The Canadian?
It was definitely worth doing – once. The journey was interesting although Ontario is really big and the scenery did get boring. Service on the Canadian was good, but with everyone “doubling in brass” it was often invisible and the call button response was long. The food service was very good and the menu varied and well prepared. The equipment was beautifully maintained, but isn’t spite of Via Rail’s rebuilds it is showing its age. I never found a truly comfortable seat. The closest to comfortable was in the Dome of the dome car, but it was fully occupied from daylight to dark. The only way of getting a seat, was to forego a meal, and grab a seat while everyone else was in the diner. My single roomette did not even have a “tray table” to put my iPad on and the game tables in the dome car were fully occupied to the point a passenger I asked to leave to make room for a card foursome. There is a toilet in the single, but the “Murphy” bed makes its use at night challenging at best. The highlight of The Canadian was the interesting variety of passengers I met.
The Rocky Mountaineer?
Not a fair comparison. The Canadian and AmTrak are “passenger trains” designed to get people from point A to point B. The Rocky Mounatineer is a cruise on rails. Comfortable seating, stunning Mountain View’s, constant polite and attentive service, near gourmet food, and comfortable hotel accommodations in route.
Would I do it again? Yes, but I would try a different route for variety.
Amtrak
To my surprise and contrary to expectations – In spite of two equipment failures on the Coastal Starlight, and a bridge outage on the Texas Eagle YES! I will definitely ride Amtrak again.
Compared to my single on The Canadian the Amtrak roomette felt luxuriously roomy and comfortable, the seats recline, there is a functional “tray table”, the toilet is down the hall and the shower downstairs but even with the roomette door closed there is enough room to put on shoes and robe if you have to go at night. Food is not great, but good although more variety would be nice on a multi-day trip. After reading a lot of comments about Amtrak service, my biggest and most pleasant surprise was the level of service and profesionalism of the on board crews and station attendants. They were physically and mentally present to the passengers and didn’t disappear to “other duties” once the train was underway. During the off again, on again bus transfer they never lost sight of their duty to the passengers, and displayed an appropriate empathy with our confusion and refused to be rattled by a few passenger’s rude and blaming behavior.
