2013_07_29: Winnipeg

Before I’m going to continue my westbound travel in six days, I’ll do a detour to Churchill, Canada’s only Arctic port and its “polar bear capital”, located some 1,700 kilometers north of Winnipeg. There’s a passenger train called “Hudson Bay” running to Churchill twice a week, besides some flights (and following the North-West-Passage on ship) the only possibility to reach this remote village at the 9-month-a-year-frozen Hudson Bay. The train runs (quite slowly) through prairies, forests and tundra. In the northern part it runs on discontinuous permafrost soil, which can thaw in spring times, so that permafrost sink holes can appear along and under the rail track. This section of the railway had been built at great expense over many years and wasn’t completed before 1929.
My train has 2 locomotives (only one is needed, the second one is joining for security reasons, if the first locomotive will break down somewhere in the middle of nowhere) and 5 cars (1 baggage car, two seating cars, 1 dining car, 1 sleeping car). The cars have been built in the 1950s. They look even more “original” and special than the Canadian’s cars, with coat-hook and a framed picture on the toilet and miniature railways in the compartments.

The 2 conductors are absolutely funny and perhaps also a little bit crazy – no wonder after having worked on this line for many years. One of them reminds me of Matthias Matussek, the other one of Mr. Bean.

I booked the train tickets when I was really busy, with no time for reading any guidebooks and the pressure to decide soon, because the ticket prices kept on rising every day. This is the first part of the answer to a question every reader will ask: Why the hell are you doing this? Why are you sitting in a train for two days just to go back the same route one day later? Another part of the answer is: the probably much more beautiful route from Jasper to Prince Rupert, combined with the “Inside Passage” ship tour to Vancouver Island, would have been much more expensive, and I had to decide for the cheaper option (which is still quite expensive anyway). But there’s also this third part of the answer: I’m interested in seeing as much different types of Canadian landscapes as possible. I want to know how Canada looks beyond the 55th longitude. I want to experience different climate zones. Although the chance to see polar bears is not very high in July and August, I want to see Churchill, “the ultimate end of the line” (Trans-Canada Rail Guide, p221). I’ll probably never have the chance again to see the Hudson Bay, to travel through Canadian tundra, to do this crazy trip. Yes, I really wanted to do this trip. And I still want to do it. Although I have to admit that I’ve been a bit shocked when I realized in Winnipeg that this little detour will take almost one week. And of course I would prefer to travel together with a good friend. In the Canadian with its international passenger mix I never felt alone. Here I definitely do. Anyway, I enjoy riding on this “wonderful dinosaur of a journey” (Trans-Canada Rail Guide, p221). And I’ve got enough books with me I can read if the landscape is as monotonous as the guidebook promised.
Yes, this is Canada, not Scotland:

I’ve seen a moose next to this river, but it was faster than the camera:

The clouds were as diversified as the weather:

This field is representative for the southern part of the trip...

The city Canora was named by the Canadian Northern Railway (take the first two letters of each word!)

Imagine the cars were replaced by horses and John Wayne was put in the middle of the picture!

First sunset on the Hudson Bay Train: