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VIA Rail

The new fleet will neither have turnable seats nor should it have them:

I'm curious if we ever heard the dimensions of the VIA version of the interiors. A check back through this thread turned up some hints, but nothing definitive.

A Trains Magazine article cites Brightline as having a 32 inch interior aisle and 19-inch economy seats, with 39 inch seat pitch. That adds up to 2.743 meters in width.

The Toronto Star places current VIA seats at 19.5 inches, but it's not clear which type of coach that applies to.

A "standard" Siemens Viaggio Comfort railcar is 2.825 meters wide, versus LRC's 3.190 m width, if I have my sources right.

Just wondering if there is a definitive answer?

- Paul
 
With the central piece of the Corridor due to restart (with partial service) only next Tuesday and this affecting almost every single Corridor cycle, I don't think it's that surprising if the equipment is all over the place and doesn't exactly match what you booked...




The new fleet will neither have turnable seats nor should it have them:

I know we had this discussion before, but the price of having turnable seats is that you can't have any quads with table, which make traveling with family or friends much more enjoyable:
Well the thing about swivel seats is that if you have a quad situation you can make a quad simply by turning the seat around. However in most cases travellers are going either alone or in pairs. By fixing the seats and not given people an option to choose yyou are essentially in a 50//50 odds of getting shafted to going backwards on your trip. Has Europe ever experienced swivel seats?? maybe its unknown because most dont bother to care or havent come across their heads.. maybe their eyes havent been opened yet.
 
I'm curious if we ever heard the dimensions of the VIA version of the interiors. A check back through this thread turned up some hints, but nothing definitive.

A Trains Magazine article cites Brightline as having a 32 inch interior aisle and 19-inch economy seats, with 39 inch seat pitch. That adds up to 2.743 meters in width.

The Toronto Star places current VIA seats at 19.5 inches, but it's not clear which type of coach that applies to.

A "standard" Siemens Viaggio Comfort railcar is 2.825 meters wide, versus LRC's 3.190 m width, if I have my sources right.

Just wondering if there is a definitive answer?

- Paul

The Brightline cars - as well as the Calidot, and presumably the VIA cars as well - meet the PRIIA 305-003 specification, which calls for all cars to fit within Amtrak's D 05-1355 clearance diagram. While I realize that it doesn't give us any specifics, it does allow for a car with 59'6" truck centres to have an overall width of 10' 6". I think that it's pretty fair to assume that Siemens will try and build the cars in such a way to try and fill out that envelope to the greatest degree possible - which means that they will be more-or-less the same width as the LRC, and definately not as narrow as the Euro versions of the Viaggio cars. (As it turns out, that ~10'6" width also happens to be the same width as the Horizon cars, Amfleets, Acela coaches, etc.)

Dan
 
If people want a forward seat then VIA should provide the option to specify the seat in advance as an up sell, as the airlines do. Additional fare income and earlier booking: win win!
As a passenger, the reason we pick VIA is because we don't like being nickled and dimed. Remember, VIA is a public service and not a for-profit corporation. If VIA does this, they should also provide an option to do it for free 24 hours in advance, like the airlines.
 
I suspect it was for cold weather testing at the NRC facility near Ottawa Airport (one of the only freight customers left in Ottawa, and IIRC, the only freight customer on the old CP Prescott Subdivision now used as the OC Transpo Trillium Line.

Still doesn't explain why not tow it on a train.
 
Still doesn't explain why not tow it on a train.
It did come in on a train. I suspect that for some reason, presumably O-Train related, it was more convenient to truck to a freight yard than to arrange a freight run to fetch from NRC?
 
As a passenger, the reason we pick VIA is because we don't like being nickled and dimed. Remember, VIA is a public service and not a for-profit corporation. If VIA does this, they should also provide an option to do it for free 24 hours in advance, like the airlines.
The reason “we” pick? I suspect VIA has many different customer strata for the same reason it has several economy and business ticker types
 
As per “Smallspy” on the Canadian Public Transit Discussion Board”:
The car has been at NRC's Ottawa facility for the past several months, and was delivered there by rail. Now that construction has started in earnest on the Trillium Line upgrades, the line has been embargoed, and so it was no longer capable of leaving the facility on its own wheels.



The car is being transferred to some other location where it will then be offloaded back onto the rails, then sent back to Siemens in Sacramento for modification and completion.



Dan
https://cptdb.ca/topic/9584-via-rail-canada/?do=findComment&comment=888640
 
Is an airline a “public service?” One pays good money for seat selection on most air carriers.

Pricing is a matter of what the market will bear. VIA is no different, although I hope they don’t aspire to airline style pricing.

- Paul

If the governments removed all public money going to them and the airports, their service would not be as low priced as it is now, nor would they fly to many destinations.
 

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