Day 5 Tuesday 28th April 2009 Still on board the "Canadian

Day 5. Tuesday 28th April 2009 still on board the “Canadian”
We awoke at 5:50am just before sunrise. The landscape was brown/grey rolling countryside with small hills rising to about 3metres. It was cattle grazing land with no cattle in sight. The grass had not yet started to grow. Small patches of snow still lay on the ground. Altitude was 550meters. At 6:10am we stopped at a small village to pickup two passengers. There is a salt mine 1127 meters underground. The landscape became flatter wheat country. The stubble from last season’s crop was everywhere. There were no signs of the coming seasons tilling and planting. I guess the soil temperature is not yet warm enough. At 8:45 were arrived at Saskatoon and once again I was to find a wireless network at the station. The time is 10:15am Mountain Time and we have just stopped at a small town named Watrous; altitude 505 metres. Watrous is noted for its mineral hot springs; the accumulated salt in adjacent Little Manitou Lake gives the water greater buoyancy than the Dead Sea. At a nearby petrol station petrol was 91.9cpl. At 11:15am we had climbed back up to 800 meters; the sky darkened and snow started to fall again. It was quite nice actually as it made the dry brown countryside look quite pretty especially on some small fir trees. When we stopped at Melville for ten minutes to pick up some passengers; the bravest of our party alighted to experience the climate and take photos. The temperature was freezing; after a couple of quick photos I rushed back on to the warm train and sat down for lunch. Shortly after, the announcement was made to advance our timepieces by one hour from Mountain Time to Central Time. The time now is 3:50pm; we have been travelling from day break (and possibly sooner) until now travelling through the same dry brown grass and wheat stubble, except where the snow prettied it up. The scene is gradually changing; we are now seeing cattle; no more snow. I have just seen a cultivated field with fresh green grass. Every now and then we see some buildings with a big man made mountain of a white substance nearby; a crewman said it was discarded salt extracted from potash being mined in the area. I am whiling away the time by keeping up to date with this diary and writing letters while Fay is g. We have arrived at Winnipeg about 7:30pm one hour early. We do not depart until 10:30pm. This is a main refuelling, provisioning station and crew change station. We are over half way to Toronto. We have travelled 2523km from Vancouver in 46 hours. We have another 1943km to go.