The main destruction was limited to residential not commercial and "infrastructure" buildings according to news reports today (7/27). Out of 1,113 structures 358 were burned.
VIA Rail Canadian and the Canadians
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It indeed seems that the information I had received turned out to be unreliable, as Jasper Station indeed seems to have survived the fire and I couldn’t be any happier that the information I had shared here previously appears to have been factually wrong:
The latest I've read is that the fires in town will probably be out today. The National Park is still considered out of control. It's a lot to take in. CN is running trains through Jasper, so that is good news. I haven't seen an update on VIA, only that the Canadian is canceled until August 2. The devastation is unbelievable. We were evacuated from a fire in our mountain community many years ago. We will never forget leaving our home and wondering if it would still be standing when we came back. Many homes and businesses were lost. We were lucky. Ours wasn't touched. Still, seeing Jasper's fire brings our experience clearly into focus again.
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as is often the case when news is fast-changing like this, many reports were wrong. i saw on various facebook pages comments like "a firefighter said the station has burned down" etc etc. Sometimes people blatantly post wrong messages but also sometimes words get lost in translation. in the case of the post i mention--it sounds like a different train building did burn. it could be that building the firefighter was talking about. or saying something like "gas station" (not saying a gas station did burn down) could have been misinterpreted to be "train station".
Glad to see from that map how much was saved. Funny how they managed to not put in any of the many railroad tracks...
My personal takeaway is that even sources within VIA I see as absolutely trustworthy can only be as dependable as the information they have to rely on…
As a map concerned about the limits of properties and structures, there is no need to place railway tracks. As with any good map, it is important to decide what information is useful for the map‘s purposes and its users‘ needs and what information would just needlessly add to the ‚clutter‘…
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im not sure if the sources i mentioned were VIA or not but they were pretty adamant the train station had burned down. i do know the monitor of one facebook group im in is a VIA employee and he made sure to not comment specifically the condition of the train station. i think hes a good moderator.
I saw two very clear pictures taken of the station by a parks photographer on a very reliable site. There were 65 pictures in total, and two were of the station. They were taken after the fire in town was considered extinguished. Pictures included the high school, elementary school, fire hall, hospital, and many downtown buildings.
Here is the link to the pictures:
https://parks.canada.ca/pn-np/ab/ja...Oj7kpfUnHdXA_aem_S6uJoRUhm8Q68_ZG42YFuA#album
You have to scroll to the bottom and then choose the "Parks Canada Infrastructure" link to get to the depot pictures. I tried to capture the direct URL to the Parks Canada Infrastructure album, but it didn't take. The station is owned by Parks Canada, btw.
Note it is the official Government of Canada National Parks site. It ought to be authoritative irrespective of how adamant anonymous sources were. That is not to say it did not suffer water and/or smoke damage, that's unknown, but the photos clearly show it standing and intact.
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Thanks for the link. I had lost it.
When booking on the Via Rail website it won't let me change the country from Canada to the US, and requires a Canadian postal code. Is there a US version of the website I need to book on?
Edit: Nvm I just made an account and it let me change it
Edit: Nvm I just made an account and it let me change it
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It took me a while to figure out that "Parks Canada Infrastructure" was a separate tab from the pictures of various locations around the town of Jasper. I felt so clueless! Good to see that the station looks all right.
Don't feel stupid, it took me awhile, too.
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I find this "Jasper infrastructure" site highly illogical, like most computer stuff, but I finally managed to find some pictures I hadn't seen and it's good to see that so much of the town survived. I can't find any pictures of the train station. That gives me the impression that it's considered the least important building in town.
The station pictures are in the "Park Infrastructure" album since the station is owned by Jasper National Park.
The site is set up strangely and I have no idea why. It's an official Government of Canada page if that has anything to do with it. In any case the link here goes to the "Remaining Infrastructure" page. You have to scroll down past all those pictures to find the "Park Infrastructure" link. The station pictures are pretty much at the top of the Park Infrastructure page.
However, all the rest of the Park's own surviving infrastructure is on that same page along with the station. I doubt Jasper National Park considers its own infrastructure unimportant, especially on their own website. They just managed to arrange the links and access paths in an awkward fashion.
