Last summer, I took a train from Toronto to Niagara Falls. I went over my experiences going to Montreal
the previous year in a thread, but the train to the Falls seemed a no-brainer.
I won't be using VIA again. It's just too weird and shitty. The ride from Toronto to Hamilton was OK, if ludicrously slow, but then we just started stopping for 10-20 minute periods every few kilometres. This happened five or six times between Hamilton and the Falls, and at no point did the driver provide any information over the loudspeaker. It was as if the arrival time stated on the ticket had no weight whatsoever, and that everybody just knew that the train would arrive whenever it did.
On SJ, I would have received a full refund for such a trip.
So that's it. It's just too slow and lame. And it's not as if we don't know how to do it -- I also used several GO trains, which were every bit as comfortable and efficient as any commuter system I've ever been on -- but VIA just sucks. I do not support privatization, but this company should be mercy-killed and a new Crown rail corporation built from scratch.