The passenger coaches, known as "cars," on the Canadian railways are very different from the passenger carriages in England. You do not enter at doors in the sides, but you climb up to a platform at the end and enter from the platform. A gangway runs through the middle of the car from the one end to the other. In this way, even when the engine is running at full speed, you are able to travel all through the train, crossing from one car to the other by means of the platforms at the end of each. On each side of the gangway of the car are the seats, facing each other, and affording room for four passengers in each recess. At night the seats can be pulled out until they meet one another, and in that way they make a bed, on which the porter places mattresses and bedclothes and around which he hangs curtains. About one-half of the passengers generally sleep, however, above the heads of those who lie on the seats. High up, all along the sides of each gangway, there are big, broad shelves, which can be let down at night, and pushed up again out of the way in the daytime. It is on these shelves that many of the passengers sleep. Each "shelf" will hold two people.
At each end of each car there are dressing and washing rooms, and on emigrant sleeping-cars a recess holds a small stove for cooking. In the early morning, on an emigrant or colonist train, quite a crowd of people gather round the door of their little dressing-room, waiting their turns to get in, for the room is very tiny, and will not hold more than three persons at a time, especially when one is a man trying to shave without cutting his chin, for very often the cars shake and rattle, and even lurch and jump. Every man comes in his shirt-sleeves, and carries his towel and hair-brush, his soap or his comb; and whilst they stand about waiting their turns, there is generally a good deal of good-natured gossiping and jesting, especially if the train shakes much, and they stumble against one another. On a Pullman, or first-class sleeping-car, however, the accommodation is much better, and one can wash and dress almost as comfortably as in a good hotel.
Nearly all Canadians are great travellers. The large towns are mostly situated wide apart, and to get from the one to the other you generally have to make long journeys. In all countries railways are important features; but in Canada, owing to the vast distances and the way in which the population live scattered over the immense territory, the railways are of especial importance. Frequently the railway is the first pioneer in opening up a district for settlement, being built to reach a wealthy mine or a petroleum-field, and as the railway penetrates mile after mile into the unoccupied valley, little towns spring up alongside it. In this way the hoarse bray of the railway-engine awakens the sleeping echoes of mountain glen or river valley before the sound of the settler's axe is heard or the smoke of the emigrant's camp-fire seen. The two biggest railways in Canada are the Canadian Pacific Railroad, known in short form as the C.P.R., and the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad, or the G.T.R. Both these form a link, and a very important link, in the route between England on the one side and Japan, China, and Australia on the other.