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VIA Rail

Wonder if this means VIA will restore service to Gaspe? (Quote below from a FB post: https://m.facebook.com/groups/214271542097478?view=permalink&id=632023276988967)

"$100 million for railroad on the Gaspé coast! Philippe Couillard surprised more than one this morning by announcing a sum of $100 million for the repair of the rail on the Gaspé, while the various echoes were saying $50 million to $75 million.

The Premier indicated at that this amount would be used to rehabilitate the entire section, from Matapédia to Gaspé. The first work will begin as soon as in the coming months. He admitted that to go to Gaspé, it would take "several years". At least three years from now."

Article from today: http://www.lepharillon.ca/actualites/2017/5/5/100-millions-de-dollars-pour-le-rail-en-gaspesie.html
 
Last edited:
Allandale25 said:
Wonder if this means VIA will restore service to Gaspe? (Quote below from a FB post: https://m.facebook.com/groups/214271542097478?view=permalink&id=632023276988967)

"
$100 million for railroad on the Gaspé coast!
Philippe Couillard surprised more than one this morning by announcing a sum of $100 million for the repair of the rail on the Gaspé, while the various echoes were saying $50 million to $75 million.
The Premier indicated at that this amount would be used to rehabilitate the entire section, from Matapédia to Gaspé. The first work will begin as soon as in the coming months.
He admitted that to go to Gaspé, it would take "several years". At least three years from now."

Article from today: http://www.lepharillon.ca/actualites/2017/5/5/100-millions-de-dollars-pour-le-rail-en-gaspesie.html
Click to expand...

I actually took that train about 10 years ago. Very nice trip, though it was pretty empty. Left Montreal in the evening and arrived in Bonaventure (about midway between Matapedia and Gaspe) around 7AM.
 
gweed123 said:
I actually took that train about 10 years ago. Very nice trip, though it was pretty empty. Left Montreal in the evening and arrived in Bonaventure (about midway between Matapedia and Gaspe) around 7AM.
Click to expand...

I took it many time too ! I still remember Bonaventure station where I would be waiting for the Chaleur back to Montreal during late summer. If it comes back to life I will definitively ride it again !
 
gweed123 said:
I actually took that train about 10 years ago. Very nice trip, though it was pretty empty. Left Montreal in the evening and arrived in Bonaventure (about midway between Matapedia and Gaspe) around 7AM.
Click to expand...

I've gone down to Halifax / Moncton a few times on that trip and remember feeling slightly confused on the first trip when I woke up at 6:30 to see the engines passing by and going off on the siding towards Gaspe.
 
kEiThZ said:
Hypothetical question. Could the current Corridor tracks tolerate hourly service if it was just twin car DMUs? Or even bi-hourly service?

Or is there just too much cargo traffic?
Click to expand...
Signalling might be interesting with such a small set. I know VIA did quite a bit of testing in SW Ont but I don't know what that revealed.

The Vermont outfit resold two of TRE's RDCs to Portland, it seems, so there should be 10 RDC-1s and 2 RDC-2s in Vermont if railroad.net has its numbers right.
 
dowlingm said:
Signalling might be interesting with such a small set. I know VIA did quite a bit of testing in SW Ont but I don't know what that revealed.

The Vermont outfit resold two of TRE's RDCs to Portland, it seems, so there should be 10 RDC-1s and 2 RDC-2s in Vermont if railroad.net has its numbers right.
Click to expand...

The CTC between Komoka and both Sarnia and Chatham was installed after VIA retired ita RDCs, and the testing was needed to verify the compatibility of the two. If VIA went ahead and bid on the Budds, one would assume the tests were OK.
The bigger issue is the difficulty of routing VIA trains around the slower freights. It's like passing a slow truck on a 2-lane highway..... doesnt matter if the vehicle coming the other way is a bicyclist or an 18-wheeler. You are still in the opposing lane and either someone pulls over or you will collide head on.
When CN introduced the Turbo trains back in 69-70, they installed double sidings every 20-30 milea between Toronto and Montreal. The idea was for freight trains to pull over and the much faster turbos could get by. These sidings were 6000-8000 feet long. They worked well until freight trains got longer. The longer freights didn't fit. Most of those sidings have been torn out in the last 20 years. It doesn't matter how long the passenger trains are, there is only so much capacity to pass on the opposing main line without being blocked by trains coming the other way.
- Paul
 
crs1026 said:
The CTC between Komoka and both Sarnia and Chatham was installed after VIA retired ita RDCs, and the testing was needed to verify the compatibility of the two. If VIA went ahead and bid on the Budds, one would assume the tests were OK.
Click to expand...
is the CTC on the Corridor the same (since that was the prior question, and only for a 2 car consist)?

