Toronto Union Pearson Express | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx | MMM Group Limited

DonValleyRainbow said:
Saw the UPX on a test run from my apartment last night. It actually scared me, I wasn't looking for it on purpose. All of a sudden, it just fired like a bat out of hell from the Weston Tunnel, and to the west across the Humber. It had to be climbing to 90 mph, I'm used to hearing and seeing GO trains roar out of there, probably going 45 mph max.

We have been tracking its progress and analyzing its readiness for launch here, but its something else to see it zipping across the skyline.
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Probably doing speed tests.

Apparently these little DMUs can go up to 100mph, as they were designed for commuter service, not just a small spur line.
 
mdrejhon said:
They are planning a peak in-service speed of 143kph in the fastest segments! That's about the speed it probably was going.
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I doubt it was going 143 km/h. The speed limit through the Weston tunnel is 120 km/h, they may have been exceeding it for testing but being that much over sounds a bit unlikely.

What is this 143 km/h and where did you find it? The speed limit is 145 km/h between Weston and Pearson Junction, is 143 km/h the speed trains can actually reach in that relatively short distance?

smallspy said:
The junction at Wice has no bearing on the overall capacity - in normal circumstances the UPX trains will run on the south/west two tracks, and the other trains will use the north/east one and two tracks of the corridor. There won't be any crossing movements until Strachan.
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The junction may not have any bearing on the capacity given the planned operation, but the planned operation has a negative impact on capacity both along the line and especially in the USRC.

Operating two pairs of double-tracked lines rather than a single quad-tracked line chews up capacity because we want the flexibility to run services at a variety of speeds, from local GO Trains, to express GO trains, to VIA trains. Having these different services sharing tracks means that they will catch up to one another, and therefore must be scheduled very far apart.

Alternatively, some of those services could use the "UP" pair of tracks, in which case there is in fact a conflict at Pearson junction.

In the USRC, UP trains in both directions must cross the Kitchener Line services to get to the platform on the north side of the corridor, whereas if there were a westbound to southbound flyover at Pearson junction, there would only be conflict for eastbound UP trains.
 
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reaperexpress said:
I doubt it was going 143 km/h. The speed limit through the Weston tunnel is 120 km/h, they may have been exceeding it for testing but being that much over sounds a bit unlikely.
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143kph is 90mph. I've seen 145kph mentioned elsewhere, including in a couple of articles. The speeds will vary along the line, but that's the peak in-service speed -- perhaps only at times when it's running a bit late -- and not necessarily via the Weston tunnel due to speed limits.
 
my understanding is that the weston and west diamond tunnels will be limited to 75mph, while the rest of the corridor will be 95mph.
 
mdrejhon said:
143kph is 90mph. I've seen 145kph mentioned elsewhere, including in a couple of articles. The speeds will vary along the line, but that's the peak in-service speed -- perhaps only at times when it's running a bit late -- and not necessarily via the Weston tunnel due to speed limits.
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90 mph is 144.841 km/h, or 145 km/h.

innsertnamehere said:
my understanding is that the weston and west diamond tunnels will be limited to 75mph, while the rest of the corridor will be 95mph.
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The speeds listed on page 10 of this 2013 noise assessment (caution, large PDF) are correct as far as I'm aware. They indicate 90 mph (145 km/h) north of Weston and 80 mph (129 km/h) south of it, with slow zones at the Weston Tunnel and West Toronto Diamond of 75 mph (121 km/h) and 70 mph (113 km/h), respectively.
 
ehlow said:
145 km/h seems really fast considering the stops aren't extremely far apart.
Do any GO services run that fast?
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Occasionally. Normally it's 128kph peak speed but I've occasionally seen my Lakeshore West GOtrain go between 135-140kph, during moments when the train is running slightly late, on a very good sunny day. These speeds have been hit in the long straightaway sections between stations. I used an iPhone GPS speedometer app. And, yes, it did sustain for about 15 seconds, well beyond normal GPS jitter/error, and newer phones are pretty accurate.

