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General railway discussions

roger1818 said:
LOL. One has to wonder if those NIMBYs would rather the 64,000 additional trucks those trains will be taking off the road every year (175 a day) to rumble through their neighbourhoods? My guess is that they figure those trucks will take a different route and not be their problem.
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The trucks CP is referencing don't necessarily go anywhere near these particular towns.

I suspect the core issue is the number of road crossings that may have to be grade-separated based on added frequency of trains impacting risk statistics and related math.... not to mention complaints from motorists..... and maybe even impact on emergency services.... as the number of trains grows.

That part of Illinois is a patchwork of small communities and the specific towns along the railway may not have the tax base to fund significant numbers of these separations. So they have to make noise for grant money either from state or federal programs - or from the railway itself.

I'm willing to bet that this is just leverage to try and armtwist money out of CP, or raise awareness with higher level legislators who control the purse strings.

I do chuckle at seeing Bensenville on the list - that's where CPKC's main Chicago yard is located, and has been for many years. But in principle, if a railway line gets busier - then the case for grade separation gets stronger. It's just a question of who pays. And maybe how much worse the situation actually becomes compared to the past.

- Paul
 
Didn’t know exactly where to post this…

I was shocked to see that the new bidirectional Škoda trams for the Helsinki Ring Line feature two pantographs on each consist, one over each cab-end. They raise/lower them at the termini so that the joint (’ <^) is always facing in the direction of travel, as with electric locomotives.

Example:
FuTq5mJWAAAGCXF

Source

Additional (recent) photos can be found here.

I don’t know what exactly to make of this, considering every bidirectional LRV/tram I have seen before have single, bidirectional pantographs…
 
Having two pantographs (i.e. one for each direction) is an almost universal standard for electric locomotives. However, it is normally the trailing and not the leading pantograph with the joint facing away from the direction of travel, as explained here on Quora:
5DFF68A5-232F-4F30-A8CC-A5A2BFE1257A.jpeg
 
mind_the_gap said:
Didn’t know exactly where to post this…

I was shocked to see that the new bidirectional Škoda trams for the Helsinki Ring Line feature two pantographs on each consist, one over each cab-end. They raise/lower them at the termini so that the joint (’ <^) is always facing in the direction of travel, as with electric locomotives.

Example:
FuTq5mJWAAAGCXF

Source

Additional (recent) photos can be found here.

I don’t know what exactly to make of this, considering every bidirectional LRV/tram I have seen before have single, bidirectional pantographs…
Click to expand...
Check out Budapest's 60 meter CAF units. Each car operates with two pantographs, both up and in use.

Of course, that is because each car is actually made up of two electrically semi-independent half cars, and while they share a lot of resources between the two halves traction power is not one of those things.

Urban Sky said:
Having two pantographs (i.e. one for each direction) is an almost universal standard for electric locomotives. However, it is normally the trailing and not the leading pantograph with the joint facing away from the direction of travel, as explained here on Quora:
View attachment 478053
Click to expand...
This is hardly a universal rule, however.

Even the direction of the pantograph isn't hard-and-fast. Some operators prefer to have the pantograph knuckle leading, and some prefer to have it trailing.

I can't speak to the Skoda/Transtec Artic units, but in the case of many multi-system locomotives, each pantograph - and they frequently will have 4 installed in total - will be used for a specific voltage and overhead system regardless of the loco's direction.

And in a more extreme case, the new Alstom Avelia Liberty trainsets being built for Amtrak's Acela service will have just two pantographs. One is located at each end, and each one being configured for the two different overhead systems in use on the Northeast Corridor.

Dan
 
Highly recommend getting this book. Via Bruce Rails.

Hello folks, Ralph Beaumont here. Most who know me think of me as a railway historian/steam fan. But when it comes to my favourite railway, the CPR’s branch lines through Orangeville have held a life-long fascination.

Over the years I put countless miles on the car chasing trains on the main line from Streetsville to Owen Sound, plus the branches to Elora, Teeswater and Walkerton. The running of the last ever train in December 2021 prompted me to round up a selection of my hundreds of slides and produce a tribute to the railway.

A chance conversation with Bob Scott revealed that Credit Valley Railway hobby shop in Mississauga was celebrating their 30th anniversary this year. And so partnering again with them, plus editor and designer Rod Clarke, Diesels to the Bruce will be the new book.

It’s full title is actually Diesels to the Bruce: A Quarter Century of Canadian Pacific Railway Lines Through Orangeville – 1970-1995. And if you’re wondering, I chose that title because it’s an update of my original hard cover, Steam Trains to the Bruce.

It’s at the printer and with any luck will be available within a month or so. I won’t make this a blatant ad by giving all the specs and cost, but it’s up on the cvrco.ca website and word is getting out. We’re having a print run of only 500 copies – so when they’re gone, they’re gone.....
Click to expand...

