Overnight from Strasbourg to Marseille

Even if I hadn’t already bagged a promotional €15 (£10) one way fare, the weather forecast would have made up my mind. In Strasbourg in north-eastern France on Monday, five straight days of rain were predicted. Meanwhile in Marseille, 850km away to the south, five clear days of sunshine and 15ºC February days were expected.

My bargain ticket to the sun was provided by the online travel agency of the SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français – French Railways). Voyages-SNCF.fr will seek to distract you with all kinds of special deals on hotels, air travel and car hire, but the site’s real pull is the booking engine of the French railway system. In addition to the basic travel booking service, the site is the portal to SNCF’s last minute online promotions, where visitors can browse deals on rail travel throughout the country.

At Strasbourg’s grand old station (currently being rebuilt for the imminent arrival of the fast TGV Est Européen), a crowd of sun seekers was waiting to board train 4297, the 20h56 Corail Lunéa service to Lyon, Avignon, Marseille, Toulon, St. Raphaël, Antibes and Nice. The SNCF may be a massive state owned operation, but its also a master of meaningless branding. Corail Lunéa means nothing much in French, but is the slinky marketing name for the network’s older overnight trains. Corail is the generic name for locomotive hauled passenger trains that operate on non-TGV lines. Corail Téoz run by day and Corail Lunéa (evoking the French word lune for moon) run by night. The SNCF recognised long ago that running heavily-staffed overnight trains with a variety of sleeper accommodations and a lounge car or restaurant simply didn’t make money. So by giving overnight services a snappy new name and emphasising the convenience of late night departures from one end of the country to the other, the SNCF was able to ditch the restaurant car and slim down the actual level of service. It upsets traditionalists, but with some savvy online promotions, it seems to be saving the romantic sleeper train and introducing new passengers to the services.

Our train has about six sleeper coaches and a couple of ‘open’ coaches with reclining seats. There are just two classes of sleeper accommodations: first class compartments with four bunks and second class couchettes with six bunks. Both compartments are the same size, so with three bunks on either side of a second class compartment, only a child would be able to sit up in bed.

SNCF cost cutting (sorry, cost efficiencies) have removed traditional bedding from the sleeper cars. Instead of sheets and a blanket (that take more time therefore cost more to be made up and cleaned) passengers find a lightweight sleeping bag on their bed. Two sides are buttoned together: one is padded and the other is a single sheet, so depending on how warm you are, you can choose whether to sleep under the thin sheet or the thicker blanket. Passengers do not undress to sleep, although the sleeping bags offer enough privacy to remove heavier trousers or clothes if you’re uncomfortable in them. These older carriages are ingeniously designed to work as both day coaches and sleeper coaches, even if the days when trans-continental journeys that require both are less and less common. In each compartment the three bunks can be folded away to form two facing bench seats. The lack of any bedding beneath my sleeping bag reveals the padded vinyl that these seats are upholstered with. Outside, that gloriously seventies’ colour-scheme of orange and brown hints at the train’s age.

We depart on time, and begin the journey south, stopping en route in the towns of Séléstat, Colmar, Mulhouse and Besançon. The SNCF emphasises a number of convenient timetabling gimmicks that make Lunéa services appealing. Leaving after 21h00 and arriving early in the morning Lunéa trains can justify the absence of a restaurant car by pointing out that most passengers would rather eat at home or in a restaurant before departure and after arrival. Some SNCF advertising even emphasises how Lunéa passengers can have friends round for a few drinks before the leave on vacation. Intermediate station stops are also kept to a minimum between midnight and 05h00 to help passengers get a good night’s sleep; besides – these shorter distance city pairs remain more popular with equivalent day services than night trains. Since passengers rarely travel in convenient groups of six, they’re grouped into compartments according to destination, so that you’re only woken by the conductor when you are getting near to your stop. Women travelling alone or with children can also specify a female-only compartment.

And the result? The evolution of the overnight train from a romantic and luxurious sleeper to a dormitory-style train might depress some, but its still a remarkably comfortable way to cover ground in France and save on a night’s accommodation. The ride was smooth, my compartment was shared between just three people and I slept well for most of the night. In fact the gentle rocking motion and lulling background sound of the train racing south was so conducive to sleep that I only woke up when we stopped at stations en route. At about 05h40, the conductor came through the train with the passenger manifest and gave us a curt but effective wake-up call.

Just before 06h00, we pull into Marseille’s Gare Saint Charles. With about six hours sleep under my belt, as well as a complimentary bottle of water and a courtesy pack with refreshment wipes, mints and ear plugs from my couchette, I step out into the pre-dawn night of Marseille refreshed, and ready for two days in the sun. Not only has €15 carried me from the north-east of France to the shore of the Mediterranean, it’s done so while I slept, giving me two full days in Marseille.

Corail Lunéa services operate between Paris and Toulouse, Irun/Hendaye, Port Bou/Cerbère, Latour de Carol, Bourg Saint Maurice, Saint Gervais, Nice/Vintimille, Briançon and Luchon. Away from Paris, services also operate betwween Luxembourg, Metz and Marseille/Nice; Reims and Marseille/Nice; Metz and Port Bou/Cerbère; Strasbourg and Port Bou/Cerbère; Lille and Marseille/Nice; Bourdeaux and Marseille/Nice; Hendaye/Irun and Geneva; Hendaye/Irun and Marseille/Nice.

