VIA Rail

[Bordercollie]

Staging *something* along the corridor seems intuitively smart, yes.

But I would question whether crews can be staged in a useful way. VIA has to schedule people to maximise the amount of work they do within the very strict hours of work rules imposed by Ottawa. Adding contingency time to shifts would lower productivity. Having crews staged at midpoints would not work, as they would be conspicuously idle 95% of the time. And, when they are needed, weather and other factors might mean they couldn't reach the scene of the problem. Having crews "time out" on hours is hard to avoid when delays happen given their fairly tight scheduling.

The same is true of trains - VIA's need to cycle trainsets productively means that any delay cascades, as clearly happened recently.

Rapid-response of standby trains and spare board personnel from the existing terminals is possible, but the same productivity issues arise and travel time to the problem would still be problemmatic - if, indeed, a standby train could thread the needle thru blocked freight and passenger trains to reach the problem. Once you have a standby train, maybe it's better deployed to fill in whatever gap in the cycling the non-availability of the stranded train creates.

- Paul

Is it better to have two crews do a half day rather than one do a full day and the other be on standby?

 

[crs1026]

Is it better to have two crews do a half day rather than one do a full day and the other be on standby?

It is better still to have everyone do a full day's work. VIA can't afford a crew of two being paid to do nothing on the off chance that a train will exceed its hours once in a while.

To the best of my knowledge VIA does not have extra board workers sitting awaiting work at full pay (I know of transit propertiesthat do schedule spare board operators who sit in the lunchroom until needed). The standard "spare board" call requirement is to report two hours after they are called. VIA might have personnel at rest at away terminals who could report faster, but their availability would depend where they are in their rest hours regime at the time of the need.

(This sort of issue is why as a management guy I had a very healthy respect for unions and elected union reps. The question of who gets the idle hours would be very divisive in any bargaining unit. Union reps are elected, after all )

- Paul

 

[Bordercollie]

It is better still to have everyone do a full day's work. VIA can't afford a crew of two being paid to do nothing on the off chance that a train will exceed its hours once in a while.

To the best of my knowledge VIA does not have extra board workers sitting awaiting work at full pay (I know of transit propertiesthat do schedule spare board operators who sit in the lunchroom until needed). The standard "spare board" call requirement is to report two hours after they are called. VIA might have personnel at rest at away terminals who could report faster, but their availability would depend where they are in their rest hours regime at the time of the need.

(This sort of issue is why as a management guy I had a very healthy respect for unions and elected union reps. The question of who gets the idle hours would be very divisive in any bargaining unit. Union reps are elected, after all )

- Paul

So if the spare crews is in Ottawa and the train runs out of hours in Kingston they have 2 hours to report to Ottawa and then travel 2 hours (4 hours in a snow storm) to Kingston to relieve the crew that ran out of hours? Hopefully they would have taken pre-emptive action and called the spare crew before they ran out of hours since that would mean at least a 6 hour delay for passengers.

 

[Urban Sky]

Is it better to have two crews do a half day rather than one do a full day and the other be on standby?

Give. That every revenue run takes at least 2 hours, it’s impossible to fit two round-trips into the maximum work hour limit of 12 hours - or to fit one round-trip into a half-day. A half-day almost inevitably means that it starts and ends in different cities, which implies a hotel stay before or after that work day…

So if the spare crews is in Ottawa and the train runs out of hours in Kingston they have 2 hours to report to Ottawa and then travel 2 hours (4 hours in a snow storm) to Kingston to relieve the crew that ran out of hours?

Locomotive engineers have a locker at their home depot (e.g., MMC for Montreal-based and TMC for Toronto-based crews), but I imagine they can be dispatched directly by taxi to save time when rescuing a train.

Hopefully they would have taken pre-emptive action and called the spare crew before they ran out of hours since that would mean at least a 6 hour delay for passengers.

The second you’ve called a LE for for duty, his shift legally starts with an already determined shift expiration time and rest-hours required after the end of his shift. There is a high cost of calling an LE you could have otherwise let work the following day, so preemptively calling replacement crews might bite you into the butt when a different LE calls sick the next day. Same reason why local bus companies will be reluctant to commit ad-hoc buses and drivers to meet stranded VIA trains and pick up their passengers…

 

[micheal_can]

Have You worked in a union environment? Would operating rules even allow on-board crews to do that? I'm not sure we even know what the exact problem was. Somebody mentioned a coupler. I have no clue about the couplers used by the Siemens but a lot of the proprietary ones include data/comms connections. Not a great place for heat.

I have worked in both union and non union places. I know that under no circumstances can I touch certain things no matter what. I also know how much I could touch under certain circumstances before I would be in trouble(and potentially not working there anymore)..Friend of mine works for CN as a conductor/engineer. They are expected to swap out bad knuckles on the spot. So,my thinking is, if it is a frozen knuckle/pin/fastener, that should be fine.

The average merchant or military vessel has a lot more resources on board to deal with some types of failures or problems than a Venture train does. But even ships have to call for a tow under certain circumstances.
A source has suggested that there was an unforeseen incompatibility between the two Venture sets involved. Maybe it wasn't just a frozen pipe after all. Just inside gossip, but quite credible.
If it was frozen something....having seen what gets done in freezing cold.... applying heat is what you do if you have sufficient time and patience and pure optimism and no other options to suggest and nothing left to lose. Asking a crew with minimal equipment and with defined hours of work to succeed by doing that, while their hours clock is ticking and they have a hundred miles yet to run before it expires, is a different matter. Sometimes cold wins.

- Paul

I have been dragged back into Hawaii on one of our RCN ships. Mind you, that's because it needed a new engine room.

This incident still shows that the railways get surprised by winter every year.

 

[Bordercollie]

There are two Siemens venture sets laying over in the Bathurst yeard. I guess it was easier than detouring to TMC. Can they service the washrooms from there?

They were iding so I guess there is only Shore power for GO trains.

 

[reaperexpress]

Why would CN do this? They've hung their hat on the US experience and White Paper and used it to justify their speed reductions in Canada. Plus that policy is what's driven Amtrak to adopt OSEs through an FRA exemption. And we ALWAYS follow the States!

If we always followed the States, we would allow passenger rail operators to use EU rolling stock like they do via Alternative Compliance. But we're not. So the Stadler KISS EMUs they use in California on mainlines shared with freight could not be used in Canada on mainlines shared with freight.