Article content But did you know we established the global template for railway hotels, a grandiose architectural form unique to our shores? We apologize, but this video has failed to load. Try refreshing your browser, or How Canada set the standard for âcastle-in-the-skyâ railway hotels Back to video Given that construction of a transcontinental railway was instrumental in cobbling together the young Dominion in the first place, this is perhaps not a great revelation. And once that steel ribbon had been laid, railway barons needed to fill those empty cars with freight and passengers, the more well-heeled the better. To entice the passengers, and inspired by the castles of the Loire Valley in France, those locomotive visionaries set about building a series of château-style resorts to replace the drab roadhouses and urban hotels that had preceded the railway age.