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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)
- Thread starter drum118
- Start date
Garuda
Active Member
Given the good ridership on the London pilot. Metrolinx should go ahead and buy the sub all the way to London.
Krypto98
Active Member
Then they can upgrade the tracks to 70-90mph
robmausser
Senior Member
They should work with VIA and upgrade it to class 6. Why not do the max you can if you are going to go through all the trouble. Class 6 would allow for 110mph, which is the max allowed with crossing gates in Canada.
The new VIA Siemens trains can do 125mph and even the EMD F59PH used on the London route can do 110mph, but the GO coaches I believe have a speed limit of 103mph.
Krypto98
Active Member
I'm just wondering what is the physical/ observable differences between class 6/5/4
Urban Sky
Senior Member
You should find all relevant differences between Track Classes 1-5 here, but for Class 6, your guess is as good as mine…
reaperexpress
Senior Member
GO's F59's have a top speed of 83 mph (133 km/h). I'm not sure what the speed limit is for the coaches, but they do operate up to 93 mph (150 km/h) in regular service.
110 mph on the London line would be nice, but it's worth noting that you get rapidly diminishing returns as you increase the track speed above the speed the curves can handle. After a certain point the benefit becomes zero as the train can't even reach the track speed before it needs to slow for the next curve. Trains will always need to operate slowly (30 mph?) through St. Mary's and Stratford due to the sharp curves which cannot be widened. Just west of Kitchener there's a series of curves which limit speeds to around 80 mph or so. I'm sure trains could briefly reach 110 mph in spots between the curves, but I don't imagine they'd be able to sustain those speeds long enough to make a measureable difference compared to a 95 mph track speed.
robmausser
Senior Member
I really have to disagree with this, there are large portions of that section of the GEXR thats super straight. Yes there are some curves but they pale in comparison to how many straight sections there are. This isn't a constantly wavering track through a valley or something.
As for the F59's I find that very surprising, i'd love to see some documentation on that. Most F59's have a 110mph top speed, and the ones own by GO were refurbished in 2011. I can't imagine they would be run down by now.
Regardless, once they replace the bridge on this section, which would coincide with retracking I am sure, they could use the MPI's or other locos.
reaperexpress
Senior Member
The line is definitely very straight, and definitely can (and should) be upgraded for speeds much higher than its historical 70 mph limit. I'm not questioning the number of straight sections, I'm questioning the length of each straight section.
Here are the 3 longest straight segments along the line:
20.3 km from Stratford to New Hamburg. Flanked by a ~ 60 mph curve to the west, and a stop in New Hamburg or Baden to the east. The curve in the middle has a radius of approximately 3000 m, which is suitable for 110 mph.
16.6 km from outside St. Mary's to near London Airport. Flanked by ~70 mph curves.
14.3 km between Stratford and St. Marys, flanked by ~55 mph and ~40 mph curves.
My intuition is that the first two may be suitable for upgrades to 110 mph, but the second one may be cutting it a bit tight as far as how much time trains can save by exceeding 100 mph. If someone has time to do a back-of-the-envelope estimate assuming acceleration and deceleration rates, I'd be interested to see the difference. This blog suggests that at 79 mph, the acceleration rate of a similar consist is 0.1 m/s/s.
The remaining straight segments are quite short, so I don't see them accelerating by 40 mph (64 km/h) from 70 mph to 110 mph, just to immediately shed off all that energy by hitting the brakes.
https://www.metrolinx.com/en/electrification/docs/Appendix3.pdf
https://www.dart.org/newsroom/trefacts.asp
My understanding is that the top speed of GO's F59's is lower than some other F59 variants because GO selected a gear ratio which would allow them to reliably pull 10 BiLevel coaches despite only having 3000 hp.
https://cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php/GO_Transit
Definitely. Any track upgrade project would definitely need to repair/upgrade the St. Mary's bridge to support normal train loads. The F59's aren't going to last forever.
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Krypto98
Active Member
Another trivia point to point out. On MPI's website it states the top speed of the mp54s is 110 mph but I believe GO ordered a difference gear ratio for 93 mph max for quicker acceleration.
crs1026
Superstar
Somewhere (won’t have time to hunt for it today) I saw a document with the actual curve data for the Guelph Sub…. the numbers were actually a little better than one’s naked eye might think. The bigger issue may be specific level crossings eg Baden, New Hamburg.
In any event, without getting into precise math, 27 miles at 110 mph = 14 minutes, 27 miles at 95 mph = 17 minutes. Three minute potential saving less whatever acceleration and deceleration penalties one wishes to assume. That’s not worth bending stars and moon for. 95 is so achievable with one basic upgrade program that I would not argue for more, at least until there is capacity and demand for express runs over and above local service.
- Paul
In any event, without getting into precise math, 27 miles at 110 mph = 14 minutes, 27 miles at 95 mph = 17 minutes. Three minute potential saving less whatever acceleration and deceleration penalties one wishes to assume. That’s not worth bending stars and moon for. 95 is so achievable with one basic upgrade program that I would not argue for more, at least until there is capacity and demand for express runs over and above local service.
- Paul
WB62
Senior Member
It was just announced that all 56 Bi-Level Series II coaches are being sent to North Bay to be refurbished. The entire project will be completed in 2025.
generalcanada
Senior Member
so 56 + previously 94 + previous 15
wikipedia says MX has 950 coaches so thats about 15% of the fleet currently being refurbrished.
this could be because mx is going to run more diesel and electric locomotives than they thought. not as many emus as they probably wanted for the GO expansion
EnviroTO
Senior Member
Need for the bi-levels would cover a range of reasons from timing (electrification isn't going to happen across all the lines for quite some time), non-electrified network (Lakeshore West beyond Burlington, Milton line, Kitchener-London line beyond Bramalea, Richmond Hill line, and Lakeshore East beyond Oshawa) which will grow significantly in service levels, and electric locomotives used to allow higher capacity during peak services. On Lakeshore West as an example there is unlikely to be less bi-levels because off-peak there is 30 minute service to Burlington today, and after electrification the service model shows (in addition to the electrified service every 15min or less) an hourly express to Burlington and an hourly express to Confederation (or beyond as Casablanca Road is being planned as the next step after Confederation) which is going to use as many bi-levels as the current off-peak services do.
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ARG1
Senior Member
Actually its beyond Burlington but the point still stands
However I do also think that generalcanada has a point - it is looking like db is likely to be chosen to operate GO, and DB runs many of their services using electric locomotives. As such I think its looking more and more likely that initial electrification might simply involve electric locomotives, and EMUs will come way later - say 10 years from now.