They issue tickets on the internet now. Unlike at the airport, there’s no window overlooking the tracks to see the trains arriving and departing. In fact, even at Union Station in Toronto – perhaps the busiest passenger rail terminal in the country – you can barely hear the clatter of wheels on steel or feel the rumble of the locomotive in the station. They don’t even blow a whistle on departure anymore. And yet VIA Rail’s slogan still reads:
“There is nothing quite like seeing Canada by rail.”
Earlier this week, I had to travel to Ottawa for some meetings between The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) and representatives of Library and Archives Canada (LAC). Expressing a concern over the speed of technology and its impact on the acquisition of our creative work, our royalties and the preservation of published material past, present and future, we writers had gained an audience with executives of LAC. It turned out that my train trip was as much an education on a changing culture as was my meeting with the national archives brass.
First, I decided to arrive at Union Station early enough to ensure that I got a good seat. Well, lesson number one about economy train travel today is that unlike air travel, there is no such thing as assigned seating (unless you book first class). It’s every man (woman and child) for himself. The point couldn’t have been made more clearly than when I walked down the ramp to the embarkation area. There was a long line-up for the train to Ottawa. I had arrived an hour before the train’s departure and the queue already stretched the equivalent of a couple of street blocks.
“All aboard, please,” the pre-recorded voice finally said.
The next big decision – I learned as soon as I climbed aboard the coach – was: Does this seat face forward or backward? The man ahead of me agonized over this one. I suggested, of the four seats in the configuration we were considering, that the two we were settling into faced forward.
“That’s good,” he said. “I can’t stand facing backwards when the train’s moving. Makes me nauseous.”
For his stomach and mine, I hoped I’d guessed right. I had. Travelling by train – sometimes facing your fellow passengers – gives you a unique perspective. Unless you’re reading, computing or sleeping, you’re forced to engage the person opposite, which may or may not be an inviting prospect.
The man next to me immediately dove into a novel. The kid kitty-corner plugged in his iPod and fell asleep. The woman directly opposite began talking to herself. She told herself to stow her coat, secure her carry-on bag, prepare her laptop game and finally to lay out her meal.
“Bread … sushi … sauce … and beverage,” she said rhythmically.
I felt as if I were watching a pantomime or a television commercial as she prepared and then ate her meal in perfect, methodical, symmetrical fashion. Instead of appearing to watch her every bite, chew and swallow, however, I decided to join the others in our group – at least appearing to be preoccupied – and buried my head in my laptop, focusing on nothing but my computer screen.
If I learned not to engage certain passengers on the train, I also learned not to expect much in the way of on-time train scheduling either. The fact that the train was late leaving Toronto should have been my first clue. Then, pulling out of Belleville at a snail’s pace should have been my second.
I remembered a train trip from London to Edinburgh in the U.K. once; after about six hours en route, when we pulled into Edinburgh two minutes late the conductor apologized profusely on the PA system. After several minutes of crawling eastbound from Belleville, the conductor eventually acquiesced:
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are currently following a freight train,” he explained. “We apologize for any inconvenience.”
When we finally picked up speed, I noticed that we began to overtake the freight that had been ahead of us. I got the strange feeling as we flew past perhaps a hundred freight cars going our way, that maybe the amount of double track was somehow limited and that we only had a certain amount of time to get past all those cars. It felt like single-lane passing in the dark … in the fog. Then, just for good measure, we got stuck behind another eastbound freight coming out of Brockville.
Oh well, I had lots of work to do on my laptop anyway. Failing that, I could always watch and listen to the woman talk me through the rest of her meal. Or, as a last ditch option, I could just close my eyes (whether I was asleep or not).
Ah, train travel in the 21st century.