Customer Reviews

Canada by Train: The Complete VIA Rail Travel Guide

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A mixed bag. It has detailed technical information about the rolling stock and train routes but suffers from poor English expression - in many parts it appears to have been inexpertly translated from another language. A notable omission is a map of Canada as a whole with the rail routes included.

Overall, this is a very helpful guide to Canadian trains, and particularly the "Canadian" trains #1 and #2. I really enjoyed the background information, especially the brief Canadian history and the history of the building of the railroad. The book provided a valuable context without having to slog through a much longer detailed history of the route.

I found the "Sites of Interest" along the route very helpful, especially since the author did a very good job of tying the locations to the rail mileposts. I wish that he had provided a bit more info on major cities, and more brief info on some of the tiny settlements we passed through. He seemed to try and give all entries equal size, despite their relative importance. There was also a bit too much fluff in some places, such as a roughly 10 page section on train "yoga" (stretching) exercises that appeared to be lifted wholesale from another source.

I found the individual section maps to be very well done. A full country map would have been helpful, but it would have been difficult to convey useful information in a small format. I had no problem with ordering the author's very well designed companion maps.

There are many Canadian guidebooks available, and there are several other generic "Canada by Train" books, but this book was written by an author with a real passion for the subject. I strongly recommend it.

Just got back from Canada. The book is a great introduction to Canada and Via Rail. Part of our trip was on The Canadian. The book was very helpful. It was really useful to have points of interest listed by mile markers on the track. As a note, there is also a high-end luxury train, the Rocky Mountaineer, going through parts of western Canada. It is not part of Via Rail, therefore not covered in the book.