service west to Vancouver and east to Toronto and Montreal. The Super Continental was discontinued in 1981 due to sharp budget cuts. Since then, the Canadian has Via Rail's only true transcontinental train. While the Super Continental was brought back in 1985 amid popular demand, it only ran as far east as Winnipeg. In the aftermath of another round of deep budget cuts made to Via Rail on January 15, 1990, Via again discontinued the Super Continental, this time permanently. The Canadian was moved from CPR trackage to the CN route plied by the Super Continental for its first quarter-century, dropping the Montreal section. The new longer route bypassed Thunder Bay, Regina and Calgary in favour of Saskatoon and Edmonton. This maintained transcontinental service and allowed Via to operate its government-mandated service to small communities along the line. At the same time, the absence of transportation alternatives along the CPR route allowed entrepreneur Peter Armstrong to develop the Rocky Mountaineer excursion service. Moreover, while pre-1990 schedules had daily service on both the CP and CN routes, service following the 1990 cuts was a mere three days per week, reduced further to two times a week in the off-season. In 2007, the schedule was lengthened so that the train now takes four nights, rather than three, to travel between Toronto and Vancouver. The four-night schedule is almost identical (in terms of travel time) with that of the 1940s, despite substantial technological change since then. In 2013, the train was honoured by being featured on the back of the new polymer Canadian ten-dollar note. , Via Rail continues to operate the Canadian using the rebuilt ex-CPR Budd passenger equipment. Due to CN's shortage of capacity on the cross-country line, 12-hour delays had become almost standard. On-time performance had fallen from 84% in 2009 to just 8% in 2017. Continuing delays reached nearly 2 days in length by mid-May, 2018. To address this issue, the schedule was lengthened again, effective July 26, 2018, to four days and four nights in each direction due to continuing schedule-reliability problems on the host railway: CNR. This change has almost entirely resolved the issue. The Canadian currently takes 94 hours 15 minutes westbound vs. 95 hours 29 minutes eastbound. This is 13h50m vs. 12h19m slower than the SSContinental's 80h25m vs. 83h10m and 13h5m vs. 12h24m slower than the Dominion's 81h10m vs. 83h5m schedules from 1952. The difference