Bordercollie
Senior Member
Couldn't you put a cab car infront of a cab car and have no passengers in it?
Two locomotives elephant style could provide additional axles.
It would be temporary until they can figure out the low shunt signal issue..
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VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
Two locomotives elephant style could provide additional axles.
It would be temporary until they can figure out the low shunt signal issue..
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Cab cars have an American coupler attached to their cab side.
Locomotives also have an American coupler on the cab side.
The technical solution is to procure and equip the trains with shunt enhancers. The legal solution is to have a court overturn these speed restrictions. There are no other viable solutions.
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Bordercollie
Senior Member
The coupler can be swapped out in the shop in less than half a day.
Either way this process is going to take 6 months to a year to resolve.
If CN bound to the courts decision? They could ignore it or make other excuses.
lenaitch
Senior Member
A party is always bound by a decision of the court. They can appeal on the grounds of jurisdiction, points of fact or points of law, but to ignore it would be contemptuous.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Sure, as long you don’t care about potentially losing the certification of your rolling stock. VIA‘s contract includes maintenance, spare parts and a guaranteed minimum availability, which means you can’t just modify parts at will, just like you can’t with a leased car…
Assuming a lifespan of 40 years, that would be less than 3% of their useful life. Annoying, for sure, but not really significant…
I don‘t know what the next escalation steps would be if CN were to ignore court decisions and orders, but you can safely assume that CN‘s own shareholders would fire and sue its entire C-suite long before the judicial system threatens to revoke its operating license and to seize its assets…
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micheal_can
Senior Member
What about ordering additional cars from the factory and sending them as one long married set? Or, if we need 2 more cars per train, order the 2 that are needed?
Trackside_Treasure
New Member
I trust this will be of interest and answer some questions:
tracksidetreasure.blogspot.com
VIA and CN in Federal Court - The Facts
VIA applied to Federal Court seeking a judicial review, claiming CN had not performed a risk assessment nor provided evidence to substantiat...
tracksidetreasure.blogspot.com
Allandale25
Senior Member
^ Wow, very detailed and well documented post. Will be interesting to see what happens.
Bordercollie
Senior Member
That would take two years since there is currently a back order and funding would need to be allocated.
Bordercollie
Senior Member
CN"a claims are not baseless. There were loss of shunt at specific crossings, only on one subdivision. But the order to slow the trains was applied to all of them not just ventures.I trust this will be of interest and answer some questions:
VIA and CN in Federal Court - The Facts
VIA applied to Federal Court seeking a judicial review, claiming CN had not performed a risk assessment nor provided evidence to substantiat...
Seems like one specific person went on a power trip and everyone just went along with it.
crs1026
Superstar
Superb summary. Hugely helpful.
Must have taken a ton of work - I hope you still had time for the holidays!
- Paul
crs1026
Superstar
I would put it a bit more charitably….from the writeup, It seems that someone at CN with a different perspective on risk tolerance entered the process at mid-point and said “Hold everything” or words to that effect. And then others piled on, possibly with the addition of CN’s lawyers. And then CN clumsily walked back its appetite and acceptance for the Ventures.
CN’s handling of the matter does seem to have veered away from standard safety analysis. I would compare the issue to how safety is managed when, say, an airplane blows a tire on landing (it happens ). There may well be investigation of all other tires in the fleet, all other tires of the same brand across many carriers, all other tires of similar nature across other carriers, and landing gear attributes of other planes of the same manufacture. As well as runway and landing conditions at that airport. There are precedents for grounding some or all airplanes worldwide while the investigation proceeds. But that is usually done on a more calculated basis considering the frequency of incidents and any "smoking guns" found..
It does sound as if someone decided to draw a line in the sand and then the organization scrambled to justify that decision post hoc.
- Paul
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micheal_can
Senior Member
If they are needed due to ridership, 2 years is not horrible.
If they are needed to placate CN, then that is very horrible.
It is good to know that it is still an option. Hopefully, at the end of the last delivery, they order them and lengthen the trains as needed for the various routes that have the higher need.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
I‘m curious how the court will reconcile CN‘s claims that „safety is our top concern louder“ with another claim they made that they‘ve only learned after 2-3 years that VIA‘s Siemens trains operate in the only configuration they‘ve ever operated in and west of Ottawa (dozens of times per week). Either you care to know what is going on on your tracks or you don’t…
lenaitch
Senior Member
Really detailed summary. Thanks for that! It's a lot to unpack. I can't estimate the number of times I heard 'this is the first time I've heard of this' or 'nobody told me' when dealing with the government and I suspect large corporations are no different. People agreeing to or signing off on something that is out of their lane isn't surprising. It is also a great way to spread out accountability to the point that, in the end, nobody is accountable.I trust this will be of interest and answer some questions:
VIA and CN in Federal Court - The Facts
VIA applied to Federal Court seeking a judicial review, claiming CN had not performed a risk assessment nor provided evidence to substantiat...
I noticed this entry that references US experience:
"October 29, 2024 - Top CN and VIA staff meet again in a 30-minute Virtual Teams meeting to discuss the LOS issue during which CN indicates, among other things, that its understanding of LOS stemmed from its experience in the U.S. and that the problem is the wheel to rail interaction that occurs with lightweight rolling stock with a narrow and trued wheel profile and low axle count (under 32)."
I know little of the regulated rail industry but, drawing a parallel from automobile safety, if it is determined that there is a safety-related design deficiency when viewed against regulated standards (and that might be the problem), one would think the manufacturer would be compelled to come up with a fix.
The filing is a lot of documents. Normally, the court will take 'judicial notice' of statute or regulatory law, but regulatory law deals in a lot of 'ya buts', exceptions, exemptions and qualifiers, and the Federal Court deals with a wide range of this type of legislation, so it might be deemed easier to simply provide it with the relevant legislation (or it is a rule of the Court). Simply from a tactical point of view, it never hurts to present a nice, tight package so the judges or their clerks don't have to look things up. It make your side look accommodating and helpful. Providing copies of any cases you are citing isn't unusual. The hearing is for a judicial review and present facts, related law and similar cases form part of your 'factum' or written foundation of your case.