Trip Report: Montreal to Toronto by VIA Rail
There are four ways to get between Montreal and Toronto: driving, airplane (either to the main airport Pearson (YYZ) or City Centre (YTZ)), bus (Greyhound or Megabus), and VIA Rail. I generally avoid buses, and VIA Rail was $70 one-way compared to $120 for the airplane, even after a 50% off discount code on both Air Canada and Porter. The train journey took 5 hours with a 10 minute delay arriving in Toronto, about 1.5-2 hours longer than the plane including transit time to/from airport and time waiting in security.
Every train system around the world operates somewhat differently, so this post is to help others who like myself have never taken VIA Rail between Montreal and Toronto (other routes may operate differently). In Canada, as with Amtrak, the confirmation you print out from booking online is not a ticket. You must physically go to the station and exchange it for a paper boarding pass.
An attendant stood at the top of the stairs leading to the platform, checking tickets and also monitoring the baggage you would take on board. Here's the line waiting for our tickets to be checked.
He immediately told me that my bag would not fit underneath the seat which was the only storage space. He said I could try to fit it in the baggage sizer, and indeed it was a bit too fat. Keep in mind that this very same bag fit underneath a pair of Air Canada CRJ705 seats on my way to YUL a few days ago! This agent was very polite, though, and gave me a bag tag and told me to bring it to the platform to the porters there. When I claimed the bag, I found out that my carry-on was even honored with a yellow "heavy" tag! If you click and enlarge the picture below, you can see that the stricter carry-on guidelines requiring the use of the baggage template applies more so if you're traveling on the "Rennaisance" train.
The 5:00 train from Montreal was operated by the "Renaissance" train, which were originally designed and built for operation in the Channel Tunnel and for which VIA Rail got a great price because they were unwanted by anyone else, as I learned from reading rail fanatic message boards. I can see why storage space on this train was particularly tight - the only storage space is underneath the seat you are sitting in. The diagonal space you see in the picture below is where you can store your stuff.
There are overhead racks, however they are tiny. Mine just fit my waist-length peacoat. Anything else would have a problem fitting. I did notice that on the end of the car there was a shelf where someone stored their suitcase. So I was confused how he was able to bring his suitcase.
On the other hand, at baggage claim I saw suitcases much smaller than mine waiting to be claimed, so obviously people even check tiny suitcases. Baggage claim in Toronto is just like an airport! Except the bags come out immediately: just think, the train has less than 15 minutes at the station in Toronto before continuing on, so they must be speedy in unloading baggage.
How to tell if your service is operated by the "Renaissance" train? When you're looking at the train schedules, click on the number of the train. A window will pop up with "Important information about this trip." In the Carry-on baggage section, it will say you can carry one bag on, instead of two. Also, the address of the pop-up window will look something like this: https://reservia.viarail.ca/tools/viewclassinfo.aspx?c0=Q&t0=67&e0=REN&s=0 See the "REN" towards the end? That means "Renaissance." On this route, the other option is "LRC" which is similar to the Acela Express trains.
In the middle of the trip, an alarm sounded in my car for about 15 minutes (a series of 3 loud beeps, a pause, and then beeps again). Not only did it wake me from my sleep and was highly annoying, strangely no employee came by to investigate until a fed up passenger finally got up and looked for one. It took three of them about five minutes to figure out how to turn off the alarm.
Aside from this incident, and the limited storage space on board, I would still consider taking VIA Rail in the future. It's not smooth like the intercity (or even local) trains in Netherlands or Germany, but it was relatively quiet and there was free wifi on board that was pretty fast. The phone agents I spoke with were unbelievably rude, but the station agents and on board conductor were friendly. You do also have the benefit of departing from and arriving in the downtown of both cities.