Breakfast? Follow the hi-vis jackets

The area around the two London railway terminals of King’s Cross and St. Pancras stations is a-buzz almost twenty-four hours a day with ongoing construction work for the imminent arrival of international Eurostar services. Britain’s first dedicated high speed rail line (optimistically numbered CTRL1, in case we ever get round to building another) will soon be open to passenger traffic, flying through Kent from the Channel Tunnel, skirting around the capital, past the east London site of the 2012 Olympics and into the newly refurbished and extended St. Pancras station on the northern side of the city centre. Journey times will be shorter and connections to other parts of Britain will be improved.

While all this construction work continues, a massive workforce of contractors, builders and labourers are on site building the new infrastructure. Finding myself at St. Pancras early one Sunday morning, the building site between St. Pancras and King’s Cross is already crowded with men about to start work. There isn’t really a uniform as such, but everyone is wearing a luminescent high-visibility yellow jacket and hard helmet. Originally designed to make sure workers could be seen on site by those operating heavy machinery, they’ve effectively become a cloak that symbolises inconspicuity in the city. Next time you’re in London, count the number of yellow jackets that you see in a short walk. They’re everywhere, and yet we’ve become so used to them they no longer catch our attention.

I have just arrived back in London after two weeks in Canada and America. Having already been delayed by two days, I’m eager to get on my train and go home. But being a penny pinching self-supporting traveller, I booked a cheap train ticket that is restricted to the service I specified when I reserved. Whereas I allowed for a safe cushion to get from Heathrow to St. Pancras, we actually arrived early and I’ve managed to ride the tube into London in less than an hour. With time to kill until my train leaves for Sheffield at 10h30, I need something to eat. With the redevelopment of King’s Cross and St. Pancras, the whole neighbourhood around the two stations is being gentrified. It was never a particularly savoury place to find yourself, and undoubtedly the powers of commercial development have seen that there could be good money to be made in tarting up the future arrival point for European tourists and business travellers. So standing outside King’s Cross on the corner of the Euston Road and York Way, I am already disgusted to find generic chain coffee bars popping up. After a fortnight away in the land of real diners, real fast food and real baristas, the last thing I want is a tepid over roasted Starbucks and an overpriced stale pastry. I’m British, damnit, and I want some grease in the morning…

It’s a beautiful winter’s Sunday morning, with a clear blue sky above me and a mild fresh bite to the air. It’s not yet seven thirty, and for a few moments I just stand on the corner, yearning for the ideal greasy spoon ‘caff’ to magically appear in place of the McDonald’s restaurant that has occupied a prime retail location near-by.

But then I realise that the answer is all around me. Where builders congregate, builders find greasy spoons. And I notice a small but promising stream of yellow hi-vis jackets heading east down the Pentonville Road.

I sneak off in hot (if silent) persuit. And within one hundred metres, I’ve struck gold. Adjacent to the King’s Cross Thameslink station on Pentonville Road (at number 275) is the Modern Snack Bar. A diminuitive facade opens to reveal a handful of tables with refilled bottles of tomato ketchup and laminated menus. A few very content contractors in hi-vis jackets bearing the slogan ‘CTRL’ are already tucking in. The Italian proprietor is talking animatedly with a friend, while a young waitress serves. I’m barely on the chair before I’ve decided what I’m having. For £4.75, I’ve found a proper English breakfast in the heart of King’s Cross. With a mug of hot, sweet milky tea and a groaning plate of bacon, sausage, beans, eggs and mushrooms, my first day back in Britain has been kick started.

So next time you have a hankering for some greasy English morning cuisine, you know which colour jackets you need to follow.

Worshiping at the (minimalist) altar of modernism

It’s Friday morning in Chicago, and we step off a green line ‘L’ train at 35th-Bronzeville-IIT station. This is the oldest urban transit line in the city of Chicago: parts of the entirely elevated line date back to 1892, when the route was constructed for the World’s Columbian Exhibition. Like all suburban ‘L’ stations, we find ourselves standing a storey and a half above street level, on a narrow island platform of untreated wooden planks, barely shaded from the sun and rain by a small canopy. Between us and the large drop to the pavement are the two train tracks, one either side of the platform. Prominent signs remind us that they are electrified.

Chicago’s ‘L’ trains are a destination in themselves: the ideal vehicle for tourists to explore and see the city. Although a few lines dip beneath the ground through the downtown core, most pass through the city centre on the ‘loop’, a circuit of tracks that connect a number of lines to the suburbs by forming a closed loop above the streets of the city centre which has come to name the downtown’s innermost core. Once outside the city centre, the tracks stay above ground level or in the medians of suburban freeways. Far more exciting than an underground network, the ‘L’ is your budget city tour – a seven day pass for train and bus is just $20, and regular ‘L’ service connects Chicago’s two airports to the city.

