Recent content by roger1818

Aren't the baggage cars on the Ocean Renaissance baggage cars and Renaissance baggage transition cars (one at each end of the Renaissance part of the consist) not the Baggage car (Budd Car Company) of which we are talking about? Or did they add stainless steel baggage cars to the consist when...

It comes back to the question, what is the problem we are trying to solve? For the 3 trains a week, it would likely be cheaper to just turn the locomotive at each end (or run with two locomotives), than it would to retrofit the RDCs and continue to maintain equipment that isn't used anywhere...

Or just wye the locomotive, if they only want one. There will be plenty of excess HEP equipment, so I don't see the need. VIA may just be wanting to retire the RDCs, instead of sending them out for another round of refurbishment. There is a cost advantage to standardizing equipment.

I would think it is well understood what DND is. As for NRE, as an engineer, I was a little surprised that its use isn't common knowledge. It certainly is used by more than those in military or public procurement. It is also widely used in private industry. A better way of explaining NRE, is...

The NRE on one off customizations would be very high per trainset. It might also trigger the need for an updated TC safety approval. There is a reason the Northlander is using the same design as VIA Rail, without any customizations. VIA's priority is to replace the LD fleet. This would...

I beleive it is twice a week all year now, as VIA doesn't have enough equipment to run the third east of Edmonton.

While I agree with you, the provincial governments have a very different view on these things. They tend to want the federal government to do most of the funding, but then turn around and say that the provinces should have all of the control on how that funding is used. I would feel very...

I've also said this before, but part of the problem is the politics stemming from us being such a large country. While half of the population could very well benefit from improved passenger rail in the Quebec-Windsor corridor, half of the population wouldn't benefit from that investment and have...

Ahh. That makes sense. I wasn't aware of that.

I just thought it was interesting that they were Siemens trucks on scene. I guess they could also have the contract to support the crossing signals, but I was wondering if it was something to do with the Venture trainsets.

I’m currently on train 35 (one of the Venture trainsets) and we came to a complete stop to “protect the crossing” at Dunning Rd (between Castleman and Ottawa). My first thought was that the gates weren’t working but when we did cross it, they were down with the lights flashing. I did notice a...

So what you are saying is if they book through a tour operator they likely aren’t spending much money in Canada other than the cost of the train. Since not everyone is likely booking through one of these tour operators, but could be booking through VIA instead, this googling of itineraries...

I would hope that they have both couchette and sleeper cars. There is a tendency by bureaucratic institutions to loose track of the objective of making things accessible and think that they can't have anything that isn't accessible. A common thing here is replacing stairs with ramps instead of...

Everything I have heard up to now indicated to me that, as you said, the new Viewliner II cars would not be replaced in Amtrak's Long Distance Fleet Replacement, but reading this page seems to indicate that they will be replaced as well. My guess is that they realized that by the time this...

I would assume no. From what I have heard they are rust buckets and the money spent doing the conversion would be better spent on a replacement fleet. Also, it isn't as if the conversion could be done overnight. The better solution would have been to build up more of the shells they bought...