VIA Rail

[Admiral Beez]

A better option would be Toronto to Chicago, which actually is 10 hours away by train. In this case, driving would actually be 10 hours as well, which gives the train more of a competitive advantage than the Montreal example above. The competing flights would also be slightly longer and theoretically more expensive.

We’re looking at taking the Amtrak California Zephyr from Chicago. But there’s no rail connection to Chicago at all from Toronto?

Am I right to say that the only passenger rail route between Canada and the US is the Toromto-NYC? Well, I suppose there is the White Pass & Yukon Route Railway between Skagway, Alaska and Whitehorse, Yukon. I took this trip as part of an Alaskan cruise in 2019, highly recommended.

 

[reaperexpress]

We’re looking at taking the Amtrak California Zephyr from Chicago. But there’s no rail connection to Chicago at all from Toronto?

Am I right to say that the only passenger rail route between Canada and the US is the Toromto-NYC? Well, I suppose there is the White Pass & Yukon Route Railway between Skagway, Alaska and Whitehorse, Yukon. I took this trip as part of an Alaskan cruise in 2019, highly recommended.

There are three passenger rail services across the Canada-US border.

The VIA/Amtrak Maple Leaf crosses at Niagara Falls en route between Toronto and New York. The train needs to sit at the border for two hours as passengers clear customs.

The Amtrak Adirondack crosses at Rouses Point en route between Montréal and New York. This service is currently suspended due to track maintenance issues on the CN line from Montréal to the US border. A pre-clearance facility in Montréal is planned, but has been caught in a loop of endless studies.

Amtrak Cascades crosses at Bellingham en route between Vancouver and Seattle & Portland. This is actually the best crossing of the three, since there are customs facilities in at Vancouver Pacific Central station. My understanding is that trains towards Canada run non-stop over the border and passengers clear customs upon arrival in Vancouver. Passengers towards the US do a pre-check in Vancouver but the train needs to stop at the border anyway for another check. The 2016 Canada-US agreement to facilitate rail pre-clearance facilities was partly intended to resolve that situation, but I don't know if the border stop has been eliminated yet.

You can also connect between the Amtrak Wolverine (Chicago-Detroit) and the VIA Windsor-Toronto service in Detroit/Windsor, using the streetcar, Tunnel Bus and/or a taxi, which is awkward but is probably the best way from Toronto to Chicago.

The Amtrak Blue Water (Chicago - Port Huron) and VIA Sarnia-Toronto service come close to each other at Sarnia/Port Huron, but the trains only run once a day each at completely different times of the day, so it's only really an option if you're interested in spending half a day in Sarnia or Port Huron and are willing to suffer through VIA's worst intercity service.

 

[nfitz]

Amtrak Cascades crosses at Bellingham en route between Vancouver and Seattle & Portland. This is actually the best crossing of the three, since there are customs facilities in at Vancouver Pacific Central station. My understanding is that trains towards Canada run non-stop over the border and passengers clear customs upon arrival in Vancouver.

I was on this a couple of weeks ago. Yes, that's how it works. They check passports when you board, and do the proper clearance in Vancouver station. I think they do a brief stop right at the border, probably involving the train's manifest - but it was so quick, that I don't clearly remember. I've not taken it southbound.

 

[dowlingm]

Could run a Toronto-Quebec City sleeper, leaving at 2359, and see how many choose to get off in Montreal at 0500 and board at 0530 to be in Quebec City at 0850 (assuming 30 min pause/schedule adjustment at Central).

At the moment the earliest departure from Central is timetabled at 6.25am and arrival at Quebec City 9.43am making five stops.

 

[dowlingm]

I was on this a couple of weeks ago. Yes, that's how it works. They check passports when you board, and do the proper clearance in Vancouver station. I think they do a brief stop right at the border, probably involving the train's manifest - but it was so quick, that I don't clearly remember. I've not taken it southbound.

That’s why the Saint Lambert stop is to be dropped if preclearance for Adirondack (and Vermonter, at some point) at done at Central. The problem with Ontario routes is the intermediate stops

 

[reaperexpress]

Could run a Toronto-Quebec City sleeper, leaving at 2359, and see how many choose to get off in Montreal at 0500 and board at 0530 to be in Quebec City at 0850 (assuming 30 min pause/schedule adjustment at Central).

