>>1247075Continued.
For the Maple Leaf, the train was delayed by about 3 hours, but I'll come onto that. The journey was something like 6 hours, or well, was supposed to be... Leaving Penn Station and making it onto the Empire Railroad was fine. I think around there, it's only Amtrak and the Metro North running on the same line, so no issues there. View onto the Hudson River in upstate NY was really worth the view and I loved that part of the journey as it was so memorable. Same Business Class experience though, which I had no complaints about. Pretty good in my opinion. I think the delays started up at around Albany, which I think was as a result of CSX or whoever the freight operator there was, but the delays were like 10-15 minutes long. More delays started up at around Syracuse and Rochester, but only really totalled up to about 35 minutes.
Being on the train as it crossed the Whirlpool Bridge over a sheer drop though was spectacular. Taking the train over Niagra is something I can't easily forget. Having a drop of maybe 200m down from the window of your train.... it's pretty epic.
Delays started from here on out. At the Canadian border, all passengers must detrain, oh, and the bar and restaurant were cleared out on the train before reaching the Canadian border. The train was then taken through Canadian customs and searched by the CBSA (Canadian Border Services Agency). We were warned that any possessions left on the train may be confiscated and destroyed by the CBSA by the Amtrak staff before they boarded on a train going back to the US.
The wait to go through the Canadian border took about an hour, longer than should have been the case, after that it was being questioned by CBSA officers who were highly suspicious of non-North Americans taking the train from the US to Canada and how I would leave Canada as well as why I wasn't taking a direct flight to the country I live in. The CBSA also thouroughly searched my luggage and basically swabbed all my stuff.
