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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

Bordercollie said:
What would it take to upgrade it to 40mph?
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New everything. I suspect it's just plain worn out. Specifically

- grub (remove vegetation)
- clean out culverts and restore drainage
- undercut to remove the existing ballast (which is likely mostly dirt at this point)
- new crossties
- new rail and fasteners
- new ballast, attention to subgrade, maybe geotextile in places
- resurface, restore superelevation on curves
- rebuild crossings (There are 46 of them between the platform in Stratford and Egerton Ave in London)
- new crossing protection devices
- repair bridges, replace deck

But that's by no means complicated, or even that expensive. No fancy engineering required. No large civil works, mostly just a decent sized mechanised track crew.

The cost of raising it to 75 mph or greater is probably not that much greater than the cost of 40 mph, so do it once and make it right.

- Paul
 
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Fun story time: I used to take the VIA train from Sarnia to Toronto through Kitchener all the time in the mid 2000s. It was the old HEP1 cars. I can remember that the part between London and Kitchener, the train cars would rock and sway back and forth like crazy, honestly if you walked between cars it was like a rollercoaster. Then, I took it again in the 2010s and I noticed that it was much slower and steadier of a ride.

Well, years later I was at a VIA Rail meet and greet thing, and I brought up with one of the upper staff about how much slower the Sarnia train is now through London-Kitchener and he kinda chuckles and goes "Yeah, about that. So someone at GEXR messed up and the track speed got misunderstood from km/h to MPH (which is the actual rail standard, they use MPH) and so for a while it was posted as 50MPH when in fact the rail was rated for 30MPH (50 km/h). Whoops!"
 
robmausser said:
Fun story time: I used to take the VIA train from Sarnia to Toronto through Kitchener all the time in the mid 2000s. It was the old HEP1 cars. I can remember that the part between London and Kitchener, the train cars would rock and sway back and forth like crazy, honestly if you walked between cars it was like a rollercoaster. Then, I took it again in the 2010s and I noticed that it was much slower and steadier of a ride.

Well, years later I was at a VIA Rail meet and greet thing, and I brought up with one of the upper staff about how much slower the Sarnia train is now through London-Kitchener and he kinda chuckles and goes "Yeah, about that. So someone at GEXR messed up and the track speed got misunderstood from km/h to MPH (which is the actual rail standard, they use MPH) and so for a while it was posted as 50MPH when in fact the rail was rated for 30MPH (50 km/h). Whoops!"
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Wow. We really should standardize railways to km/h already. If thousands of cross-border truckers can handle it, trains can as well.
 
felix123 said:
Wow. We really should standardize railways to km/h already. If thousands of cross-border truckers can handle it, trains can as well.
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What?! And use the same units of measurement on the Waterloo Spur for both the light rail AND freight trains?!!
 
SaugeenJunction said:
Here is today’s test train at Stratford:

Fight
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Feels like whoever recorded this has spent years using a VHS camcorder and bam last year they get a 4K function. They really like that zoom function.

can some fleet ethsuthsists please explain why the new locos can’t pass over the st Mary’s trestle?
 
TFC said:
Definitely a tangent in this thread, but I wonder whether future passenger service through Stratford to Goderich would ever prove feasible (again, tapping into a future recreational/tourist market for day trips).
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I'll be long dead before passenger service is ever resurrected to Goderich, but boy would I love this. Ride the G2G trail from Guelph to Goderich, stopping for lunch at Cowbell in Blyth, and then hopping on the train back to Guelph.
 
Garuda said:
can some fleet ethsuthsists please explain why the new locos can’t pass over the st Mary’s trestle?
Click to expand...

The GO MP40’s weigh in at around 288,000 lbs - versus a GO F59PH at 260,000 lbs or a VIA P42 at 268,500 lbs. Just a bit too heavy for a poorly maintained old bridge.

Interestingly, it was CN who insisted that the F59’s be limited to that weight back when the locos were designed….GO downsized things like the fuel tank to keep the weight within what CN would accept. Just this once, the restriction paid off.

- Paul
 
jamincan said:
I'll be long dead before passenger service is ever resurrected to Goderich, but boy would I love this. Ride the G2G trail from Guelph to Goderich, stopping for lunch at Cowbell in Blyth, and then hopping on the train back to Guelph.
Click to expand...

I assumed he meant passenger service on the existing Goderich Exeter RR, not one abandoned 35 years ago.
 
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