All Aboard the Rocky Mountaineer Magnet

The railways in Canada, especially in the west, were a unifying force. A condition of British Columbia joining confederation was the completion of a transcontinental railway that linked the province to the rest of Canada. That said, the resulting railway, built through the Rockies, is an engineering tour de force and a most spectacular journey. We had planned to travel on the Rocky Mountaineer from Vancouver to Kamloops and then on to Banff, but alas the first day had to be cancelled because of forest fires. This image, though, is from deep in the Rockies, where the train line follows the Columbia River up towards Golden, British Columbia. The skies were clear here of the incredible, widespread pall of smoke that 'clouded' the first part...