Rooms with a view on VIA Rail's The Ocean train

 

When we went to Nova Scotia we took VIA Rail's The Ocean. The service runs from Montréal to Halifax and takes 22 hours. For us, living in Ottawa as we do, the trip took a bit longer than that once you account for the train trip from Ottawa to Montréal, a couple hours or so of layover in Montréal before The Ocean's 7pm departure, and around 3 hours of delays on The Ocean part of the trip. I can't complain though because it was a great experience.

We booked a cabin in one of the sleeper cars. They're small, but comfortable for two. There're two seats, two fold down bunks, a fold down table, cubby holes for storage, and a toilet room - it's hidden behind the open door to the corridor in this photo.

Speaking of corridors, here it is. There were a few sleeper cars in the train. Maybe 4 or 5, I lost count walking through them all. A crew member told us the train was 19 cars long.

As well as the chair and sleeper cars there was a dining car, which if you're staying in a sleeper, eating here is included in your ticket. This meant dinner on the night out, and breakfast and lunch the next day. I think my Uncle Bill would have enjoyed this.

Contrary to the image on the menu, there isn't a dome top observation car - the so-called 'Park' car - attached to this train. According to Wikipedia and the crew VIA got rid of it a couple years ago due to some operational problem with no longer having access to track they needed to turn the train around. I can appreciate the technical issues, but look, if there is anyone from VIA reading this, you really need to figure out how to bring that car back. The views from this train are one of its draws, so I suspect you're losing out by not having it. Think about this: it only took us 1 hour and 25 minutes to fly on Porter airlines on the return trip from Halifax to Ottawa, so it isn't travel time that attracts the long distance traveller. 

Ok, so enough grousing :-) The dining car has a lounge car attached to either end. One has an operating canteen and the canteen in the other car is closed. That photo up there is of the one with the closed canteen.

Here's that same lounge car, but looking towards the other end. It turns out Wifi seems to be only available in these two cars. It might be available in the chair cars, but it certainly didn't work in the sleepers. 

And here we are in the second lounge car during the night leg after I had had a couple of 'beverages' from the canteen :-)

The most unusual car had to be this 'Transition' car. Basically it's used to couple dissimilar cars. For such a prosaic car it's very nicely appointed with wall-to-wall carpeting and framed pictures on the walls.

I didn't get any photos of the train when we got in to Halifax station as it was late and cold and we were focused on getting to our hotel. But, the next morning I got that shot of the train in Halifax awaiting its return to Montréal.

Would I do it again? Probably not, but I had to do it once and enjoyed it very much. Although, VIA Rail, if you're listening, I'd be glad to return and do a 22+ hour build of some sort of railroad model streamed on YouTube live from The Ocean, with proper sponsorship of course :-)