The Canadian departs Vancouver in Real Time

In my youth, back when it was still run by Canadian Pacific in its original maroon livery and beaver-topped shields, I had the good fortune to make several trips across Canada on The Canadian. Many years later in 2012 I decided to make it the subject of some footage I was shooting with my brand new video camera.

Not content with just a single clip, I shot more footage and before I knew it I had accumulated a quite lot of material, which gave me the idea to put it all together and fill in the gaps so I could have a record of its entire journey as it left Pacific Central Station here in Vancouver and made its way through Burnaby, New Westminster, and across the Fraser River.

It turned out to be a lengthy project. The train departs Vancouver at 8:30PM, so shooting was only possible for a few weeks before and after the summer solstice when the sun sets late enough. Combine that with weather challenges, late departures and other issues, and it ended up taking six years to collect enough footage to document the entire run of about 30 minutes.

So here is the result: a presentation of the journey of The Canadian, with the original recorded sound, in approximately real time from when it leaves Pacific Central Station to it's crossing of the Fraser River in New Westminster.

Although edited to look like the continuous journey of a single train, it is of course composed of shots captured over several years - so there are countless "continuity" issues: different cars and locomotives in the consist, differences in the cars or lack thereof being deadheaded at the front end of the train, routing via different tracks, and even different livery as Via Rail introduced their "Prestiege" class cars.

For the curious, this was shot on the following equipment:

Pansonic X900M camcorder
GoPro Hero 3 Black
Sony RX100 Mark 2 and 4
Panasonic GH3 and GH5