20 hours is by no means too much for me, but I think for now I have to hold off.

Saving my money for another trip to the final, don't you know.

I realize this form of transportation is outdated, slow and still relatively expensive, but in all honesty, i think a trip to Edmonton by train would be a blast. i know this idea will be shot down before it even gets off the ground because, frankly, it's just not practical. but just imagine the thought of 30 or so Dark Clouds taking over a train car and drinking and having a good time for the 19+ hours it would take to get there. that would be a pretty memorable trip.

reason #1 this will not work. for what ever reason, the US and Canada dont like to share railways. from what i've seen online, the Canadian railway we would need only crosses the US border to go to seattle, meaning a departure from winnipeg would be the only option.

reason #2 - major time factor - 'The Canadian' railway, goes from toronto to vancouver every 3 days or something like that. so in order to get to Edmonton by game day, the only departure from winnipeg is thursday the 2nd, travel on a train 19+ hours and arrive in edmonton early morning friday and couldn't catch a ride back to winnipeg until the 6th.

reason #3 - money money money - despite being a slower mode of transportation, round trip cost of just the train tickets would be somewhere around $390. plus hotel for 3 days and the cost of fuel to travel minneapolis to winnipeg. (and who knew it was only a matter of 20 minutes difference between winnipeg to minneapolis than winnipeg to duluth?) as KJ said, he found flights starting around $404.

like i said, it's really impractical, but it could be a lot of fun, lots of scenery, little responsibility while traveling and lots of booze. and this train does run to jasper for anyone considering the Eddies suggestion of going there as well. so maybe someday, if the NASL decides to get a team that is somewhere in western US, this could be a viable option.

and one other tidbit, no trains run south along the mississippi which for some reason i thought they would. so the thoughts of a train to san antonio would involve a train to chicago, switch lines, a train to dallas, to fort worth and south to austin and finally san antonio. all in all, well over 45 hours of traveling and i didnt even bother with pricing it out. 20 hours in a car doesnt sounds so bad anymore, huh?

I've looked into doing trips by train before because I have enjoyed them a lot in Europe and India. However, like you said, our rail system makes this impossible.

I had a friend take the train out to San Francisco, said it was great but was glad he only bought it one-way, and had planned on flying back.

[censored] it i'll go by train. Sounds fun.

I vaguely thought about trying to do a train trip way back when there were league opponents in Seattle, Portland and Vancouver. But I never really got beyond the thinking about it stage. Realistically, the only train trip that makes much sense would be if the Stars ever got drawn with away against the Fire for an Open Cup matach. Theoretically you could leave that morning and get there in time for the match, stay over night and then leave the next day. But even that, it looks like it wouldn't be overly convenient getting from the train station out to Bridgeview.

The game has been officially moved.
http://www.rowdiessoccer.com/index.php?id=52&newsid=1767

A shame they didn't move it to Sunday instead.

Pfutz, I was actually thinking about this and saw your post. Can you check it out and see what the price would be? If if is reasonable, I am in.

PS: Do they have wi-fi on trains?

They did on a train that Brenda recently took from DC to Philly.