cautioned us about the schedule of the Churchill train.

"It's supposed to arrive in Churchill at 9 AM, but if it arrives on the same day, it's considered to be on time!" He said. And he was right about that.

Our guides for the trip were Robert and his wife Deborah, and they were absolutely terrific hosts. Much to our surprise, we found that most of the tour group were from Manitoba. When we booked the tour, Daryl told us that most of his customers for this trip were usually out-of-towners. He said that in Churchill they refer to this as 'perimeter-itis", reflecting on Winnipegger's well known reluctance to vacation in their own province. But it was a welcome surprise, as we got to know a lot of great people who lived nearby.

Wonder of wonders, the train had an domed observation car! The dome car has been featured this summer on a number of trips on the Churchill service as a pilot project. The domes were also featured a few years back during polar bear season in the fall and at the odd time for special groups. Boy, was it ever popular! It gave us the perfect place for our group to get to know each other, and to enjoy the scenery as no other passengers on the train to Churchill had ever been able to before.

After a hot, humid morning in the station, it was a blessed relief to travel in air conditioned comfort. I was giddy in anticipation as we left Portage La Prairie for the Gladstone subdivision, for it was a route that I'd never travelled before by rail. We weren't breaking any speed records. It was a bit disconcerting to see cars zipping by us on the road next to us, but none of us cared - we were in the dome car, it was a beautiful sunny day, and we were all having a wonderful time!

We went through Gladstone, which I had only seen from Highway 16. The track through town was elevated, and everybody laughed when we passed mere inches away from the second floor window of a Chinese restaurant! If our windows had been able to open, we all could've got some take out!

We had a wonderful dinner in the diner as we slipped through the Togo subdivision, then crossed the border to Saskatchewan and into the Assiniboine subdivision. We went to bed when we reached Hudson Bay, Saskatchewan, looking forward to what the next day was going to bring.

But the next day was full of surprises that no one had anticipated.

A tour of the Winnipeg Railway Museum was included as part of the travel package.  

Photo by Margaret Ullrich.

The train rounds a curve through a heavily wooded area outside of Gladstone, Manitoba.

The train arrives at Glenella, Manitoba, just before Dauphin.