Manitoba to Saskatchewan

Hey there virtual train travellers. We have left Ontario and it’s abundance of trees, and Train # 1 is now making its way across the Canadian Prairies.  I must say that it is extremely flat around here, and any tree to be found most certainly stands out. The common expression I am hearing from my fellow passengers is, “where are all the trees? “and “boy is it ever flat around here.”

We awoke this morning in Winnipeg as I mentioned in my previous post. Lucky for us it was still spring like weather, which by the way is totally unheard of for this particular latitude and longitude. I heard last year at this time there was 5 feet of snow and was a chilly -20 degrees Celsius, burrrrrrrrrrr.

After our little walk about in the downtown core we re-boarded our train to continue our journey. As we zipped along the rails closer to our destination I found it somewhat challenging to provide you with a worthy photo or two. Now in all fairness, that could be for a combination of reasons. It could simply be the time of year we are taking this trek and/or geography.  But I was able to snap a few reasonable photos that reflect the changes in our geography as the Canadian miles roll by. 

As we approached the Manitoba/Saskatchewan border we travelled through the Assiniboine Valley pictured below.

We will soon be changing time zones from Central to Mountain Time, as well as the topography to go along with it. If you notice in this photo we have acquired two additional passenger cars and one less locomotive. The two extra passenger cars are being repositioned to Kamloops after being painted by VIA rail for the Rocky Mountaineer train that runs out of Calgary to Vancouver.

Below is another photo that seems to depict a constant image that you see as we travel through Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Like most communities along this route they pretty much all started out solely as railway towns, and have since developed into the heart of Canada’s grain industry.

I think this would be a good time to sign off on this particular post because I really don’t want them to be lengthy. I am having an extremely difficult time with access to the internet along the trek. We stop too briefly in some areas to even get off the train in order to seek it out in the station. I also don’t have access without a password when I do or just simply can’t connect with a strong enough signals.  

However, I will leave you will one more picture with a little story attached to it. Our train will stop for anyone living in the most remote of communities if you provide 48 hours’ notice. Below is the little station of Melville, Saskatchewan. We had a passenger on board that wanted to disembark here, but somehow we lost him somewhere along the way. All of his personal property was still on board, but no passenger. I am hoping that he just missed the train when we re-boarded it in Winnipeg. Perhaps he went to the nearby casino and won large!!! I will continue to try and learn more from the staff as to what actually happened.

 Thanks for checkin’ in with RAD.