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Will we arrive tonight? - Day 4 on the Train

The chief steward announced last night that we would make up five hours of lost time and only be three hours late. This seemed very ambitious, this morning he was still saying we would “only” be four hours late but I was a little concerned when our steward was making up the beds as we were not expecting to stay a fifth night but perhaps that is for the next customer. In the end we were 6 hours late arriving in Toronto. We had breakfast with an Australian who has been on this journey four times before, none of which arrived on time.

Thoughts on the train journey: It is great fun and a very sociable way to travel, there are four classes of accommodation:

Prestige - Very posh at the rear of the train where the cabins have showers and there is a posher lounge and free booze (it was fully booked in March when we started looking).
Sleeper Plus - Less posh where most people travel including ourselves, own cabin, shared shower, free food but pay for drinks.
Sleeper - Not posh with a bunk bed in a corridor but free food.
Economy which is a seat in an ordinary carriage, bring your own food or buy snacks.

No one with a schedule travels on the train, freight has priority on the line so it is not surprising our train is always late, our biggest concern is that where we are staying in Toronto is a little way from the station so we didn’t want to arrive late at night.

I mentioned earlier in the blog that there are two rival trains, we have met two couples who have been on the rival Rocky Mountaineer, one couple thought it was great, the other didn’t. Apparently the food is better (although ours was good) but getting to and from hotels, whilst well organised, was a pain as on the other train does not have sleeping facilities. We were pleasantly surprised by the Canadian Train, the stewards were cheerful and helpful, they even put on an extra dinner as we were running late. The food was good and perhaps we were lucky but all the other passengers were friendly and interesting.
We will explore Toronto during the next two days before getting on an overnight flight back to a country where both the monarch and prime minister have changed since we left.