Okay, so I'm really excited to be setting off on my trip through the splendour of the Canadian Rockies and across nearly 3000 miles of Canada on the observation train, and I fully appreciate that the journey is going to take several days and that there will be plenty of time to take in the scenery along the way - but could somebody please explain to me exactly why we are setting off half way through the evening just as it's getting dark? Surely, all these tourists who have come thousands of miles to settle down and watch the beautiful scenery of Canada on board The Canadian are not expecting the view from their train windows to be pitch black for the first several hours of the journey? All I can imagine is that somebody with more knowledge of Canada than any of us has decided that there isn't much to see for those first few hours and that we are leaving at just the right time so that we'll reach the mountains as everybody is getting up in the morning - but the cynic inside me insists quite categorically that it's actually something to do with saving a buck or two somewhere.

Having bought my rail ticket from Calleche Travel yesterday, where somebody had come up with the bright idea of employing the most beautiful girl Canada could find just in case I would have otherwise quibbled about the price of the ticket, I was expected to go straight to the rail station in Vancouver because somebody with altogether too much time on his hands at VIA Rail had decided that all tickets had to be validated at the station in person twenty-four hours prior to departure.

Those of us who come from a country where you just book your holiday at a travel agents and then set off on the chosen day might find this a little hard to swallow - but I did, in fact, have to waste quite a lot of time in Vancouver darting backwards and forwards across town just arranging to get on a train today. To be fair, this isn't just any old train of course - The Canadian really is the North American equivalent of the Orient Express but with altogether more interesting scenery, no requirement that you have to remortgage your house to buy a ticket, and no need to help solve any murders while on board. People come from all over the world just to experience The Canadian, some getting off at small stations along the way and experiencing life in the mountains, and others with less time to spare, like myself, just intending to sit back and enjoy the ride and the scenery. The Canadian runs three times a week, and for many of the stations along the way is actually the only train they ever see - so if you're lucky enough to live in a small town up in the Rocky Mountains surrounded by raw nature as far as the eye can see and you have a moment of madness where you decide that you really need to go into a big city and buy something, you can only do it when the train comes to town. This is not a part of the world where you want to get drunk in the city on a Friday night and miss your train home, because the next train home won't be until Monday.

The actual route that The Canadian takes across the country has changed over the years, and purists like to get up on their soapboxes and complain in loud voices to anyone who will listen - which is nobody - that The Canadian isn't actually The Canadian anymore. The fact that the route still uses all of the original trains and is still totally true to the feel of the original doesn't seem to bother these people - the route has changed, and the new route is not considered to be quite as scenic as the old one, so they've all decided to have a good old moan. It is also true, of course, that most people riding the train never got to see the old route anyway and therefore have nothing to compare the journey with - so they all come away ranting about how amazing the journey was, and having somebody pointing out that the trip would have been so much nicer if it had gone a different way can do nothing other than piss them off, so these people should probably just shut up and go back to their usual occupation of train spotting. Considering that the main reason the route was changed was in order to cut costs back in the early nineties when the only other option was to close the whole thing down, I think these people should be grateful they still have anything at all. How many classic old scenic railway routes still exist in Europe that haven't been closed down over the years for budgetary reasons? How many people spontaneously combust in the UK if you mention the Beeching Report to them? I think I've made my point.

Pacific Central Station in Vancouver is one of those old style buildings which boast huge stone hallways that make every footstep you take echo eerily around the walls and where the ticket office is bigger than the Victoria and Albert Museum. When I turned up yesterday to validate my ticket for The Canadian, I must have really annoyed the people in the queue behind me because the ticket guy was clearly freshout of the packet and had to go off to make all sorts of long phone calls in order to find out how to operate the new computer system just to make sure I hadn't printed my ticket out on my laser printer five minutes earlier. For one horrible moment, I thought that perhaps he would come back and say that I'd been sold a dud, but everything was fine. Pacific Central Station is a truly international terminal with trains heading across the border to the USA, and they seem to have a somewhat unique approach to customs clearance - rather than being bundled off the train at the border as I had been when arriving by coach, passengers heading south have to put their luggage through X-ray machines and go through customs and immigration clearance at the station before even being allowed on board the train. The only other place I've seen anything else like this was back in Australia where I had been required to hand all my luggage in every time I got on a coach, so I was glad that, for now, I was just heading across the country and wasn't required to queue up with all the people going to the USA. When I returned tonight for the 7pm Canadian, I just showed my ticket and made my way down to the platform as though boarding any other train, although the number of flashily dressed guards posted along the doors welcoming people on board and the elegance of the old style carriages did indicate that I was about to embark on a slightly more up-market journey.