Bruce Diesels Cover.jpg
 
Saw this on my FB feed and thought some UT'ers might find it interesting:

1685565579098.png

Sourced from the FB group: Friends Who Like Vintage Toronto - Poster Richard Essery

Link: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbi...aoDjxBatQ2gsySFCQHWxWrjNSSVfkYca0&__tn__=EH-R

Associated text:

1685565643157.png


1685565664510.png


A thousand acres for 1M, LOL

That's $1,000 per acre; had that price increased in line w/CPI it would mean you could buy 1 acre of land in Vaughan today for $9,365 (per the Bank of Canada Inflation Calculator)

Ha ha. Not even out by just one order of magnitude but greater than 2.
 
Northern Light said:
This is an interesting little kerfuffle........

www.thestar.com

In backrooms and on social media, battle rages over law to expand railway competition

MONTREAL - A new rail shipping rule is poised to drive up inefficiency and consumer costs.
www.thestar.com www.thestar.com

Furious lobbying going on against 'extended interswitching' which was in the federal budget.

I'd be interested to hear from our railway experts on this...
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Interswitching is a supposed monster under the bed that causes railway execs to turn apopleptic,. It’s almost identical to the debate over having multiple telco’s doing cell service in the subway, or not.

In most cases the economics are not favourable as it can indeed be inefficient - it throws a wrench in the spokes of a railway’s efforts to plan their interchange and marshalling points for peak efficiency. But if a customer wants it - there is likely a good reason, other than money - like, say, service frequency or car supply or trip time..

The premise that in a free market economy, customers ought to have choice of their supplier has traditionally been quickly thrown under the train when rail customers start looking to competing railways to meet their needs better.

My take - the pressure for the current change derives directly from years of customer dissatisfaction that is the direct result of the service indifference that is implicit in PSR. Railways will shudder, but it looks good on ‘em.

- Paul
 
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crs1026 said:
Interswitching is a supposed monster under the bed that causes railway execs to turn apopleptic,. It’s almost identical to the debate over having multiple telco’s doing cell service in the subway, or not.

In most cases the economics are not favourable as it can indeed be inefficient - it throws a wrench in the spokes of a railway’s efforts to plan their interchange and marshalling points for peak efficiency. But if a customer wants it - there is likely a good reason, other than money - like, say, service frequency or car supply or trip time..

The premise that in a free market economy, customers ought to have choice of their supplier has traditionally been quickly thrown under the train when rail customers start looking to competing railways to meet their needs better.

My take - the pressure for the current change derives directly from years of customer dissatisfaction that is the direct result of the service indifference that is implicit in PSR. Railways will shudder, but it looks good on ‘em.

- Paul
Click to expand...
Thanks for the explanation. it's one of those 'inside baseball' topics that can be difficult for folks outside the industry to wrap our head around. I would think it might be possible to limit non-Canadian roads from benefitting but that might have some NAFTA/CUSMA impact.

It seems that both Class 1 roads walked away from a lot of their branchline customers in the prairies in favour of more profitable long-haul work, and would prefer farmers/shippers truck to them.
 
lenaitch said:
Thanks for the explanation. it's one of those 'inside baseball' topics that can be difficult for folks outside the industry to wrap our head around. I would think it might be possible to limit non-Canadian roads from benefitting but that might have some NAFTA/CUSMA impact.
Click to expand...

That's likely the big fear that has gripped the railways - there are enough places where a 160-mile radius opens up huge opportunities for US railways to reach into Canada for business.

I'm on the fence about whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. Our west coast ports are capacity strained, so having more overseas commodities routed through the US relieves our system.... but conversely it puts at risk the investment we are looking to the railways to make to add capacity east to west.

A hundred and fifty years ago, a rail system based north-south rail links threatened confederation in a way that I don't think is as real any more.

I see this very similar to upstart airlines - Westjet and Air Canada continue to capture much of the business, but the upstarts grab enough to hurt the big two at the margin, and they present a reason for the big two to take competition seriously and not rest on their oars. We haven't seen price wars that cut fares so low that they drive everyone to the bottom. In general I don't favour the traditional Canadian model where we let two entities pretend to "compete", with a roomful of regulatory lawyers simulating true open market competition (Rogers vs Bell, etc). That may have been necessary when our population was 22 million, but as we look to much greater population and economic growth, true free markets are viable and we should embrace them.

The other part of the railways' fear derives from the shift to bulk shipments. There isn't really that much incentive for railways to seek interswitch business from customers who only handle a few cars per week.... the interswitch portion of the haul adds time and is costly, which offsets any price differential that can be offered over the rest of the haul. But.... with prairie grain terminals that deal in trainloads, interswitching becomes much more of an opportunity..... instead of heading for Swift Current and on to Calgary, the whole grain or potash train just turns left and heads south into North Dakota. That's a much bigger loss to the existing railways.

All the same, we have things that we want the railways to do for us that they aren't necessarily doing at the moment. I think Ottawa is being astute by not bending over backwards on this one. Maybe this is the lever that brings the railways to the table on other things. Nothing wrong with playing one's cards strategically.

- Paul
 
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