We’re in southern Chicago on the edge of the historic Bronzeville district to visit the Illinois Institute of Technology. This university campus, which has its principal campus here around 35th street, is home to no less than eighteen buildings designed by the architect Mies van der Rohe, who spent much of his life teaching architecture at IIT. Regardless of whether you find Mies’ architecture cold and emotionless, or clean and uplifting, a new tour programme offered by the Illinois Institute of Technology and the university’s Mies van der Rohe Society is an unmissable part of any visit to Chicago’s architectural high lights. For just $5 a person, you can choose to follow a self-directed iPod tour or be shown around the campus by a student (tours depart twice daily, Monday to Saturday at 10h00 and 13h00). Seeing that one such architecture student was waiting near-by the office that offers the tours, we gladly accepted the latter. The tours start at IIT’s most striking new building: the campus and student centre designed by Dutchman Rem Koolhass. This bizarre and colourful building slides and folds itself beneath the elevated tracks of the green line, and encloses them with a corrugated steel tube that was originally designed to damped the sound and vibrations of the trains passing over the tracks. You can visit the building yourself to see if this grand design works, but it was amusing to compare it to the adjacent student accommodation blocks designed by Helmut Jahn. This calmer and less ostentatious building forms a permeable wall between some of the campus’ open spaces and the passing trains, and it deals with the associated noise much more prosaically: with triple glazed windows mounted in insulated frames.

The landmark architectural feature of the campus is, however, van der Rohe’s Crown Hall building, the huge floating steel and glass block that was built to house the university’s architecture department. The department has now grown and spilt out into neighbouring buildings, but following a multi-million dollar refurbishment in 2006, the Crown Hall remains at the heart of the faculty of architecture school. Our guide confesses that while the building may be worshiped by fans of the Modernist movement in architecture, its refurbishment was well overdue. The black steel frame had begun to rust badly, and with no coherent shading inside the building, it had been likened to a green house in summer and a refrigerator in winter. Double height glass windows enclose the main floor of the building, used as a studio space for undergraduate students. We were there a week before the start of term, and the vast space was silent, with small wooden and cardboard models on white workshop tables reminiscing of last term’s projects.

Some visitors may find the building familiar. That could be because you’ve been in one just like it before. Mies van der Rohe refined many architectural and engineering techniques while he was teaching and building at IIT, and the Crown Hall is considered the peak of van der Rohe’s exploration of the plan libre: spaces that were entirely open and undivided, supposedly allowing for the space to adapt to any use at any time in the future. It’s a romantic idea that this vast open plan studio space could be used in that way, for students to occupy as they wish: design studio one day, lecture hall the next, play room for softball after hours when the security staff aren’t around.

The dream is broken very rapidly though. Two ‘floating’ staircases descend from the open plan studio to the basement level; these are proudly explained and shown off by our guide, because they make no contact with the building at any point other than the two landings – but are designed to hover so close to the adjacent walls that this detail seems wasted. It was here, rather than upstairs, that I understood Mies van der Rohe’s plan libre. For in the hushed basement we found the partitioned offices, ventilated workshops and subdued library. Photographed and reproduced in a thousand books, magazines and journals the world over, Mies van der Rohe fooled the world into thinking that a department of architecture was the ideal client for an open plan pavilion of steel and glass. In fact, the plan libre is a con: van der Rohe just knew to sweep all the messy, noisy and compartmentalised bits of the building into the basement, out of sight of passing visitors and distant architectural admirers.

Slick and the six centimetre sandwich

Some of my itineraries have seen me changing trains in some slightly unexpected places. It’s all very well spending a layover of a few hours in a big city, but it’s quite often more enjoyable to discover something of a smaller town when you have time to kill between connections.

Schenectady, New York is one such place. I didn’t know of this small town until I started planning a major train trip around the USA last year. It’s the recommending connection point for passengers travelling between Montréal and Chicago. Unfortunately for anyone in the windy city who fancies a train trip to Montréal, the connection only works going west; the east bound ‘Lake Shore Limited’ misses the north bound ‘Adirondack’ by several hours. Although I suppose you could spend the night here.

This is how I first found Schenectady, in April 2006, en route from Montréal to the west coast of the USA. The full post is here.

Schenectady is a tidy little town, and a good example of the peaceful middle America I’m happy to experience for a few hours between trains. The station is small, with the tracks up on a raised embankment through the town centre, and with a small one-box station below. After leaving my bags safe in the station with the friendly attendant (definitely a good mood day for Amtrak staff) I head out to stretch my legs on a short tour of the town. Schenectady’s biggest feature is that it’s the home of General Electric, and also of Thomas Edison. Although as my USA By Rail handbook explains, that’s not how he started life.

Edison’s first job was selling sweets to railroad passengers, money from which he spent on chemistry sets and building a telegraph system out of scrap metal.

Just behind the station you’ll find the Edison Exploratorium (I think that means museum) but’s only available to visit by appointment, according to a sign in the window. I walk for an hour or two, buy some stamps from a stubborn vending machine that doesn’t like my dollar bills, and then look for a place to sit down for a while. While exploring the smaller tree lined streets on the other side of the station, I find a small saloon called Slick’s Bar and Restaurant. It’s more bar and restaurant, though Slick seems to be doing good business with his sandwiches. I’m assuming it was Slick that I saw, because his hair was indeed particularly slick.