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I put our travel together online, and then I call VIA Rail. That way we can talk about which room we will actually get. The agent can also double check my itinerary and let me know if I have any discounts available in my account that would reduce the fare. I've never been a fan of doing it all online. having a second set of eyes has caught more than one error on my part.
I did this after making a reservation online and learned that VIA no longer has senior discounts, even though that option still exists. The agent advised me the AAA discount works and it did save me some money.
I was able to book online in May for a November VIA trip on the new system with a US address, including zip. I already had a VIA Preference account, though. However, there was a glitch with the credit card processing, that FNBO said originated with VIA, not them. FNBO said VIA was requiring some kind of extra, manual authorization from them, but the site wasn't giving me a message to that effect. Since the requirement wasn't originating from them, FNBO didn't send me a verification text, either. It took a human agent to look at it to see it. FNBO did what was required and it went through. Consistent with my generally excellent experience with FNBO, the agent stayed on the line with me until it went through.
I usually book with an agent, but was using a discount code that I interpreted as only being good for online bookings. I think I was wrong on that and from now on I will start with an agent irrespective of what I think the coupon says.
In any case, from the website's behavior, not just the credit card thing, it looks like they might as well have subcontracted its development to Amtrak IT
. However, my understanding it was a part of a wholesale replacement of the core ReserVIA system. It would be like Amtrak converting over to an ARROW replacement. So kudos to VIA for undertaking what had to have been a huge project to replace their core system, even if it was months late (not at all unusual for a project of that scale), with an awkward UI.
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I also had to confirm manually with my bank before purchasing it.
That's funny, last year I booked a November Candian trip online in May and had no problem with my FNBO credit card. Not sure if I had my VPN st to Canda, but I think not. From your description, it sounds like VIA decided to "upgrade" its website sometime in the past year. This seems to be a common problem when people upgrade their software, they don't do enough beta testing, or should I say that they let the customers do the beta testing.I was able to book online in May for a November VIA trip on the new system with a US address, including zip. I already had a VIA Preference account, though. However, there was a glitch with the credit card processing, that FNBO said originated with VIA, not them. FNBO said VIA was requiring some kind of extra, manual authorization from them, but the site wasn't giving me a message to that effect. Since the requirement wasn't originating from them, FNBO didn't send me a verification text, either. It took a human agent to look at it to see it. FNBO did what was required and it went through. Consistent with my generally excellent experience with FNBO, the agent stayed on the line with me until it went through.
I usually book with an agent, but was using a discount code that I interpreted as only being good for online bookings. I think I was wrong on that and from now on I will start with an agent irrespective of what I think the coupon says.
In any case, from the website's behavior, not just the credit card thing, it looks like they might as well have subcontracted its development to Amtrak IT
The upgrade happened late in 2023, though I don't recall more precisely than that. I didn't have any problems before that, either, though BoA always required verification for my VIA purchases, but that was clearly on their end, not VIA's.
I know they had problems with what had to have been late stage parallel and/or stess testing. They pulled the planned implementation a bit less than a month from their planned date after having trumpeted it publicly on their site and in emails for months. It was several months later before they finally pulled the switch, so they had to have been scrambling. They still don't have all their intended functionality, like being able to change seats/accommodations or a new app (the old one doesn't work with the new system).
My real complaint is the vague error message. That they put an extra credit card security step, probably for foreign cards, is fine, their perogative, and my guess is that was working as intended. The error message it threw says nothing material about what happened and so suggest how to proceed is not though. It should have been caught in testing, but more so, it feels more like a design or lazy programming issue to me.
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whenever i book trips on VIA (which is frequently) i use my amtrak credit cars and 99 percent of the time have to jump thru hoops to get the VIA system to accept the card as payment for the reservation. before then i get pop ups requiring text confirmation codes etc. sometimes i have to call bank of omaha.
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VIA of late tends to reject foreign credit cards. I just call the VIA agent after setting up the itinerary. Given the PNR and Credit/Debit Card info they can run the charge through
When I made my reservation online last week with my AGR card, no issues. Just received a text from FNBO to confirm the transaction. Easy peasy.
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