Most of the rail lines in Canada have been upgraded to continuously welded rail about a decade ago.

Most class 1 railroads use welded rail on their mainlines now, including CN and CPKC

it’s also the quality of the train cars

Ha.... most rails in Canada are welded... Jointed rails are almost all gone now, expect in a few places.

@@trainboy1979 Yet with his welded rail, there are more heat restriction than in the past with jointed rail... Those gaps allow the steel rails to expand and contract as the temperature changes from the hot summer months to the frozen winter months... With welded rail the tracks become like spaghetti noodles when they expand and contract causing MORE DERAILMENTS, and thus more speed restrictions...

The rail lines need to be smooth or separated from the bumpy freight rail lines.

I took the Sofia-Varna night train once. It had one sleeper car and about 9 or 10 seating cars.

Extremely long overdue. Sleeper trains and high speed rail lines need to be a high priority in funding and USA transportation.

Well, if the tracks were open access, the other private companies would likely be very happy to share maintenance cost for the tracks to ensure they are smooth and high quality. Not so much when they tracks are owned and operated by one company. Just like any infrastructure, they're not incentivized to increase the service quality since all they move are freight that do not care much, if at all, about track quality.

@@zeighy Yet, the government doesn't have the financial resources to buy the tracks from the freight railroads. Nor does the government have the financial resources to maintain and sustain the tracks. Don't confuse local metro commuter rail networks with trans continental rail networks. Furthermore, the major freight railroads that controls most of the tracks in North America are the richest political powerbrokers of Canada and the United States... The likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, among others... Never ever betray the kingmakers...

None of the rail advocates mention the MAIL... In North America during the heydays of passenger trains long before the jet airliners were a thing, passenger trains had on their consists a dozen or more MAIL cars... Notice at many of the older railroad stations and depots the post office is literally next door or across the street... VIA wasn't created by PT until RN created Amtrak after PennCentral went bankrupt. PennCentral the railroad operating America's Northeast Corridor lost its mail contracts... It never was about passengers, the mail carried the day...

Sounds like you need to ditch your rampant capitalism, or rather a super skewed version of it, it's become more like some kind of monopolistic capitalism, - like in communism, except the monopoly is in private hands who do not need to compete as a lot of eg. price fixing is going on, shame😕

Yeah good luck getting freight railroads to give them priority/permission. There’s a law in the US where Amtrak trains have priority but it rarely happens and is never enforced

99 mph for the current ones, only the new ones that will be introduced next year will be able to reach 142 mph.

They can only go 90-100mph and and that’s already pretty good, sleeper trains are for sleeping so speed is not really important

@@CreatorPolar It's for sleeping, but also for travelling: the faster they go, the further you can go overnight.

Most of Amtrak's and VIA's rolling stock and locomotives are quite capable of doing speeds over 79 MPH, 125 km/ph, its the signals that keep that the top speed on almost all of the tracks, notice not ALL of the tracks...

Just have to keep Habs and Bruins fans in different coaches

Very long overdue. Rail line need to built for Boston to Montreal route.

@@counterfit5 The line they are proposing isn't through the "notch" sadly.

There's no direct train between Brussels and Barcelona.

@@slasherfun lol i live in Belgium and Bruxelles midi is in front of my house. I think I know better than you 😂

@@ammarmangala9814 Sorry, but the fact that you live in Belgium won't make a direct train between Brussels and Barcelona magically appear. There are direct trains between Barcelona and Marseille, Lyon, and Paris, but none go further North so far. And the direct train that goes the furthest south from Brussels ends at Perpignan.

@@ammarmangala9814 ​​⁠​⁠can you give me the exact timetable of that Bruxelles Midi - Barcelona train you talk about? Departure time? Train number? Platform? Intermediate stations? I checked the timetable of all intercity and highspeed traffic departing out of Bruxelles-Midi, but I could not find any direct train to Barcelona. Maybe you have some inside information not known to the outside world? Enlighten us please. This is important information given the demand for direct trains. The more you know…

Best we can do is a standard greyhound in the middle of the night.

THat is also caused by the issue addressed in the video. Because the lines are pretty much all owned by freight companies they prioritise their freight. That is true in planning a route like in the video, but also in signalling once the train is scheduled. So often in North America is a train delayed because of a freight train.

You took a train from Montreal to Halifax in order to catch a flight out of Halifax? 🤔

@@abcdeshole yes lol

He got off in Halifax. Where is the story about the rail line to the 'new deep-water port' of Sydney, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. A line that's been laying in wait for a decade.