The Canadian is certainly luxurious compared to other trains I've ridden during my travels. At one end, there is a buffet car with large picture windows and a cafeteria where we can sit and watch the view go by while snacking on biscuits, sandwiches and cakes, and beyond this is a full service restaurant which resembles something from the Orient Express. The tables in the restaurant, each with a large picture window to itself, are laid out at dinner time with cloth napkins folded carefully into shapes and inserted into fine wine glasses next to place settings with too many rows of cutlery to think about. I have trouble remembering which side of the plate to place my knife and fork on at the best of times, and usually have to pick them both up and mime eating something in order to work it out, so having three knives, three forks and more spoons than I could count was likely to cause me problems. I made a note not to order egg and chips and show myself up. During the day, the restaurant is apparently less formal and actually allows people in who want a cup of tea and a snack, but I've only seen it at it's snobbiest so far - complete with old style oil lamps flickering over the windows and candles on the tables. Getting into the restaurant car is hard enough at the best of times, because if it's not packed to capacity with people eating something posh in a white wine sauce and drinking cups of tea with their little fingers in the air then there's a bouncer standing on the door eyeing you suspiciously and wanting to know whether you're suitable to be entering such an establishment or just one of the riff-raff from the rail equivalent of steerage. Naturally, since I still have need of a little money between here and the end of my journey, I haven't splashed out on a first class ticket - so it usually takes a little persuasion to be allowed into the restaurant, but I think that if you wave a wad of cash and make it clear that you'll be leaving the restaurant with lighter pockets then they turn a blind eye. Beyond the restaurant car is the last carriage of the train which appears to be devoted to the kitchens - I peered through the window on the locked door between carriages and could see what looked like the kitchen of a posh London restaurant, complete with people in chefs hats darting back and forth waving knives and mouthing things like "No, not that pot you stupid little man!" in that stuck-up way that chefs do, so I knew the service was going to be exceptional.

At the far end of the train is the mysterious zone known as first class, with its locked door to keep the rabble out. It is here that you may go should you have paid the extra to get a personal cabin in a corridor - something well out of my price range. To be honest, I think that anybody splashing out on a first class ticket for The Canadian is out of their tiny little minds - after all, surely the point of being on board such a train is to enjoy the scenery and socialise with your fellow passengers, and spending all your time locked in a cabin away from everyone and with only the view from a tiny cabin window seems to defeat the whole purpose of being on board. Even the standard carriages outside of the first class zone have huge picture windows and seats spaced wide enough apart to be able to stretch out comfortably for the night while still having space between them to put all of your luggage and the luggage of the person on the seat opposite. VIA Rail even supplies everybody with a pillow and blanket, so there is certainly no feeling that the first class passengers are living a life of luxury we could only dream of. In fact, it's hard to imagine how much better things could be in first class - we have large comfortable padded seats to stretch out on, whereas the first class cabins presumably have hard beds. I'm not envious of them in any way.

The observation car, naturally, is the highlight of the journey and probably somewhere that I will spend most of my time - if only to stop anyone else grabbing my seat when I get up to stretch my legs just as we approach somewhere really spectacular. I'll probably have Deep Vein Thrombosis by the end of the trip from sitting stubbornly in one place for several days just in case I lose my seat, but it will have been worth it! Positioned between carriages two and three of the train, a flight of steps leads up onto the roof where a transparent dome has been installed to protect us from the elements. Here, two rows of seating have been arranged so that passengers can plonk themselves down and be surrounded on all sides by fastmoving scenery. Apart from the occasional yell of "Watch out for that bridge" from somebody at the front, it's a very pleasant way to pass the time. It's also quite surreal, of course, to be sitting on the roof of the train surrounded by a bubble. Alas, by the time I had found my designated seat - not that anybody takes the blindest bit of notice of where they're supposed to sit anyway - and deposited my things in the overhead rack, the observation bubble was full of gawking tourists and there were no seats free - not that there was much to see at this point, since it was now getting quite late into the night and any beautiful mountains out there were likely to be hiding in the darkness. I shall be heading back to the observation car at regular intervals on the lookout for anyone who looks as though they might be developing Deep Vein Thrombosis, so that I can have their seat when they get up.

The first part of our journey, being close to the city of Vancouver, hasn't been particularly spectacular - but things are bound to improve when the sun comes up in the morning and we're well beyond the city limits. Chugging out of Pacific Central Station at just after 7.00 this evening, we moved for a distance of what could only have been a couple of miles before stopping for an inordinate amount of time at a little place called Port Coquitlam, which perplexingly doesn't even appear on the route map. When we finally got underway again, we headed south for a while towards the US border before finally veering off at the last minute at the small town of Matsqui in Abbotsford when the driver suddenly realised that he was supposed to be going North-East towards the centre of the country rather than taking us all into the US illegally. It was now totally dark outside and none of us could see anything but the occasional lights of trackside houses or small towns through which we passed, and by the time I decided to call it a night and curl up on my allocated seat in preparation for trying to force my way into the observation car in the morning, even those were starting to become few and far between and it felt as though we had left civilisation well behind...

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.