For the Georgetown corridor, the station spacing is similiar. The UPX trainset should be able to accelerate faster, being an MMU. However, speed limits will clearly be the limiting factor (including factors such as vertical curvature, etc). UPX should easily be able to accelerate to 140-145kph north of Weston, after the curve. It probably won't happen all the time, and probably only if a train is running late and the track is all-clear, but if MY Lakeshore West GOtrain has occasionally hit almost 140kph between stations, then UPX most certainly can do so north of Weston after the curve. There's more straight railway over there between the Weston curve and the Perason spur, than the moments my Lakeshore West train manages to hit 128kph with less acceleration than the UPX.
 
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mdrejhon said:
Occasionally. Normally it's 128kph peak speed but I've occasionally seen my Lakeshore West GOtrain go between 135-140kph, during moments when the train is running slightly late, on a very good sunny day. These speeds have been hit in the long straightaway sections between stations. I used an iPhone GPS speedometer app. And, yes, it did sustain for about 15 seconds, well beyond normal GPS jitter/error...

For the Georgetown corridor, the station spacing is similiar. The UPX trainset should be able to accelerate faster, being an MMU. However, speed limits will clearly be the limiting factor (including factors such as vertical curvature, etc). UPX should easily be able to accelerate to 140-145kph north of Weston, after the curve. It probably won't happen all the time, and probably only if a train is running late and the track is all-clear, but if MY Lakeshore West GOtrain has occasionally hit almost 140kph between stations, then UPX most certainly can do so north of Weston after the curve.
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Thanks. I'm not a regular GO user, I'm impressed that it gets > 100km/h. Although I guess average speed is a more important metric than peak speed.

I'd love to hear what travel time improvements happened with the Georgetown Corridor project. For example, how much did Kitchener to Union travel time decrease? I'd assume that with all the grade separations and track upgrades there would be some improvement in travel time & speed.
 
Most of the time, the GOtrain goes slow, definitely sub-100kph, leaving enough pad for delays and all. But last summer, when express trains (express Union-Oakville then allstop past) ran Union-Aldershot in 55 minutes, the train was above 100kph very frequently between almost all station pairs, and when things ran slightly late, that's when I saw those 130-140kph moments on rail sections that presumably has the 90mph(145kph) speed limit. And I've seen 128kph on the curve between Exhibition and Mimico (I think that's the curves' speed limit) where you see the landscaped advertisements along Gardiner. You certainly feel a slight bit of sideways force on that! It's always a hoot when a GOtrain regularly enters a station at approx 70-80kph, and brakes to 0 within a single platform length with disc brakes on every single bogie. Wish they could accelerate as fast as they are able to brake (EMUs, EMUs...)!

Even with regular trains in the winter, >100kph almost always occur between at least a couple station pairs on Lakeshore West. But it's the summer express trains or late trains where you really see it happen between almost every station pair, and 128kph regularly, with 135-140 rarely. As the summer schedule is slightly more aggressive than the winter schedule.

Currently, the train is timetabled at slightly above an hour, on the winter timetable. They probably will reset it back to 55 minutes for the summer timetable... They typically switch timetables twice a year in agreement with the union(s)...
 
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ehlow said:
Thanks. I'm not a regular GO user, I'm impressed that it gets > 100km/h. Although I guess average speed is a more important metric than peak speed.

I'd love to hear what travel time improvements happened with the Georgetown Corridor project. For example, how much did Kitchener to Union travel time decrease? I'd assume that with all the grade separations and track upgrades there would be some improvement in travel time & speed.
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There has been no changes to the schedules yet. That is not to say that speeds have not improved, perhaps they have....but since trains operate on a schedule, they can't leave a station until the scheduled time of departure. So the answer to the part I bolded is "none, yet"
 
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