As the lights of Vancouver, British Columbia's eastern suburbs slid away across the wide, placid Fraser River, the woman seated in front of me in the domed viewing car put her arm around her husband and gently leaned on his shoulder. I took a sip of my sparkling wine, nibbled on a filo-wrapped savory, and thought, this must be what is meant by "the romance of the rails."

I was traveling east to Edmonton, Alberta, on VIA Rail Canada's Canadian line, whose refurbished 1950s coaches evoke the heyday of railway travel. After crossing the Fraser, we would head north and east, deep into British Columbia, before picking up the river again at its Moose Lake headwaters and then entering Jasper National Park in Alberta. The 24-hour one-way journey is beautiful any time of year but especially now, when the Rockies are mantled with snow.

The Canadian line is not the only inviting winter train excursion in the West. Other trips--both multiday and less expensive one-day excursions--lead into the Cascade Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and the Rockies. Seeing the West's great mountain ranges in their white coats, from the comfort of a dining or observation car, is an experience you owe to yourself at least once.

From recklessness to reality

Like most of the West's great rail routes, the one the Canadian travels has a riveting history. When, in the late 1800s, Canadian Prime Minister John A. McDonald proposed that a Canadian transcontinental railway stretch west from Ottawa to entice distant British Columbia to join the fledgling union, the plan was called "an act of insane recklessness." And looking at the geography involved, the plan still seems crazy. The government sought to construct a railroad almost 1,000 miles longer than any yet built, through land still largely unsettled by white people, and wanted it completed within 10 years.

In the end, they built two transcontinental routes: a government-funded, more southerly one through Banff, Alberta, and a privately built northern one through Edmonton--the route I took.