Not to mention it gets to Buffalo in the middle of the night both ways. No thank you; that place is scary enough in the daytime.

I mean in places where this happens it doesn’t really deter people that much from taking the train. Also if you add a 12 hour schedule or a couple daylight intercity trains it isn’t all bad

Not even close to reality. That VIA train from Montreal to Halifax doesn't even run daily. And it is the only VIA passenger train east of the province of Quebec!

I don’t think anyone recommends attempting to travel 21 hours on a train in a coach seat.

The high price of sleeper accommodation in US and I assume Canada rules out a sleeper for most travelers.

​@@richardhazlett7070agreed ! I think those long distance trains in North America are for 'tourists'.

Parallel passenger only tracks will work better.

Isn’t that what I said?@@maroon9273

BREXIT didn't stop a Glasgow to Lyon sleeper. We were never in Schengen so there would have to be a passport check however there's nothing to stop a passport check in Glasgow just like Eurostar travel from London to France.

@@mikefish8226 I know but it made it even more politically infeasible.

@@user-vv6vu1xj7t Politically it's fine. It's the logistics, no-one other than Eurostar puts passenger trains through the tunnel, even going to effort of not selling their old trains so no-one else can use them. The biggest blocker is passport control and security, you need a large secure area to process and hold passengers even St Pancras which is designed for this struggles. Personally I'd love a night train to Europe, do say Glasgow-Manchester (via HS2) then on to Europe but not having it isn't BREXIT's fault.

@@mikefish8226 You really think it's politically "fine" (accepted) to join schegen area. Then why didn't it happen under multiple labour governments let alone tory governments.

@@user-vv6vu1xj7t No-one said anything about joining Schengen. Please re-read then acknowledge your mistake.

It's very different on every country's network actually: a ride in Finland will be smooth, while a ride in the Balkans... well not so much.

In North America there's too much collusion between corporations and government. Thus its not proper capitalism.

I've seen articles saying that economic mobility is better in Europe than in the home of the American dream.

... almost as bad as the "Deutche ban" one...

Because gas companies lobbied the government to destroy the rail infrastructure and make it as inconvenient as possible to use.

You're terribly closed minded. You've taken the worst example of rail on Earth, and assumed it is the only way to do rail. If you've seen Paige's video on that topic you'd know why it is so expensive. It is the cheapest, and most efficient way to travel on Earth. Just not in Canada.

Wow you sure showed me! That's crazy how the laws of physics work differently in Canada! @@dylanc9174

@@dylanc9174 I've experienced execelent rail service... in other countries. Even here service used to be good in terms of price, frequency and coverage but successive governments for decades have cut funding in favour of roads and air travel. It's only in the last few years that they've *started* to move more towards the European model and even that is politicized with high speed rail being built in areas that don't need it, but contain ridings the government wants to win/keep, over where people actually live and work. Hence the routing from Toronto to Montreal via Peterborough and Ottawa and the *north side* of the St Lawrence between Montreal and Québec City (even though there's already good existing options). If the train service of my or my father's youth still existed I'd be happy to use it (and did back when it was a viable option, along with good bus service).

@@cstephen98 I don't know what is your experience but I live where it's the norm and I took night trains and they were far cheaper and much more relaxing than flights+food+accommodations. Of course, if you expect a luxury compartment you'll pay more but you can get a good night sleep in a couchette which can cost around 100€, which in many of them includes breakfast. A cabin is around 200€ for a single but much lower per passenger for more, like couples, family or a group of friends. this is far cheaper than driving/flying + hotel. As for transport, unlike trains the state of public transport in Canada is pretty good for North America and, with inter city rail, should also be expended. If you want to be more like other countries you will need to invest in local public transport as well. In any case, you can still rent a car if you want. When people use trains train stations have all kinds of services, including car rental agencies at the station that are, surprisingly, open. I'm from Barcelona. The rain station has restaurants, shops, all the big car rental agencies that are open every day all day (some even from 7am to 11pm), regional services, 2 metro lines, buses and plenty of taxis at all times. If you take a regular service long distance/high speed train the ticket includes free regional rail transfer to/from the station in both the origin and the destination (up to 4h before departure and 4h after arrival) - this is all over Spain, not just in Barcelona. When you provide good rail service train station are like the airport, with all the services you want, just at the city center and without the hustle (you can board a train up to 2 minutes before departure, although I'll give it it 10-20 minutes).