I drank a bottle of Samuel Adams, and watched the CBS Evening News that was on a television screen behind the bar. Tonight’s top stories: the average price of gasoline across the States is now $2.86 a gallon (a bargain in the UK); the prices of building materials such as copper and plastic has increased dramatically in the last few months (apparently because of China’s economic boom… all I can say is that you should go into any Wal-Mart and you’ll see straightaway why there’s a boom in China); and also… an exclusive helmet mounted camera view of an Iraqi soldier’s duty in Iraq. I kid you not…

I am delighted to find Slick’s Restaurant again (click here for address and directions). It’s less than five minutes from Amtrak’s centrally located depot, and the small bar is a perfect place to spend some time between trains. Slick isn’t in attendance today, but a friendly waitress takes our order for two sandwiches (which have apparently made the restaurant famous). I take my time examing the unusually wide selection of bottled beers that are on sale, and settle for a not-too-distantly brewed Vermont Porter, which quickly recovers my faith in real American brewing.

This is my travelling companion’s first visit to the USA. She is slightly perterbed but not unsurprised when our sandwiches arrive. Between two thin slices of white bread are crammed dozens of freshly sliced and tightly packed wafers of meat. I chose ham and she chose beef: both sandwiches each way about as much as my Lonely Planet guidebook to the USA, and take almost as long to consume. Neither of us make it onto the second diagonal half of our sandwiches, and almost with a sense of satisfaction, our waitress offers to wrap them for us. We each mumble an acknowledgement of defeat, pay the bill, and scuttle off into the night.

Nonetheless, I look forward to my next layover in Schenectady.

Nice and slow: Montréal to New York by train

Thursday morning saw me re-tracing a familiar route that I have taken several times in the last year or so. I was back in Montréal’s Gare Centrale (central train station) for the daily Amtrak train to New York City.

In the USA and Canada, taking the train is not the obvious choice. Distances are so great that flying is almost always faster, and rail lines are so poorly developed and busy with freight traffic that even the Greyhound bus can usually get there quicker. From Montréal to New York, the bus is indeed quicker by at least a couple of hours, but it can’t match the train in terms of price: US$59 adult / US$50.15 concessions for a one way trip.

The train follows a trajectory that is very roughly similar to the bus, heading south to the Québec – New York border and then down through the Adirondack mountains towards Albany and the Hudson River into New York City. The train, however, hugs the shore of Lake Champlain for a significant part of the trip, twisting and turning along a single track that was forged through the rocky shore between the lake and the forrested mountain region of the Adirondacks. When you combine this exceptionally scenic route with the competitive price, it’s no wonder that there is always a long queue in the airy hall of the Gare Centrale to board Amtrak train 68.

After recognising and saying hello to a previously helpful and memorably friendly VIA Rail agent, we are treated to the priority treatment and whisked down a separate staircase to the platform when the train begins to board. As usual for this busy time of year, train 68 is formed of four passenger coaches with an open plan café car in the middle of the train. Comparisons with the Greyhound continue to be favourable once you’re on board: the seats are vast and very comfortable (comparable with short haul airline business class at the very least) and the train is very spacious.

Travelling with Amtrak does require a certain skill though: that of letting go. The journey to New York City is scheduled to take just under ten hours, covering just 381 miles. The border crossing accounts for much of the delay, but so does incredibly sub-standard track. The journey from Montréal to the border takes ninety minutes – almost three times what a similar journey would take by car along the autoroute. And once you reach the border, the timetable becomes even more loose as the process of checking every passenger’s paperwork is labouriously handled by customs agents. Thirty-five minutes is allowed for this, and on our trip it takes twice as long. You can blame the awkward foreigners who require visa waivers for that (my apologies to everyone else on train 68 that day). Passengers who are joining the service (which is subsidised by the state of New York for providing service through the communities of the northern part of the state) further down the line know to check the service status service on amtrak.com or by calling 1-800-USA-RAIL. Since the train crew radio their position to a control centre after leaving most stations the information provided by this service is notably accurate and dependable.

Although today we’re not going all the way to New York City (we have a connection to make before then towards Chicago) I wasn’t too bothered by our delay. As the train pulls away from Plattsburg – the second station stop in the United States – the line pulls alongside the calm expanse of Lake Champlain, with the snowy mountaintops of Vermont visible across the lake in the distance. It’s very comfortable to kick off my shoes, recline the seat, and drift off as our shining silver train does the hard work, and carries us through this beautiful region of upstate New York.

Every cloud has its silver lining

From the letters page of the Independent newspaper, Saturday 23 December 2006:

Sir: As part of the 51 per cent of the population who did not take a flight this year, I cannot help but find a beautiful irony in fog grounding hundreds of planes at Heathrow (“A sorry story that highlights the flaw in aviation policy”, 22 December).

How nice to see the climate wrecking flights for a change, rather than, as usually happens, flights wrecking the climate.

R. GEORGE, LONDON SW19

Just before Christmas we were treated the sights of hundreds of emotional travellers left stranded at London Heathrow, as thick fog stubbornly refused to shift from the two rather unsophisticated stretches of concrete that sandwich the central complex of terminals at the airport.

Television newsreaders and newspaper copy writers were excitedly describing it as ‘travel chaos’, or even with as ‘travel misery’. Airlines were already being marked down as ‘beleagured’ before the inclement weather had settled in – it has not been a good year for commercial aviation in Europe. The much vaunted double deck Airbus A380 – which was supposed to relieve so much congestion at hub airports such as Heathrow – has slipped behind schedule, and governments across Europe are finally waking up to the rather late realisation that it’s time to start taxing people who fly for the environmental damage that their flights are causing (although Gordon Brown’s extra £5 a flight is not going to be nearly enough).

