The ailing economy apparently has taken another tourism industry victim.

GrandLuxe Rail Journeys, a luxury train that visits Mount Rainier National Park via Tacoma Rail tracks as part of a Northwest rail tour, is shutting down.

Notices on travel agent Web sites and in on-line travel bulletins said the Colorado-based rail operation's owner, Tom Rader, told employees that the trains would halt their journeys Thursday.

In a letter to clients, Rader reportedly told customers: "We are financially unable to continue operations."

Neither Rader nor agents for GrandLuxe were available for confirmation.

One of GrandLuxe's high end trains was in Eatonville today where buses were to take customers on a tour of Mount Rainier.

Tacoma Rail Interim Superintendent Alan Hardy said the rail tour operator has told Tacoma Rail it will store its train on Tacoma Rail tracks until it has more definite plans for the future.

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Oh, those patient Canadians.

Not any more.

A story in yesterday’s Toronto Globe & Mail outlined a survey saying Canadian shoppers aren’t likely to stand in line as much as they once did.

“Canadian consumers are abandoning their shopping carts, delaying purchases and leaving stores, public transit stops and restaurants in significant numbers,” the marketing research firm Maritz Research Canada said, offering the results of its online survey.

A large majority – 86 percent – of participants said they had walked out of a store frustrated and empty-handed because they were tired of waiting for service.

• 78 percent said they had walked out of a department store because of long lines;
• 40 percent have left grocery stores without buying;
• 50 percent have walked out of a medical waiting room;
• 54 percent have left a bank without conducting a transaction;
• 54 have walked out of a convenience store;
• 58 per cent gave up waiting in a fast-food restaurant;
• 64 per cent had abandoned waits for public transit.

Quantifying their tolerance, those polled said eight minutes was a reasonable wait in a grocery store, and that they’d likely leave after 15 minutes.

So I’ll ask you the same question.

How long are you willing to wait in line at a grocery store? How long before you leave without buying anything at a department store? Are there any stores that are especially good (or not so good) at making sure service is provided in a timely manner?

Please respond below. Thanks.

Vancouver, B.C. ranks fourth on Mercer Consulting's new list of the best cities to live in the world.

Our neighbor to the north earned 107.6 points on Mercer's ranking system that rates New York City at 100 points.

The Mercer index is designed to give international companies an idea of the environment into which they've sending their expat managers on overseas assignments.

The system, based on the results, seems to value highly such factors as political stability, personal safety, public services and health and sanitation.

Ranking first was Zurich with a rating of 108. Tied at second were Vienna and Geneva. Auckland held down fifth place.

Not surprisingly, Baghdad was the lowest city on the list with a score of 13.5.

The list heavily favored European and Canadian cities. The top five ranked cities in the Americas were all Canadian: Vancouver, Toronto, Ottowa, Montreal and Calgary.

Seven of the top cities worldwide were European. Besides the European cities mentioned above, the top ten included Dusseldorf (6th), Munich (7th tied), Frankfurt (7th tied) and Bern (9th).

U.S. cities fared relatively poorly. Top on the list was Honolulu at 28th followed by San Francisco at 29th, Boston at 37th, Washington, D.C. at 44th, Chicago at 44th (tied), Portland at 48th, New York City at 49th and Seattle at 50th. The survey rated 215 cities worldwide.

Olympia's iconic Olympia Brewery building and grounds are once more on the market.

The landmark brewery closed in 2003, and its then-owner, Miller Brewing Co., sold it to an investor. The brewery enjoyed a brief life as the home of a bottled water company, but has been unused since that venture failed.

California owner Barney Ng is asking a total of $40 million for the brewery and its grounds.

The 130-acre property in view of I-5 is being offered by the Olympia office of commercial real estate company Colliers International.

If the property fails to sell by Sept. 24, the parcels will be offered in a sealed bid auction beginning Oct. 10.

In the past, several shopping center developers have expressed interest in the property.

Alaska Airlines will commemorate the retirement of its last MD-80 airliner and its move to an all-Boeing 737 fleet Thursday with the unveiling of a new paint job on a newly-delivered Boeing 737-800.

The special livery will be applied only to a single 737-800 that is replacing the last of the airline's MD-80s.

Alaska isn't allowing any sneek peeks, but expect a paint scheme that somehow commemorates Alaska and Boeing's tight relationship.

Plane spotter and photographer Andrew Sieber captured the new plane on the ground in Seattle. You'll find his photos here on his Flickr page.

Photo by Andrew Sieber

Alaska moved away from Boeing to McDonnell Douglas in the '80s as it acquired MD-80s to replace its fleet of Boeing 727s. Boeing acquired McDonnell Douglas in 1997.

But the airline moved back to Boeing in the '90s by acquiring 737s.

The airline accelerated the retirement of the rear-engined MD-80s in recent months as fuel prices rose.

The 737-800s that replace the MD-80s are as much as 20 percent more fuel-efficient. The new plane will join several others in the Alaska fleet with one-off paint schemes. Two of those planes are painted in a Disney design. One is a dark blue Alaska.com plane, and another is painted to resemble a salmon. It's called, for obvious reasons, the "salmon-thirty-seven."

Seattle luggage maker Tom Binh is one of the first companies to offer travelers a "checkpoint-friendly" laptop bag that allows air passengers to keep their computers stowed through security checkpoints.

The Transportation Security Administration earlier this month relaxed its rule requiring laptops to be removed from their bags for inspection if they were carried in so-called "checkpoint-friendly" bags.

The new rule allows travelers to keep their laptops zipped up if the bag has no zippers, clasps or other items that interfere with a clear x-ray view of the laptop.

The Tom Binh bag folds out to allow such a clear view.

The bags, made in Seattle, are available in three colors in ballistic nylon on the luggage-maker's Web site, www.tombihn.com