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Sorry, I should have made clear that our experience was last month. The closures were Covid-related and - one hopes - temporary. The short crossing we took were Horseshoe Bay-Langdale, the one further north (to Powell River), and Powell River to Comox.

When we were there, the buffets were out of action on the short crossings. It was operating on the long Port Hardy-Prince Rupert route, and actually wasn’t too bad.

I like this positive mindset. It’s the same in golf - when you slice off the tee 20 yards into the rough, you’re still one shot nearer the hole.

Dredging my photographs, here is York station a few years ago. A rebuilt Bulleid Pacific - SR Merchant Navy class - Wikipedia - happened to be passing through with a steam special excursion. Note the fine overall roof.

York is often cited as one of the most liveable cities in Britain. In railway terms alone it enjoys a fantastic service to/from London - a train every half hour, taking under two hours for the 188 miles. The fastest is 1:48 - all on lines completed by 1852 (no high speed line).

You should be fine with Oyster on those type of journeys. As you say, you don’t actually need to get an Oyster card. Smartphones will work and the same applies to a credit or debit card with a chip in it also. There must be thousands of Oyster cards sitting around the world with a few pounds on...

And, of course, York has the National Railway Museum - which is fantastic.

Reading between the lines, I suspect he may have thought - bearing in mind that the train was non-stop from Paris to London - that he was OK to do as he pleased once the train left Paris. If so, that was an error.

It will be Euston. There used to be several through trains, but it seems to be down to one a day at present - possibly the pre-Covid schedule hasn’t been restored. If you have to change - at Crewe - the connections are usually OK. Whether the connection between ferry and train is as good is a...

Here’s the final ferry of our Canada trip. BC’s Northern Expedition is a serious vessel, seen in the first photo at Port Hardy with her bow visor up. She also has a substantial (post-Estonia) inner bow door, and the stern ramp is pretty solid too. The 22-hour crossing to Prince Rupert includes...

A tenuous link, but here is a picture of the Park car on the rear of the Canadian at Jasper yesterday, when we happened to be passing. Also a rather splendid 4-8-2.

The weather changed today… This was the view from the early Powell River to Comox trip aboard Salish Eagle. To be fair, she rode the choppy crossing very well. Later, we took the Mill Bay-Brentwood Bay ferry across the Saanich Inlet aboard Krista - a very pleasant alternative approach to...

Yes, it was indeed taken at the extreme east end of the station. The GO train from Toronto pulls up some way before that point. The speed restriction as far as the lift bridge over the Welland Canal is very slow - I’m guessing 20 km/h. The date on the rails in my photo was 1945. The GO trip...

The Royal York is a bit sad in pandemic mode. We spent four nights at the end of last week, and no spontaneous cocktails etc. But Fairmont were much more on top of their game in Vancouver, when we moved on there. Tenuous link, but while we were in Toronto we went to Niagara (on GO, but the route...

Two more today from British Columbia - Hoseshoe Bay to Langdale, and then Earls Cove to Saltery Bay (for Powell River). It’s a very interesting landscape from a transport perspective. Langdale to Powell River - the Sunshine Coast - comprises two sections of mainland BC which are islands in all...

Well, at the risk of influencing you one way or the other, the breakfast was sufficiently good for me to photograph it…

I did do the Schweitzerhof a few years ago. It was certainly expensive, but I thought it was worth it, and you get this view (the original train shed in vv’s photo runs left to right within the building I have photographed). I wanted to do London to Florence via the original St Gotthard route...

More accurately, *his* haphazard way… 🙂

It is frequently stated that the GC was built to a more generous loading gauge, but this is actually an urban myth. The Channel Tunnel aspirations of Sir Edward Watkin were real enough, however. As you say, restoration of the line north of Ashendon Junction would be all but impossible. It was...

Well, here’s the first one - St Siméon to Rivière du Loup in Quebec. That’s crossing the St Lawrence estuary from the north bank to the south. It’s a b-I-I-I-g river at this point. We’re waiting to board the ferry just arriving. Crossing is just over an hour.