In order to loosen some slack at the airport, British Airways cut all domestic routes in and out of Heathrow for the duration of the heavy fog. What astonished so many bystanders was the sheer number of domestic flights that we have flying in and out of Heathrow every day. For an island nation whose length can barely justify overnight sleeper trains, it was incredible that this meant one hundred and fifty fewer flights would be operating than on a normal day.

While it is getting more and more socially acceptable to harang someone over the dinner table for flying with Easyjet from London Stantsed to Newcastle (almost as acceptable, in fact, as haranging a smoker, in fact) the fog at Heathrow revealed a problem. The vast proportion of BA’s affected passengers who were trying to fly on domestic routes were those who had just arrived or who were trying to depart on international long-haul services. The low cost airlines may have sewn up Europe from your local airport, but for long haul BA is still one of the most competitive and popular airlines from throughout Great Britain. Their business strategy of not fighting with the lo-co airlines has paid off: BA is now doing very well off strong long haul business, and their European and domestic network is primarily a feeder into this.

And here’s the rub. Door to door, from the centre of London to the centre of Newcastle, the train still edges it, as it does between London and Manchester, Glasgow, Paris and Brussels. But our skies are still going to be clogged with this insane volume of domestic routes for as long as our airports and rail networks exist independently of one another, each operated by independent (and increasingly private) organisations. If we’re serious about cutting aeroplane emissions, we need a whole new level of joined up thinking.

Next time you find yourself at Amsterdam Schipol airport (one of the world’s finest international hubs) have a look in the basement of the landside terminal. It’s one of the biggest railway stations you’ve even seen in an airport. And there are trains to every corner of the Netherlands twenty four hours a day. London’s airports at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, and City all boast about their integrated railway stations, but until airports are plugged into a national network of intercity railway routes that operate in and out of the airports before the first and after the last flights, we’re going to be playing a second rate game. And a dense cloud of fog could foul up everyones’ Christmas all over again.

Connecting at Ely

“This must be the coldest place on earth,” says the businessman in the heavy and expensive looking duffel coat. He is stirring sugar into his cup of coffee at the small platform counter of the L.A. Wild Bean coffee shop at Ely railway station.

I attempt to engage in some polite and mildly witty conversation, suggesting that actually the coldest place on earth is about two metres to his right, where I’m sitting on a steel and wicker garden chair, optimistically provided by the café management for al fresco caffeine consumption in comfort. But the businessman does not hear me. The pretty young woman of non-descript Eastern European origin who is making his coffee hads evidently distracted him, although somewhat pleasingly, he isn’t having any luck starting a conversation with her either.

Ely, and its famous cathedral, is built on a small hill in the middle of the Cambridgeshire fens, once a vast area of marsh and coastal inlets that has been reclaimed over the course of a few centuries. Ely railway station sits on the edge of this low protrusion from the fins, and from the platform waiting passengers peer out into the vast landscape of intensively cultivated fields. Not only is it very cold today (barely above zero celius at midday), but there is thick fog blanketing the countryside for miles around us. It appears increasingly unlikely that the sun will burn it away before descending beneath the horizon again. On the island platform across the tracks from me, lonely passengers wait for trains to London King’s Cross and Stansted Airport against a pitch white backdrop of white. To my left, at one end of the station, a busy road passes underneath the northbound railway lines. A strip of tall, bare trees line on side of this road as it stretches away from us into the mist. Each tree is markedly less visible than the one before it: half an avenue vanishes into the fog.

The road passes under a low bridge, so any vehicle taller than a Transit van has to climb a sharp incline parallel to the road and cross the railway lines via a level crossing next to the bridge. Unfortunately for the long line of trucks, lorries and vans, Ely is a relatively important junction between north-south and east-west railway lines, and the gates of the crossing sometimes stay down for fifteen minutes or more, as successive freight and passenger trains pass by. In this jolly country of the privatised railway, every identical three car diesel sprinter that comes by has been dressed up in a different set of colours for a different commercial operator. One green and white train belongs to the singularly mis-named and uncapitalised ‘one railway’, as does another which has yet to be re-liveried from the colours of ‘Anglia Railways’. A green train belonging to ‘Central’ rumbles in, burbles for a few minutes, and then rumbles off again, back in the same direction that it came from. Then a sleek and mildly whining red, white and blue train glides in, carrying passengers on a fast service to London.

Two noisy freight trains pass in quick succession, and finally the level crossing gates go up. A flurry of heavy goods vehicles shoot across the line, knowing that they could be help up for another quarter of an hour if they’re not quick about it.

My toes are cold, and my train is still fifteen minutes away.

First published on jamesbrownontheroad.wordpress.com

A day out in Canada’s frozen north

This is an extract from my month long USA and Canada train trip travelogue, published live online as a blog at jamesbrownontherails.blogspot.com. Click on the highlighted links to see photographs from the trip. For details of the thrice-weekly ‘Hudson Bay’ train from Winnipeg to Churchill, Manitoba, contact VIA Rail Canada. Also previously published on the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree.

