VIA Rail

[Bordercollie]

It's much more complicated than that: some cars have quick couplers on one side (which only couple with other quick couplers) and you can't turn the baggage or baggage transition car because they have standard American couplers on the other side...


There is a reason why non-corridor trains typically have their baggage car next to the locomotive(s) and the coaches directly afterwards. This is not possible with a Park car, unless it's at the opposite end of the train...

I assume it was too expensive to change all of the couplers to north american ones?

But even with the corridor fleet renewal we don't have enough equipment to replace the Ren sets.
But with the Canadian only running on a limited schedule, why didn't they use BUDD cars on the ocean instead?

Did they fix the AC on the Ren cars while they were stored during the pandemic? What about the leaking roofs?

 

[Urban Sky]

I assume it was too expensive to change all of the couplers to north american ones?

But even with the corridor fleet renewal we don't have enough equipment to replace the Ren sets.
But with the Canadian only running on a limited schedule, why didn't they use BUDD cars on the ocean instead?

Did they fix the AC on the Ren cars while they were stored during the pandemic? What about the leaking roofs?

As I said earlier, I no longer work for VIA and I was never directly involved in (re)configuring the Ocean post-Halterm. That said, when if not now (where lots of Budd equipment is unassigned and may be used at short notice on any service) is the best time to test out how well the bidirectional and hybrid REN-HEP trainset works in revenue service?

 

[littlewill1166]

Halifax to Montreal train | VIA Rail

The Halifax to Montreal train makes an overnight journey along the St. Lawrence before crossing the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. No other train offers such a variety of travel options.

www.viarail.ca

• We ask that all passengers limit their movements within the train and remain in their cabin or at their assigned seats for the duration of the trip.
• All meals will be provided in-cabin only and will have to be eaten in cabins. The menu and bar service have been modified.
• Unfortunately, the Park car and Service cars (lounge/dome cars) will not be accessible to any passenger.
• Activities and entertainment (including music) have been cancelled.

 

[smallspy]

I respectfully disagree. The Nightstar trains were designed to be unidirectional, as being overnight trains, they had plenty of time to turn them around during the day while being stored in a yard. From a passenger perspective, most of the cars are agnostic to these direction, but as @Urban Sky said, the couplers and wiring are directional. The big exception are the coaches, as the seats all face in the same direction, so unless you want to have everyone face backwards in one direction, that is a problem.

The trains were designed to be run as fixed consists, and so the "couplers" are handed, yes. (As are the electrical connectors.) They also must have at least one service car, as that is where a lot of the heavy electrical conversion equipment is located for the entire trainset.

But they were absolutely designed to be bidirectional. Why do you think that both the bedrooms and coach seating were configured to be fixed, and facing in both directions?

And why do you think that the diesel locos that they had converted for the service (class 37/6s) were to be operated back-to-back, with a generator car between them?

Dan

 

[smallspy]

I assume it was too expensive to change all of the couplers to north american ones?

It frankly wasn't feasible, not within the timeframe and budget provided.

As I wrote above, the cars were designed to operate in fixed consists. Even within each consist, there were slight differences in some cars depending on how they were designed to be marshalled and used (most coaches didn't have couplers at all, some had an automatic coupler not unlike a Scharfenburg that allowed for faster coupling-and-uncoupling).

Couple that with the early crash energy management built into the cars, and it is very, very difficult to design a system to allow for the use of North American couplers on the cars. The conversion of the 12 sleeper shells into baggage cars was the best that could be done.

But even with the corridor fleet renewal we don't have enough equipment to replace the Ren sets.

Yes and no. Remember that the new equipment will not have to be turned at the ends of its runs - that frees up a lot of time that is otherwise required for prepping each train.

There's also the assumption - right or wrong - that the new equipment will be more reliable by virtual of its new-ness.

And finally, the will be some older rolling stock maintained for corridor service, providing a net increase of seats for service.

