The last time I took a VIA train across the country, or half way across, which is still a multi-day journey, was during the 1980s when the government was making extensive cuts to rail service across Canada.  My trip was shortly after the Hinton disaster, in which 23 passengers died after a head on collision with a freight train. All the passengers on my trip were talking about the disaster, not that they were “that worried about it”, but clearly we all were, and were trying to talk our way in to making sense of the tragedy. Needless to say, the atmosphere was dismal, and the demise of passenger train travel seemed imminent. When our daughter invited me to the Edmonton Folk Festival this…