VIA Rail's Canadian #2 ~ Vancouver to Edmonton ~ Summer Solstice 2022

31-Jul-2022 - Does anyone actually read these descriptions? When I uploaded my first train video last winter, I had all of ten subscribers, and the most popular post, a few hundred views, was part of my Adventures of the Tea Grannies series. Local jaunts around the Salish Sea, pretty gardens, flowers, and yummy afternoon teas had been my YouTube offerings for the very few family members and friends who knew I had a channel. Within a week, that train video doubled all my other videos combined, blowing me away. That's when I began to really explore the vast rail-fan community on YouTube. I mention three of YouTube channels I like in this video, but there are many others. With that first train video [   • VIA Rail's Canadian #1 ~ Edmonton to Vanco...  ], I just cobbled together the odd bits of footage that I had. With this offering, not only did I have significantly more daylight to work with thanks to the Summer Solstice, but also I realized that there are people from all over the world who may very well check this out, so I definitely did my best to share a little more Canadian history as I traversed one of the most historic routes in Western Canada. I actually start this journey on another train, Vancouver's mass transit SkyTrain [https://www.translink.ca/schedules-an...], taking it to VIA Rail's Pacific Central Station [https://www.viarail.ca/en] to hop aboard its Canadian #2 to Toronto. I'll only go as far as Edmonton, the starting point for my winter video, because I have family there and had a reunion to attend. I'll spot a couple of other train travel opportunities along the way, the Rocky Mountaineer [https://www.rockymountaineer.com/] and West-Coast Express [https://www.translink.ca/schedules-an...] as well as the seriously big and historic steam engine locomotive 6015 in Jasper [http://www.visit-jasper.com/things-to...]. Other highlights of the route include the stunning farming community of Agassiz, the former gold rush boomtown of Yale [https://historicyale.ca/the-wickedest...], Simon Fraser's famous Hell's Gate http://www.hellsgateairtram.com/, and the stunning Pyramid Creek waterfall [https://bcparks.ca/explore/parkpgs/py...]. The late-setting sun of the solstice allowed me to film the devastation in Lytton, which burned to the ground almost exactly a year earlier after setting Canada's heat record, indeed the temperature record for anywhere in the world north of 45° latitude to that point. I had planned to do this video in two parts, sticking to my personal limit of half an hour per video, until I realized that Lytton would end the first part on the most bleak example of climate change British Columbia has to offer. I prefer happy endings, so this is now my longest video by far. It is offered with love to all you train fans out there, and I hope you enjoy it! :-)