Really Enjoys Ride On Super-Continental. Published 5 January 1959 Besides
cinders. I think I have diesel fuel in my veins, and that is why I
enjoy riding the Super Continental so much. The long slick streamliner
slid softly out of Vancouver the other day, with myself deeply
ensconced in the plush of the car Euclid. The Angel in Human Form
helped me watch the scenery, while we doubled back along the Fraser
River toward the Pacific at New Westminster, and as we described a
creaky arc over the old bridge. Then the twin diescls started to
chatter, and up the Valley and east toward Ottawa we rushed. I was wondering where we would meet our first snow: it was at Boston Bar, 131.8 miles up the Eraser, near Hell Gate. From here on it's an incessant struggle against the elements, as the powerful engines fight gravity to the top of the Yellow Head Pass, which you cross at 3717 feet altitude. It, incidentally, is the lowest transcontinental pass in North America. To me it is always fun to sit up in your darkened room at night, and to gaze through the murk at the gloomy Fraser. You are on one side of the river, the CPR is on the other.and if you wait patiently, you will be rewarded by the sight of the opposition across the valley. Like some mad glow worm it seems in perspective, its fiery single eye aiming apparently to pick a path among the rocks. If it happens to be a passenger train, the strange bug will glow from head to tail. Then sleep, and when you wake, you sense the battle is over, and where you were struggling, you are now gliding. You have passed the Yellow Head, a grey and belated dawn shows snow everywhere as you roar down through the peaks to Jasper. Then - suddenly the heavens are rolled back, the sky is blue, the air is gold, and this is sunny Alberta. Old Sol starts to beam on you warmly, benignly, as the time suddenly jumps ahead to mid morning, and your club ear is suffused with saffron sun. A mile a minute you rush as the Super comes out of the Rockies. The forests give way to clearings, then you get rectangular patches, and this is the prairie. It takes you an hour to get into, and out of Edmonton, as if the railway wanted to see every last stick of it. Then you are back once more on the prairie, and it does not seem so very long till you are greeting Alf Bence, former MP, and his wife Vera, at Saskatoon. A great day ends after this swift race across the prairie, and you awake at Portage to the blue snow of a pre-dawn. as the sky turns pink and promises good weather for Winnipeg. |