I’m the only person disembarking train 693 from the sleeper car. Further up, the thrice weekly arrival of the two locomotive, five coach train (one baggage car, two coaches, a restaurant car and a sleeper coach) is being met with great activity, as supplies and luggage are unloaded from the train. I hang around for a while, waiting for the station master to return from unloading the train so that I can leave my bags here for the day. It is bitterly cold. I check the printed weather forecast that is pinned inside the station, and today’s high is not predicted to be above -8C. This is in fact, unseasonally cold for Churchill, and just last week a period of warm sunshine and spring like temperatures was apparently broken by a sudden snow and ice storm. Regardless, I am hopelessly unprepared for this drop in temperature, and just waiting outside on the platform, my extremities are getting cold. I joke with one of the other passengers that this is quite a change from California the week before last. If I’d known I would have packed gloves and a hat. He replies that if he’d known he would have packed his thermal underwear. I fantacise about my soft silky long johns, far far away from here, stuffed in a drawer back in Montréal.

I manage to leave my bags with the station manager (no charge) and am told to be back before 20.00 to collect them. The return train to Winnipeg will be leaving tonight at 20.30. I have no intention of missing it. Just outside the large, beautifully restored station is a big sign, welcoming visitors to Churchill. It says that apart from being the ‘Polar Bear Capital of the World’, Churchill is a’ Bird Watchers Paradise’ (late May through September), ‘Belguga Whale Capital of the World’ (late June to late August) and home to the Aurora Borealis (late November through late March). So it’s no wonder that the train was empty – I’ve conveniently arrived at the one time of the year when there isn’t much going on in Churchill for the tourist.

I scamper up Kelsey Boulevard, the closest thing Churchill can claim to have to a busy shopping street. It’s a broad tarmac road, with wide unpaved strips either side. Low-lying one and two-storey buildings are dotted out along the street in both directions. I head straight for the ‘Northern’ supermarket and general store. I am fully prepared to pay a fortune for some gloves and hats, knowing full well how expensive things can become up here because of their long journey to get here. Much to my amusement, however, because it’s now the end of winter, there’s a clearance sale on all outerwear. I pick up a 75% discount on a pair of gloves and a toque (hat). Total price: C$3.13. I am now prepared.

I leave the Northern stores wrapped up snugly and prepared for a day out in Churchill. The Northern is Churchill’s biggest store, and it really is a ‘general’ store. It has a small supermarket with a surprisingly large selection of fresh fruit and vegetables, a small electrical department, a video rental store, a clothes department and just about every small thing you could need around the household.

I walk back towards the station and then turn left alongside a partly snowed over park, towards the Town Centre Complex. This large, low building hugs the crest of a low hill on the north-eastern side of town, stretching along the edge of the community for several blocks. It’s not particularly pretty, but then its large amorphous shape serves a purpose. As well as housing the town’s school, hospital, theatre, library and council rooms, the large complex forms a large barrier between the town and the shore of the Hudson Bay. As soon as I walk round the side of the building to visit the beach, I realise why that’s a good idea. As far as I can see, the bay is still frozen over. All my hopes of seeing the ocean at the end of my forty hour train ride evaporate.

And because the sea is still frozen, the wind that is coming off the bay is perishing. The moment I turn the corner and walk towards the beach, the temperature drops about another ten degrees with the wind-chill. Even with my extra layers, the icy wind cuts through me, and it feels about –15C. And remember, this is May. In January this icy wind-chill factor can push the perceived temperature down to nearly –60C.

I trudge down the track towards the sandy beach. The last time I saw sand, I was in California just over a week ago, when it was a rather agreeable 15C. I can’t believe that just a few weeks ago I considered that chilly. On the edge of the beach stands a stone Inuit sculpture. These beautiful abstract structures don’t require much explanation. In this inhospitable environment, these simple stone structures tell you that other people have been here before; that you are not alone. They are a friendly greeting, made from the materials found lying to hand, but arranged in a way that could only be made by another human being. The precise meanings of different sculptures revealed messages about hazards, territories or even good fishing grounds. Although Churchill’s population is now predominantly white and Anglo-Canadian, this sculpture is a beautiful reminder of this territory’s traditions and origins.

I feel like I should sit and consider this barren seascape for a bit longer; maybe stop and sketch for a while. But as they say back home, it’s brass monkeys out here and I’m cold. I scoot back towards the town, but take a right and walk a little way out of town towards Churchill’s most notable landmark. Out on the edge of town stand the enormous grain elevators of the Port of Churchill. It’s because of the port that Churchill has a railway line. Churchill handles tens of thousands of tonnes of grain and other freight every year, even though it is closed in by ice for almost half of the year. In a magazine article published in Montréal before I left on my trip, Omni-Trax (the new owners of the Port of Churchill) were openly optimistic about the opportunities for increasing the volume of freight that passes through the port. Over the next few decades, it is expected that the effect of global warming will be to allow sea passage to and from Churchill for longer every year. The period that the port is iced in has already been seen to be slowly reducing. Some of the Churchill residents I spoke to were pessimistic, however, and pointed out that despite the effect global warming on the polar ice, it’s still impossible to work outside in the winter when it gets below –40C, and the winters don’t appear to be getting any warmer up here..

Churchill is the only sea port in the Canadian prairies, and grain shipped through here can reach Europe two and a half days earlier than if shipped through eastern ports such as Montréal or Boston. Importing and exporting produce and products through Churchill avoids thousands of kilometres of railway and, because of the curvature of the Earth, allows for a quicker sea crossing to Europe.