At the moment the earliest departure from Central is timetabled at 6.25am and arrival at Quebec City 9.43am making five stops.

That would indeed be an ideal distance for an overnight train, and avoiding the transfer in Montréal would provide a huge time savings compared to the current offerings even before discounting the "free" 8 hours people spend asleep. Currently there is not much travel from Toronto specifically to Québec City, so I'm not sure if there would be enough riders to fill a train. But maybe travel would increase if such a sleeper service existed. The introduction of NightJet services throughout Europe seems to have shifted travel patterns anecdotally based on the number of other Dutch people I encountered in Vienna who had also arrived by NightJet, and had also chosen Vienna for their vacation specifically because the NightJet went there from the Netherlands.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

I think the issue with many of these places is that they're actually too close together for an overnight train to be competitive. People sleep for about 8 hours, so the trip should ideally be around 10 to 14 hours long.

Toronto to Montreal is only 5 hours by train, so if you left Toronto at 22:00, you'd arrive there at 03:00 which does not sound like fun. This is why the VIA Enterprise sleeper train along that route sat in a siding for several hours along the way. The problem is that the time spent sitting in the siding is still time you need to pay the crew, and more importantly it's time that isn't spent getting a head start relative to the competing transport modes. In this case, the train takes 10 hours but driving would only take 6.

A better option would be Toronto to Chicago, which actually is 10 hours away by train. In this case, driving would actually be 10 hours as well, which gives the train more of a competitive advantage than the Montreal example above. The competing flights would also be slightly longer and theoretically more expensive.

There are many cross-border routes which fall nicely in the sweet spot with major cities 10 hours apart by rail, like Toronto - Chicago, Toronto - New York, Montreal - New York, Montreal - Boston, etc. The main obstacle in these cases is the American border which lies partway along the route. Requiring passengers to get up in the middle of the night to clear customs would destroy the attractivess of a sleeper service, so pre-clearance facilities in Toronto and Montréal would be a prerequisite for those services to be successful. There is one being planned in Montréal, which should spark conversations about the Montréal-based routes, but progress on that facility has been absolutely glacial.

For Toronto to NYC you could always work the customs stop into the schedule. No stop Toronto to NF might take 1.5 hours (go allocates about 2 hrs 20 mins for all stop service from Toronto to NF), add in time to clear customs. Then on to NYC.

Buffalo to NYC is 8.5 hrs so even a late ish 11 pm departure from NF puts you in NYC for 7:30

 

[Urban Sky]

Even at relatively conservative 250 Km/Hr speeds and night train out of Toronto Union would get you to, Halifax, Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, London, Windsor, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Regina, Boston, NY, Philadelphia, Washington, Pittsburgh, Chicago, St Louis, etc, etc, etc. Yes there are issues with serving American cities but you'd be able to reach pretty much any major city from the mid west to the Eastern Seaboard.

In fact Toronto to NYC seems like a no brainer sleeper train. Leave Toronto Friday evening, arrive in NYC Sat morning. Spend Sat/Sun in NYC, take night train back to Toronto and be home Monday morning.

I challenge you to name a single night train service with Sleeper accommodation which operates „at relatively conservative 250 Km/Hr“. Also, you can‘t let any passenger rail service break-even on just two someone popular nights out of seven or in the case of Toronto-Maritimes two out popular months out of twelve. A year has 365 nights and unlike day trains, you can‘t sell the same space more than once per 24 hour period…

 

[reaperexpress]

I challenge you to name a single night train service with Sleeper accommodation which operates „at relatively 250 Km/Hr“.

What do I win?

https://www.seat61.com/beijing-to-shanghai-by-train.htm#What_are_the_D-category_sleeper_trains_like

Also, you can‘t let any passenger rail service break-even on just two someone popular nights out of seven or in the case of Toronto-Maritimes two out popular months out of twelve.

Well we already run trains between most of these places so the target isn't necessarily to be profitable. It could be to just be less unprofitable than a daytime train.