In any event I would expect to see them on the proposed Nova Scotia services, possibly Vancouver Island and/or Gaspe if they reopened rather than trying to keep a P42/F40 timetable on the Corridor.
 
dowlingm said:
is the CTC on the Corridor the same (since that was the prior question, and only for a 2 car consist)?

In any event I would expect to see them on the proposed Nova Scotia services, possibly Vancouver Island and/or Gaspe if they reopened rather than trying to keep a P42/F40 timetable on the Corridor.
Click to expand...

It will be different vintage and manufacture, although it all works similarly. The question is whether a lighter consist with a small number of axles can maintain enough electrical contact across the rails to be detected by the CTC and crossing protection. Two cars may not always be enough, one is even more iffy. Different brands of signalling equipment have different tolerances, but other variables (eg soil and moisture conditions in a location) are involved also. Different flavours of DMU will perform differently based on axle weights etc.

CN ran plenty of 2-car RDCs on the corridor, although under some operating restrictions.

- Paul
 
The Annual Report 2016 is finally out:

COVER_2016_EN.jpg
 
kEiThZ said:
Why is their load factor down?
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More Corridor trains, probably will take a while for demand to catch up to new supply?

The Niagara numbers (the VIA part of Amtrak Maple Leaf) are interesting if appalling. Wonder if the issue is very little west/north demand because of uncertainty of when the train passed the border? That's the only Niagara service offered at present, right?
 
Today's NatPost:
John Ivison: Tories should stop politicking, support infrastructure bank
[...]
The REM deal is merely a dry run, but the first deal the bank strikes will be closely scrutinized by the investment community to see if the bank’s staff know what they are doing.

One contender for that first project could be Via Rail’s proposed high-frequency rail service between Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, that would also serve smaller cities like Peterborough, Ont. and Trois Rivieres, Que.

A number of pension funds have already expressed interest in the $5.5-billion project but the infrastructure bank’s involvement could prove to be decisive by making the terms richer.

From the federal government’s point of view, the new service would tick a number of policy boxes — taking cars off the road and providing Canadians with a faster, more frequent service between four of the country’s largest cities (it’s anticipated there would be up to 24 trips a day between Toronto and Ottawa, an increase from the current frequency of nine a day).

It’s a project that makes sense and is much more likely to come to fruition if Ottawa takes an equity stake.

Hearing Justin Trudeau talk about maximizing opportunities to create well-paying jobs and grow the middle class is like living next door to the highway. He says it so often, eventually, you don’t even notice.

But this kind of project has real potential to boost Canada’s economy. For one thing, real estate developers along the route would be rubbing their hands.

Yet whether it has merit for the taxpayer would depend entirely on the structure of the deal. Canadian history is littered with bone-headed financial deals made by governments – the sale of Highway 407 and Newfoundland’s lease of Churchill Falls to Quebec spring to mind.

In theory at least, the bank will be run at arm’s length from government by investment professionals better qualified than bureaucrats to make sound investment decisions.

The infrastructure bank is clearly not a good fit for all proposals, but for others like the high-frequency rail service, it could prove the catalyst to lifting it off the drawing board.

Opposing the bank as a “terrible idea” — mainly because it wasn’t your own — is the kind of blinkered statism that has made the NDP the electoral powerhouse it is today. The Conservatives should know better.
Click to expand...
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-c...-stop-politicking-support-infrastructure-bank
 
dowlingm said:
More Corridor trains, probably will take a while for demand to catch up to new supply?

The Niagara numbers (the VIA part of Amtrak Maple Leaf) are interesting if appalling. Wonder if the issue is very little west/north demand because of uncertainty of when the train passed the border? That's the only Niagara service offered at present, right?
Click to expand...
There's a summertime Niagara GO train, too. Which is probably siphoning off a few Toronto-Niagara passengers. It's due to become a yearround 7-days-a-week GO commuter train service by 2023, although Niagara is trying to pull that off by 2021.

But yes, the incoming trains do have an unreliable arrival time -- that also affects with ridership.
 
I'm in Japan right now and from what Ive experienced so, man it really makes me feel so ashamed when via and JR are mentioned in the same paragraph. they have so many shinkansen running out of tokyo as HFR and HSR at the same time, that my train only showed up on the display 15min prior to the train arriving. Even their lesser local service routes that are akin to what the RDCs serve have a much more reliable and frequent service than everything we have bar maybe the corridor routes. And they are essentially a private conglomerate working together AND making MONEY every year. Maybe its time that via gets offloaded so that theyre future isnt tied to the next election. I dont understand why we are so afraid of a private railway company. Its not like china where corruption is rampant. Japan has been private for decades and is one of the largest and most successful private networks in the world. Currently our government is unable to fund our national railway and along with our international reputation, its turning into an archaic joke that has virtually no chance at all to recover from.
At this rate, this HFR will never get off the ground in the next decade. Maybe like Japan, we need via to be sold off so that at least it will have a chance to make money and grow.
 
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