But at this exact moment, the port stands silent. The winter ice is beginning to break up and melt, but it will be some time before shipping commences for the summer season of 2006.

I walk back into town, cutting down through some of the residential streets at this end of town. The architecture here tells you everything you need to know about the climate. In some cases, the windows are deeply set in thickly insulated walls. On some buildings, there are no windows or openings at all on the side facing the bay.

I return to Kelsey Boulevard and stop into a large shop selling souvenirs. I’ve spent much of the last winter experiencing much colder temperatures in Montréal, but to return to this climate again suddenly without any time to acclimatise is making me balance my time walking around town with my time inside. The shop is quiet, but I can imagine that in a busier time of year it’s hopping with tourists. All sorts of Canadiana is available to purchase, although it’s hard to find anything that you can honestly say is from Churchill. More or less everything is imported via the same long surface route that I came. Even the plastic polar bears are made in China.

I walk the length of Kelsey Boulevard, and decide that there’s no point holding out on a nice warm meal any longer. By the time I reach Gypsy’s Diner, I don’t need to be persuaded by the recommendation in my Lonely Planet guidebook. It’s already sold itself to me. It’s a basic diner and bakery with a solid menu. I choose today’s lunchtime special, a beef and pork stir fry, which reminds me to warn any vegetarians thinking of moving to Churchill not to underestimate the difficulties you’re likely to encounter here. I sit and write postcards over my coffee, listening in to the gossip from a group of retired ladies on the next table.

I spend the rest of the day exploring what’s left of the small town. The population of Churchill once numbered 7,000. It’s now less than 800, following the closure in 1979 of the large US Military base. American service men and women were dispatched to Churchill for cold weather training, since Churchill’s climate bore more than a passing semblance to much of that of the then Soviet Union.

The Eskimo Museum opens at 13.00, and I go in for a look round. Incredibly the museum is free, although it does depend on donations to help maintain the beautiful collection housed in the modest building next to the town’s Catholic church. The museum’s single large room is lined with glass display cabinets, and these are filled with hundreds of Inuit artefacts and sculptures. In fact the collection of ivory and soapstone figurines and carvings is easily the highlight of my trip. There are also a couple of stuffed arctic animals which sit in large cases, lamely caught in poses designed by a distant taxidermist.

The museum is also worth visiting for the large collection of books that are on sale. They cover the natural environment of Churchill and also the history of this town and the region. I bump into one of the other passengers who had travelled up from Winnipeg with me, and he was pleased to have finally found a copy of the book that chronicles the history of the construction of the Hudson Bay Railway.
After seeing the museum, I visit the library, which is inside the Town Centre Complex. You can use the internet here for free for up to thirty minutes. The lady at the counter raised her eyebrows and shrugged, saying that the computers were mainly for tourists who wanted to be able to check their e-mails every day while staying in Churchill. Apparently some people don’t take to the wilderness too well (myself included, it seems).

The rest of the day passes slowly but leisurely. Churchill seems to shut down outside the major tourist seasons, so I was able to spend a pleasant afternoon just walking and stopping off for a coffee from time to time in one of the town’s cafés. There are a handful of attractions outside town, such as the wreckage of a freight plane that crashed near Churchill Airport in the seventies. I’m told it was brought down because of a heavy load of Pepsi, but I suspect it might have had more to do with something more mundane. Seeing these requires transport, but I decide not to spend C$20 on a taxi tour.

I explore the town some more, stopping off in the post office for stamps (and to ensure my postcards get a suitably interesting postmark) and going back to the Northern store to get some supplies for the return trip. I go back to the library when it opens again at 19.00 for a second burst of blogging, having realised how far behind I am in my online travelogue. On my way out, I notice some boxes by the door. A large quantity of old books, some from Churchill Library, are being offered for free to anyone who can offer them a better home. So I rifle through, and pick out the Booker Prize winning paperback The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, and an old hardback biography of the inventor of radar (something my father would doubtless approve of…). Having been turned off by the imported souvenirs I’d seen today, this would be an excellent souvenir of my trip. Inside the front cover, this decommissioned library book still carries it’s loan record and the insert library card. It was given to the For Churchill Library in 1953, and has spent the last fifty years being read by generations of Churchillers with a passing interest in radar. It adds quite a weight to my luggage, but I’m happy to leave with a special souvenir.

Just before returning to the station, I turn round the corner of the Town Complex once more and walk down to the beach. The sun is falling behind the pretty solid grey cloud cover, and the temperature is beginning to drop again. I crunch through the untouched banks of snow and down onto the sand. I stand alone, staring out across the frozen bay once more. Another cinematic reference pops into my mind – this time The Winter Guest, filmed on an unnamed Scottish island during a particularly cold winter, during which the straight between the island and the mainland freezes over. Despite being quite unbelievable for Scotland’s mild climate, it’s still an enchanting image, and throughout the film people do as I do, and come out to stare across the immensely solid yet dangerously fragile surface. I’ve never seen anything quite like this before, and the immensity of this frozen sea is almost overwhelming. Having lived in Montréal for almost eight months now, I have realised how much I miss being near to the sea. I miss the smells, the sounds, and the sense of enormity that borders seaside landscapes.