A year has 365 nights and unlike day trains, you can‘t sell the same space more than once per 24 hour period…

Unlike daytime trains, which require frequency in order to be attractive, there's little point in running more than one overnight service per day, because for an overnight service, everyone wants to leave their originating city in the late evening, and arrive at their destination in the morning. So we only need to find a single trainload of people per day, which is a pretty small number of people considering the total travel between two cities.

 

[Bureaucromancer]

There genuinely is something to the point that good overnight schedules are one of the better ways to make low capital investment, relatively low speed, rail corridors work.

 

[Urban Sky]

What do I win?

https://www.seat61.com/beijing-to-shanghai-by-train.htm#What_are_the_D-category_sleeper_trains_like

I didn‘t challenge you and the existance of a single example at almost the other end of the globe does not make 250 km/h in any way „a conservative speed“.

Well we already run trains between most of these places so the target isn't necessarily to be profitable. It could be to just be less unprofitable than a daytime train.


Unlike daytime trains, which require frequency in order to be attractive, there's little point in running more than one overnight service per day, because for an overnight service, everyone wants to leave their originating city in the late evening, and arrive at their destination in the morning. So we only need to find a single trainload of people per day, which is a pretty small number of people considering the total travel between two cities.

The problem is the Economics: Sleeper cars cost more to procure and operate (per car-mile) - and have spaces for less passengers which can only be sold once (rather than multiple times) per day. To achieve the same cost-recovery rate than even the worst day train, you would likely have to sell each bed for more than what a hotel night in Toronto or Montreal would cost, thus eliminating the main attraction of the night train service. I‘m genuinely regretting this, as I would have taken such a service (to commute between my home office and my actual office) more than a dozen times in the last two years…

 

[ShonTron]

The Amtrak Blue Water (Chicago - Port Huron) and VIA Sarnia-Toronto service come close to each other at Sarnia/Port Huron, but the trains only run once a day each at completely different times of the day, so it's only really an option if you're interested in spending half a day in Sarnia or Port Huron and are willing to suffer through VIA's worst intercity service.

There is also no way one can cross the border at Sarnia/Port Huron without a car or an expensive taxi ride. There are no public buses, and there’s no public sidewalk on the Blue Water Bridge.

 

[dowlingm]

There is also no way one can cross the border at Sarnia/Port Huron without a car or an expensive taxi ride. There are no public buses, and there’s no public sidewalk on the Blue Water Bridge.

I’ve occasionally wondered what it would cost to rehab the disused rail tunnel and have Amtrak Blue Water terminate in Sarnia, have customs for both sides there, and have VIA take passengers on into Ontario. As long as customs requires people to disembark with luggage for checks, changing from one carrier to the other seems just as reasonable as a through service.

 

[turini2]

I’ve occasionally wondered what it would cost to rehab the disused rail tunnel and have Amtrak Blue Water terminate in Sarnia, have customs for both sides there, and have VIA take passengers on into Ontario. As long as customs requires people to disembark with luggage for checks, changing from one carrier to the other seems just as reasonable as a through service.

I wouldn't put money on that happening anytime soon - given the Montreal Central border preclearance has never been agreed...
Juxtaposed controls are still pretty rare around the world...

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

I didn‘t challenge you and the existance of a single example at almost the other end of the globe does not make 250 km/h in any way „a conservative speed“.

The problem is the Economics: Sleeper cars cost more to procure and operate (per car-mile) - and have spaces for less passengers which can only be sold once (rather than multiple times) per day. To achieve the same cost-recovery rate than even the worst day train, you would likely have to sell each bed for more than what a hotel night in Toronto or Montreal would cost, thus eliminating the main attraction of the night train service. I‘m genuinely regretting this, as I would have taken such a service (to commute between my home office and my actual office) more than a dozen times in the last two years…

I figured this was a group conversation, I didn't realize this was a direct challenge. Meh. Italy's Intercity Notte service runs on lines with a max speed of 200 km/hr.
Bureaucromancer made the point more elegantly than I did. Night train service doesn't NECESSARILY need to be high speed service, clearly what I thought was conservative (250 km/hr) isn't so conservative. My bad

I don't think that significantly impacts my point. Out of Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Chicago, NYC are all well within reach of a night train service.