This was an ongoing post series I had going on cohost.org starting on July 6, 2023 that eventually led to my friend, Tam and I going on a little train ride

I decided to look this up on Wikipedia:

The station is served by Via Rail’s The Canadian as a flag stop (48 hours advance notice required). The station is only served by westbound trains towards Vancouver. Eastbound trains call at Agassiz railway station along the CPR tracks, on the other side of the Fraser River. This split in service between Vancouver and Ashcroft is due to CN and CPR utilizing directional running through the Thompson- and Fraser Canyon.

Okay. So 48 hours notice is required to catch a train from Chilliwack to Vancouver. Let’s see how much it costs to book:

So it’s CA$32 to take a train, but they’re quoting me it’s five hours to do the entire trip? Here’s why it’s absurd:

I am guessing Via has zero expectations for being on time when arriving so they pad it out by 5 hours. Freight rail surprise surprise often causes delays.

I was curious, what does Chilliwack’s counterpart in Aggasiz look like?

So it looks slightly better but it is still a dreadful platform situation. Just like Chilliwack, it has zero accessibility. However, we have another station we can look at:

This is Abbotsford station. It’s literally in a farm field located 80 KM from Pacific Central. It’s the counterpart to this station:

Yes. This is a station and it’s gated off. Just like Aggasiz, this is the split service station to Abbotsford. It’s so dreadful. The irony is that this station is 1 KM away from this station which is used for the commuter rail into Vancouver’s Waterfront station:

It is entirely possible for Via Rail to have a platform at this station considering it passes by it, but for whatever reason they do not want to build a platform on the other side.

All of the trains that go to these Via Rail stations terminates or departs from this beautiful building:

Part of me wants to book a trip from one of these stations to Vancouver to just experience it, but the idea of dealing with an up-to five-hour delay seems like a really, really bad time.

If the employees at BC Transit in the Fraser Valley were not still on strike, I’d consider trying to do a loop between Downtown Vancouver, Mission City, and then back to where I started.

I sure as hell would not dare try this with Via Rail simply because the train -probably- arrives at 2 AM.

Look at these weird and awful trips I can do on Via Rail.

I visited two of the stations (Aug 12)

Mission Harbour (first) was gated but had a sign whereas Abbotsford (second) required me to trespass on a pothole-laden private road to get to it.

Yeah. This is abysmal.

I got some numbers today (Aug 21)

With Mission Harbour in 2019, it had 151 passengers board at the stop and 36 get off. Assuming 2 trains per week, at least one per was made to board and every 3-4 trains that pass through had someone get off at the stop.

Going to Abbotsford in the same year, it had 3 board and 193 leave. Over 50% of the time a train will have passengers get off at the stop and maybe every few months someone gets on there.

Planning some nonsense with a friend earlier this evening… (Aug 29)

Imagine booking a sleeper train for two for a mere 80 KM trip which should take 1.5h and leaves at 3 PM and yet spending this much.