Recent content by dowlingm

If only this existed in Canada… (both the high speed train but also the food option)

The current White River service is a day train. What is more likely to work out in the event of an extension to TB - a Jasper-Prince Rupert overnight stop in White River, or operating at night? Folks between Thunder Bay and White River might be cheesed off if they end up with an unsocial hours...

I mean REM showed us but not in the way I think you mean - promises by private operators to provide upgraded infrastructure which they say at time of assumption will be shared with public operators will not necessarily be followed through on. (VIA being shut out of Mont Royal tunnel)

Andy Takagi (not going to @ him even though he is on here) has been doing great work lately.

it's an interesting piece but written from the contractor's point of view. I know there is a predisposition on this board and likely elsewhere to think Metrolinx can do no right, and thus anyone who sues them or otherwise criticises them is right. One wonders if DB had given any thought at all...

The notion that ALTO is what delivers electrification in the USRC is similar to VIA post-HFR, and I hope it's entirely wrong, because there is every chance that ALTO won't go anywhere, but until it demonstrates either explicit progress or explicit failure, governments and agencies can sit and...

11 LRCs gone to the scrapper https://m.facebook.com/groups/199250763950431/permalink/2116854718856683/?

Cut and cover went down so well in Vancouver for Canada Line that they promised not to use it for the Broadway extension...

Public service competency klaxon: When the fire in an adjacent building closed Glasgow Central railway station for ten days, Network Rail mobilized resources to get almost a year’s worth of track replacement and infrastructure inspections done in that time...

As I have said before, the entire reinstatement of the Northlander, including the necessity to run buses to support it because of the Matheson-Timmins-Cochrane routing, means we’re outside the realm of economics and into politics. That means my preferred metric of net extra passenger-km per...

I wouldn’t bother with Ontario Southland - just have ONR operate Ontario regional services that Alto won’t. It’s in MTO now not northern development, so why bother having to stand up a whole new entity with various mandatory management positions, branding exercises, discrete fleet and spares etc...

While we can’t rule out seeing one, we are now getting quite close to the WC so they are unlikely to have a major impact. It may simply have been that Metrolinx didn’t need them immediately but if they didn’t bid, it might be unlikely that they could snap up similar locos later. Between MP40...

More work for CAD on top of the F40 and LRCs they have already Nearly $3m per car to refurb 56 HEP1 sleepers https://media.viarail.ca/en/press-releases/2026/rail-invests-150-million-modernize-sleeper-cars-enhancing-passenger-experience-and-supporting-canadian-jobs

I wonder what the ridership of the express Matheson Cochrane and V/V bus versus staying on the train for two extra hours into and out of Timmins

Hardly impressive. More impressive for CN would have been sufficiently maintaining their track or their train so that repairs were not required, depending on which of those it turns out the issue was