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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

I just hope that GO and the Minister understand just how embarassing the track speed west of Stratford is.

I watched the moving map tonight - 50 km/hr is the highest speed that VIA ran between St Mary's and the outskirts of London.

Note the time used for the 9 miles from Stratford to St Mary's - 29 minutes.

I'm accustomed to seeing VIA being placed in untenable situations - will Ontario do the same with GO to London?

- Paul

Screen Shot 2021-08-15 at 9.07.19 PM.png
 
crs1026 said:
I just hope that GO and the Minister understand just how embarassing the track speed west of Stratford is.

I watched the moving map tonight - 50 km/hr is the highest speed that VIA ran between St Mary's and the outskirts of London.

Note the time used for the 9 miles from Stratford to St Mary's - 29 minutes.

I'm accustomed to seeing VIA being placed in untenable situations - will Ontario do the same with GO to London?

- Paul

View attachment 341652
Click to expand...
Is that 20mph track speed? What would it take to upgrade it to 40mph?
 
Bordercollie said:
Is that 20mph track speed? What would it take to upgrade it to 40mph?
Click to expand...

50 km/h is roughly 30 MPH.

That’s the result of GEXR maintaining the track for many years at a minimum speed for its freights. Though CN recently took back the Guelph Sub between London and Kitchener, it’s still in poor shape. VIA only runs one train a day through there anyway these days.
 
ShonTron said:
50 km/h is roughly 30 MPH.

That’s the result of GEXR maintaining the track for many years at a minimum speed for its freights. Though CN recently took back the Guelph Sub between London and Kitchener, it’s still in poor shape. VIA only runs one train a day through there anyway these days.
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So in exchange for allowing GO to run to London could they not fix up that track?

I mean if you add up the crew hours over time if you spend 100k on track repairs you would make that back in crew hours.

Or make it part of the agreement with CN. They are getting revenue per axle anyways.

That might be why they are doing test runs to see where they can optimize the speed with the funds available.
 
Bordercollie said:
What would it take to upgrade it to 40mph?
Click to expand...

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!"
Click to expand...
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?
 
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