Yes. And you could come back as a tourist to full one of those long distance sleepers. Ah, rail travel in (most of) Canada is in a sad state.

Canada has more territory to cover with less people to serve.

Could be. But it might just be the "extra" charge for all the scenery. HaHa.

At least no more than 8-10 hours.

True, but the revival in night train travel is. Even just 10 years ago, the night train sector across Europe was seeing mass closure of lines, notably lead by the, at the time, biggest operator, CityNightLine. A consortium made by Deutsche Bahn and SBB, the national railways of Germany and Switzerland. They did this due to lower than wanted passener numbers, plus smaller returns compared to high speed rail and other offerings, plus competition from budget airlines. By the end of 2015 CityNightLine had become a thing of the past. But ÖBB, the Austrian state railways stepped in and still saw viability in several routes, and together with SBB, took over a number of the remaining services and modernised the service. Including with the new service rebrand of "Nightjet" which matched ÖBB's other service types like their High Speed 230km/h "Railjet" trains. Needless to say Nightjet has been a huge success, which has also influenced other operators, both state owned and private, and revived interest in these trains. Especially as people were starting to become more environmentally concious at the time. Plus for private companies and others, there were still plenty of unused CityNightLine carriages lying around, waiting to be put back to use. But all of this has also caused a new issue, which is that operators are running out of hand-me-down trains to affordably buy. There isn't much left and what is left is often so run down it's seen as unviable to modernise. Leaving operators with options to either bear the cost of getting brand new trains, or take another existing old train, not built for night operation, and rebuild it to night train specifications. Though as state operators like ÖBB and Trenitalia (who actually have the cash available) are now going ahead with buying brand new factory fresh night trains, it means their older trains can become available on the market as hand-me-downs for private operators and leasing companies to grab.

I've also been kind of surprised by the open competitive market as main argument while in France the EU obsession with competitive free market is perceived as one of the main factor to the decline of the different previously exclusively state regulated markets (energy and transport being the most discussed ones).

unless it's cheap enough

And mismanage then like the government already with CN before having to privatize.

That's funny !!! So, you heard Canada came about because of the railway !

Yeap, right up there with intercity buses.

CBC propaganda

Funny joke, Cletus. @@theracer6882

Because the train is less stressful, it replaces the need for a hotel (add this to the 60€ flight), at the city center with public transport connections (also add this to the transport to/from the airport) and you get a full day after a goodnight sleep. Apart from that, if you'll invest in it the train to Halifax will be faster.

Night trains are great for business travelers as well, they can arrive to morning meetings much more comfortably than by air or car.

Did you watch the video though before commenting or just read the headline....it literally explains that! This is factoring in travel time to airport, airport security, and requirements to be at the gate in advance of boarding. Also, Halifax the city is quite far from their airport.

It's unfortunate VIA rail was so gutted. The ocean line could be profitable, if people actually took it. But thanks to slow lines, and freight priority it takes almost 16 hours to get from Montreal to Moncton.

@dylanc9174 That is why they are trying to build their own tracks. The CN public trade is joke. They become profitable by cutting losing money lines and pricing up remote routes.

​@dylanc9174 tue problem is unlike highways , rail corridors aren't nationalized. This is why the network has not expanded. Look at other 7G country were so behind in transportation infrastructure it's an embarrassment. While Spain managed to revived and bring one if the faster train service in Europe in just a couple of years, in the opposite end were a decade stuck in talking about high speed rail between Toronto and Montreal with no progress at all

@@MrAlen6e We aren't serious about rail, just like how we're hot serious about fixing our housing issue. We need serious leadership with real interest in these matters.

@@dylanc9174EXACTLY MY FRIEND EXACTLY

Government regulations along with two huge monopolies CN and CP preventing other competitors from entering the rail market.

​@@kiddo817they all priotized airline over rail.

Canada and the US have a combined population of 350 million, equivalent of the EU and growing at a faster rate. Dense population corridors like Montreal, Toronto, NYC, Boston, Chicago require multiple modes of transit including good, reliable, and affordable passenger rail. We ain’t talking about some fantasy high speed rail here, just basic essential passenger rail infrastructure that Canada and the US used to lead the world with not so long ago. Nowadays, the rail infrastructure quality has deteriorated so much in some parts of eastern Canada and the US that it’s almost impossible to run freight trains.