Greetings from sunny, downtown Kamloops. It’s been a long day today, up at 5:30 for luggage pickup by 6 and on the train for a 7:30 departure. We got into Kamloops by 8pm, the data is a bit slow and the coffee is lousy so we’ve resorted to Chai and a short blog !

It was a quick run to Lake Louise, enough to start the first sitting of brekkie, where we picked up a few passengers. It’s a short train at the moment, but will pick up a lot of carriages tomorrow from Jasper.

Our breakfast was delayed as we progressed the spiral tunnels, literally tunnels in mountains to reduce the grade enough as we descend from the Rockies. It can be quite confusing with the same mountain in front of you, popping up behind you ! The scenery is MAGNIFICENT

They are an amazing piece of engineering, but we were all summoned inside because of excessive diesel fumes when outside on the vestibule. It was our turn for food, with an amazing view of the Kicking Horse River passing thru it’s canyon. I white water rafted down this in 1986 with a group of Citroen enthusiasts (when I drove from Montreal to Vancouver to LA), I’m considerably older and wiser for such things now, but it remains as white knuckle memory…

The scenery opened up into Vistas of endless mountains and valleys, with more tunnels and bridges.

During lunch, notice a theme here ? we descended out of a valley into lush rolling farmlands, transitioning into a mighty lake and Canada’s house boat Capital.

Everybody waves at the train, including Doris featured on the Mighty Trains TV program, she got a free ride one year for waving at every train over many years. Using a walker now, she still waved to us from the front door.

Finally we joined up with the Highway to roll into Kamloops, I’m always interested in wheels, but most of them have 16 !