Get on track: Go to www.canadabyrail.ca

Daniel Drolet
Citizen Special
Saturday, April 24, 2004

Want to take a train holiday but don't know where to begin? Holidays on the rails have been taking off in Canada in the last few years and information about them has recently been pulled together by a new organization.

Formed in 2002, Canada by Rail is jointly funded by the Canadian Tourism Commission and The Rail Association of Canada. It sees its mandate as providing "one-stop shopping" for people looking for rail-related travel or tourist attractions. The group's website, www.canadabyrail.ca, offers direct links to more than 50 tour operators, 200 historic rail stations and 36 rail excursion companies across the country.

"This is all new," said Peg Herbert, Canada by Rail's manager. Until she began compiling the material for the website, "there's no one who knew there were that many rail opportunities out there."

The site is a resource for travel agents as well as the travelling public.

"There's a lot of interest in rail," said Herbert. "It allows people to discover things they didn't know about before."

The site is a treasure trove of information for rail buffs of all kinds. Even Ottawa's O-Train is listed. Its claim to fame?

"The O-Train is the only passenger rail service under federal jurisdiction on this continent operating with only one person, and the first to use Bombardier Talent Diesel Multiple Units," says Canada by Rail.

More common are excursions such as the Gatineau-to-Wakefield steam train. There are day-trip excursions such as this one all over the country and Canada by Rail is a useful resource for people planning a trip anywhere in the country. For example, in the Yukon, adventurous people can follow the path of Klondike gold seekers and take the White Pass and Yukon Route between Skagway, Alaska and Whitehorse.

The site also provides information on museums all across Canada with trains on display -- Ottawa's Science and Technology Museum and the Smiths Falls Railway Museum, for example -- as well as historic train stations and even clubs.

In Ontario, there are 18 rail excursions and tours listed, 13 museums and eight rail historical sites and societies. And there's news of new tours or excursions being offered, whether by Via Rail or smaller rail companies.

"In the past two decades, tourism railway operations have become a growing trend well beyond that offered by Canada's traditional railways," says a profile of the railway industry prepared for Industry Canada in 2002.

"In 2000, there were more than 25 entries in the market. Tourism products take three main forms: the short-distance, heritage railway; the day excursion developed by, or in conjunction with, a new short-line railway; or the long-distance excursion aimed at the high-end market."

(An example of a high-end trip is the Royal Canadian Rockies Experience, a six-day, five-night trip that loops from Calgary, through the southern Alberta prairie, into the Rockies and Banff before returning to Calgary. The cost: $6,895 based on double occupancy.)

In 2000, Canadian railways carried about 4.2 million inter-city passengers, about 95 per cent of whom travelled on Via. There are no exact figures on how many people travelled specifically on tour trains, says the Industry Canada report, "although total ridership approaching 500,000 passengers may not be unreasonable."

© The Ottawa Citizen 2004