Train Beyond the Mountains

A captivating blend of memoir, travel, and history profiling one of the world's most famous trains and the dramatic, picturesque route it follows—and sharing a host of fascinating stories along the way.

Rick Antonson has ridden trains in more than thirty countries—but everything he thinks he knows about train travel changes when he boards the Rocky Mountaineer with his ten-year-old grandson, Riley. As they wind over trestles and through tunnels, each mile of track uncovers stories of dynamite and discovery, surveyors and schemers, explorers and visionaries, and the people who helped to build Canada against the odds of geography and politics. Surrounded by a wild landscape that sparks imagination, fellow passengers recount train travels in other countries, get nostalgic for the era of steam locomotives, and consider life’s unfinished journeys.

Peppered with spirited dialogue, heartrending vignettes, and intriguing anecdotes, Train Beyond the Mountains is a travelogue with urgency: to make your travel dreams happen now. As one passenger muses, "the mistake we make is that we think we have time."

Rick Antonson has travelled on trains in thirty-five countries and is co-author of a book of railway stories, Whistle Posts West: Railway Tales from British Columbia, Alberta and Yukon. He and his two sons, Brent and Sean, circumnavigated the Northern Hemisphere by train over the course of five trips, travelling through countries as varied as Belarus, Mongolia, and North Korea. Rick and his wife, Janice, became engaged on a train in Alabama en route to New Orleans. Rick is the former president and CEO of Tourism Vancouver, and served as chair of the board for Destinations International, based in Washington, D.C., and vice chairman of the Pacific Asia Travel Association, based in Bangkok, Thailand. He was vice-president of Rocky Mountaineer during its start-up years in the early 1990s. Train Beyond the Mountains is his fifth travel narrative.