And for more info on the White Pass & Yukon Railroad, drop by Boerries Burkhardt’s excellent fan site.

Glacier Station

PAGY Approach

PAGY Apron

Skagway Bulk Terminal

Skagway Tank Farm

Temsco Terminal – Skagway

PAGY Terminal

Venus Mine

Here are some shots from the areas I contributed to for this project.  These are still beta and not final.

Skagway floatplane terminal

Skagway Container Yard

Bennett

Carcross Campground

Carcross CBD

Carcross Airport

Carcross Hanger

Fraser Station

Fraser

• Skagway cruiseship terminal
• Skagway floatplane base. (7K2)
• Temsco helicopter terminal
• Skagway airport (PAGY)
• White Pass & Yukon train model
• Glacier Station
• Fraser Station
• Bennett Station
• Carcross airport (CFA4)
• Carcross floatplane base (CEB7)
• Carcross town centre including custom buildings and bridges and seasonal objects
• Venus mine site (this one you have to find!)

Got lots of help from Chris Clack, Neil Hill, Alex Goff, Tim Harris and of course Holger Sandmann.

Release date has not been announced, but watch the ORBX site for details.

But my main incentive to explore Telus was my desire to see all the games of the Montreal Canadiens, which would require the French sports network, RDS, which Shaw only offers in Standard Definition (SD).  Telus offers the HD feed.

So to make a long story a little shorter, I switched to Telus, despite the dire warnings from Shaw that I wouldn’t get the internet speeds promised, I found that I did get the promised 1Mb/s upload, and 14.5Mb/s download consistently.  And I found the following:

• Music channel audio quality (which I use a lot) is much better with Telus, although they do not show the title of the current song playing like Shaw.
• The Telus user interface is more responsive and much easier to use, for example I can filter the program guide to only the channels I am subscribed to, or further to just my favourite channels
• Telus can record 3 HD programs simultaneously as opposed to 2 for Shaw.  (Telus does not promise you can get 3 HD, but the software tests the line quality and if it’s good enough, allows this.  Otherwise it degrades the capability to SD signals, only promising one or two HD recordings, the balancing being SD).
• The Telus HD PVR hard drive was much quieter.
• It was cool (but useless) to have the caller ID display on my TV screen when the phone rang.
• The Telus PVR doesn’t auto-prompt to extend time on live recordings like Shaw, but does allow a max of 3 hours extra as opposed to 2.
• The Telus PVR storage is vastly larger: 200 HD hours vs. 20 on my four-year-old Shaw PVR.  Not an issue for me as I don’t watch much TV.
• Telus offered a free Samsung Galaxy Tablet on a 3-year contract.
• …and finally the picture quality: Telus was much more pixelated and blurry than Shaw on movement in HD scenes (terrible for sports) and the SD quality was appallingly bad, even on static images.

So the Telus technician came back and worked hard on improving the quality, to no avail.

So it’s back to Shaw for TV, but I’ll stick with Telus internet.  And hope that Shaw offers RDS HD before the hockey season starts.  Bad news is that the quote I got for the package I wanted from Shaw was incorrect, it’s actually $3/month more.  Good news is that Shaw is giving me a six-month discount for switching back.

EDIT: So I just had Optik TV disconnected, and I have to say that the Telus customer experience was much better than that with Shaw:

• Telus gave discounts, both on my initial order (took $5/month off on the long-term bundled rate) and even after I cancelled the TV they kept the discount for my remaining Internet service, which I had ordered at the same time and kept. They considered that I had my home phone with them for years as well, and had met my end of the bargain in trying to use all three services, so I got the full bundled pricing. They also let me keep the Samsung tablet.
• Shaw stuck to listed prices and had no wiggle room. One Shaw rep misquoted me and the next rep did not honour that pricing and so I’m paying more for the TV.
• Telus reps were friendlier, more understanding.
• The Telus tech worked his butt off to try and make it work, including giving me his mobile number, and talking to me on his day off

So I’d definitely recommend Telus over Shaw from this point of view. Dang twisted pair!