Friday, June 16, 2023. Good news: The earplugs helped! Bad news: I was woken up out of my doze at about 11pm by Mackenzie shaking me to indicate that she was going to puke! Boy, that killed any sleepy vibes that were settling in! Thankfully, our berths are right beside the bathrooms and I was able to get  her into the bathroom far enough that she at least made it to the sink. After loosing all of her dinner, I was able to get her and the bathroom all cleaned up, and left her sitting on a stool in the bathroom hugging a trash can while I hunted down some saltines. Thankfully, some of the staff was still sitting up in the dining car and happy to oblige. After some nibbles of the crackers and a dose of Dramamine, she was back in her bunk and I put my earplugs back in for some real sleep. 

The next morning was pretty uneventful. Mackenzie was feeling better and I had a little more productive night’s sleep. 

The highlights:

• Lunch: ginger beef
• Dinner: prime rib
• Ellie nearly skunked me at cribbage! She managed two back-to-back hands of 24 points! I still think Carson was helping her cheat…
• Stopped to stretch our legs in Saskatoon and grabbed a cache just outside of the parking lot.

But here is where our day got interesting. Once we were all boarded and ready to go, they closed all the doors but the train wasn’t leaving. They went ahead and started serving lunch. (This wasn’t supposed to happen until we were moving again.) During lunch, the train finally departed and we were on our way again without any word on why we were delayed.

However, this advancement was short lived. As we made our way into Unity the train came to a stop and we were not sure what was going on. We took this opportunity to hang out in the Skyline car to read and maybe learn more about our delays. After sitting for a bit, we received word that a freight train had derailed not far in front of us! Details were coming in slowly, so we were not sure how long we would be stalled nor what our next move would be.

After about a half hour, the train left the station in Unity. But this again didn’t last very long before we came to a stop. Without any additional information, Ellie and I went back to our berth to take a nap and Mackenzie and Carson stayed behind in the Skyline car playing Zelda. After about another half hour, the train started moving again. Seeing as I was asleep, I am not sure how long we had been moving, but I woke up sometime later and saw that we were passing a freight train slowly. Ellie was still asleep and I went to the bathroom. When I came back our berth mate had just finished videoing the passing train. I made some comment about wondering what was going on and he informed me that the train we just passed was the derailed freight train. 

What we learned later is that a freight train (not sure what it was carrying) derailed in a section of the line with two parallel tracks. When the freight train derailed, it happened in the center of the train, so the front and rear portions were still on the tracks. Thankfully, it appeared like the engineers may have been bounced around a bit, but should have been able to walk away okay. Unfortunately, there were several mangled cars and the tracks were torn out of place. It’s going to take some time and work to repair that stretch. However, the other parallel track did not appear damaged and the derailed cars fell away from the second set of tracks, leaving them in operation. Because of this, the RTC (Rail Traffic Control) allowed our lighter passenger train to traverse this section at a slow speed; I’m not sure if they were allowing other heavier freight through. Very scary all in all, but also very fortunate as it could have been a lot worse!

We ended our day tucking the girls into bed and heading up to the top of the Skyline car to catch the setting sun. Editor’s note: We had a longer scheduled stop in Edmonton, but we were getting in so late due to the delay that we both decided to stay on the train.