But here, there is no sound, other than the wind whistling off the ice and across my numbing cheeks. Every quality I associate with the sea has been obscured. Part of me agrees with a young female character in The Winter Guest, who runs out onto the ice, teasing her more cautious friend that he shouldn’t be afraid: he might never get the chance again to walk on the sea.

But fears of plummeting through a cracked ice flow overcome my subconscious urges. I turn my back to the sea, and walk back to the station.

Shortly after we arrived this morning, our train reversed out of Churchill station, and was turned in a triangular turning circuit just outside town. It subsequently backed into the station, and was left there with engines running all day. From time to time I would round a corner and hear the not too distant hum of the gently throbbing locomotives. It might seem like a waste of diesel, but it’s safer than shutting down the engines and then discovering that they can’t be re-started. This especially important in the depths of winter, when a train failure could be extremely difficult to fix, and a replacement locomotive could take days to reach us. Despite their normally short consist, trains 693 and 692 to and from Churchill operate with two locomotives not for pulling power, but for safety. If one were to break down, there would not be much chance for another to reach a stranded train for some time. And in the depths of winter, if a train with a single locomotive was to break down, the heating in the passenger cars would soon drop far below freezing. It would cease to be a matter of convenience, and soon become a matter of life or death.

I’m early at the station (old habits die hard) but there is already a hub-bub on the station platform as luggage is loaded into the baggage car. The tourist office inside the old station building has a single VIA Rail ticket desk, and it’s from here that a locally employed agent sells tickets and provides information to passengers. I notice that on the desk is a pile of the new Amtrak system timetable. Perhaps a few other long distance journeys have commenced here?

Most of the tickets being sold, however, are for Thompson. There is a small group of young teenagers here this evening, all with violin cases and luggage for a couple of days away. I learn through overheard conversations that they are actually fiddles, not violins, and that they are presumably going to play in a concert or competition.

Of the handful of passengers who travelled north with me, two are returning to Winnipeg this evening as well. The two gentlemen, who I’d already met on the first night, had taken advantage of a VIA Rail special offer, which allows one passenger over the age of sixty to take a companion of any age for free. Both being over sixty, they paid one fare and split it between the two. Having lived in Winnipeg for much of their lives, they had decided (much like me) to take a trip to Churchill just for the sake of it. They had had a similarly interesting day, but had also retreated indoors in the afternoon to warm up.

Our train begins boarding at about 20.15, preparing for a 20.30 departure. There is a healthy load of coach passengers, most going to Thompson and connecting to bus services from there. I board the sleeper car shortly afterwards.

When I arrived this morning, my sleeper attendant had mentioned that she would be making up one more berth for another passenger. So when I re-board the train and head to the familiar couchette end of the carriage, I meet a new travelling companion. Vera has lived in Churchill since 1979, and she runs a three room bed and breakfast on Hearne Street. She has two sons in the town, and ever since she arrived here almost thirty years ago following a period in the Wrens, has called Churchill her home. One son works on a pilot boat that guides ships into the harbour. The other is an engineer in the Town Complex, and helps with the maintenance of the water supply. Tap water is sourced from the Churchill River, at a point about two miles inland from the town. Part of his job is to maintain the water heaters that heat the water three times between the river and the two. Without these (and the element heaters that many houses have in the pipes where the water enters the house) the pipes would freeze solid throughout the winter. Along with heavy duty engine block heaters that require cars to be plugged in overnight to prevent them from freezing up, it’s just another practicality in the life of the town.

It’s rewarding to finally talk to a Churchill resident for a short while. She says she is yet to be convinced that the port will ever be open for much longer, but says that despite the bitter winters she enjoys living here. Everyone knows everyone, and it’s a tight community. I ask about the inevitable flip side of remote life in Canada: are there drug or alcohol problems in Churchill? Her answer is yes – there will always be a few heavy drinkers, but the drug problem is harder to solve. A town meeting later this week will be bringing together the officers of the RCMP and local residents. Until specific information can be brought against members of the community suspected of supplying drugs (such as fatally addictive crystal meths) not much can be done.

We leave a few minutes early, and together we watch the settlement slip away. In ten or fifteen minutes, we cross the level crossing that had announced our arrival to me this morning, and we’re on our way back across the wilderness once more. Ten hours in Churchill might seem a short justification for eighty hours of travelling, but at this time of the year I didn’t miss much in town. Besides, for me the journey has been as much the destination as the town itself.

Shortly after leaving Churchill, our attendant returns to make up the third pair of bunks. A passenger in coach class has decided to pay the night fare for a couchette through to Thompson, so we’ll be losing the spare pair of seats for the night. It’s fine with us – Vera goes forward to read in the coach car, and I decide to turn in early to read. For this half of the Churchill run, I’ve paid a bit more and booked a lower berth. Getting in and out of it is easier, and I get this time I get window. If there’s one complaint it’s that the lower bunk is just slightly too low: it’s not possible to lie in bed and look out of the window at anything other than the sky or the tops of the trees beside the track. But that’s hardly a major complaint. I curl up under the sheets, button the curtain closed and dive into The Blind Assassin. Beside me, my picture window fills with an ever deepening blue, as the sun sets and night falls. I’m back in my natural habitat, it seems, warm and cozy, gently falling asleep to the sound of the train rattling over the tracks. It’s Tuesday evening: I will arrive in Toronto in three days time.