But with the Canadian only running on a limited schedule, why didn't they use BUDD cars on the ocean instead?

And then what is done when the Canadian goes back to regular running?

It's not just that the equipment then has to be moved to another location for that service (Montreal to Toronto) - but also a whole lot of stuff at the back end of VIA's systems needs to change as well.

Did they fix the AC on the Ren cars while they were stored during the pandemic? What about the leaking roofs?

I'm hearing that there was a LOT of work done to the Rennaissance equipment that remains left for service on The Ocean. I suspect that they did fix most of those issues with the HVAC and what have you. The exterior condition certainly reflects that some work was done to the cars while they sat.

Dan

 

[roger1818]

The trains were designed to be run as fixed consists, and so the "couplers" are handed, yes. (As are the electrical connectors.) They also must have at least one service car, as that is where a lot of the heavy electrical conversion equipment is located for the entire trainset.

But they were absolutely designed to be bidirectional. Why do you think that both the bedrooms and coach seating were configured to be fixed, and facing in both directions?

The coach seating is configured to be fixed, and facing in one direction.

And why do you think that the diesel locos that they had converted for the service (class 37/6s) were to be operated back-to-back, with a generator car between them?

The locos were built in the 1960s. The fact that even with two of them, they still didn't have enough power to provide HEP and needed a separate HEP generator van must tell you something. Them being back-to-back may have been that they were designed to operate that way.

Even if they were originally designed to operate in both directions (which I doubt), VIA now has the coaches configured to have all the seats facing in one direction and the way the under seat and overhead compartments are designed, it would be difficult if not impossible to change the seat directions. Even if it were possible, given the poor condition of the Renaissance equipment, it would be foolish to spend good money to modify the coaches for bi-directional operation.

 

[cplchanb]

The coach seating is configured to be fixed, and facing in one direction.



The locos were built in the 1960s. The fact that even with two of them, they still didn't have enough power to provide HEP and needed a separate HEP generator van must tell you something. Them being back-to-back may have been that they were designed to operate that way.

Even if they were originally designed to operate in both directions (which I doubt), VIA now has the coaches configured to have all the seats facing in one direction and the way the under seat and overhead compartments are designed, it would be difficult if not impossible to change the seat directions. Even if it were possible, given the poor condition of the Renaissance equipment, it would be foolish to spend good money to modify the coaches for bi-directional operation.

Im surprised why hardly anyone else in the western world has not adopted swivel seating like the japanese trains. That way everyone can all face the direction of travel back and forth. Its not rocket science and if the shinkansen can implement them safely its should be no issue on much slower venture cars.

 

[roger1818]

Im surprised why hardly anyone else in the western world has not adopted swivel seating like the japanese trains. That way everyone can all face the direction of travel back and forth. Its not rocket science and if the shinkansen can implement them safely its should be no issue on much slower venture cars.

AFAIK, the LRC and HEP trains have (had) swivel seats, but VIA doesn't tend to turn them as it takes too much time.

 

[cplchanb]

AFAIK, the LRC and HEP trains have (had) swivel seats, but VIA doesn't tend to turn them as it takes too much time.

Honestly though if that's their excuse that's just pure laziness. There should be no reason why a 5 car train (assuming Toronto to montreal) that runs at best once an hour cannot be prepped for service within that time frame. They can clean and turn around a 16 car shinkansen unless than 10 minutes. For sure if they tried they can rotate 5 cars in 1 hour

 

[Urban Sky]

Honestly though if that's their excuse that's just pure laziness. There should be no reason why a 5 car train (assuming Toronto to montreal) that runs at best once an hour cannot be prepped for service within that time frame. They can clean and turn around a 16 car shinkansen unless than 10 minutes. For sure if they tried they can rotate 5 cars in 1 hour

If the time taken to turn these seats was really the only drawback from having rotating seats, how do you explain that virtually zero rail companies across Europe bothers with them, despite the fierce competition they often find themselves against each other (Trenitalia vs. Italo, ÖBB vs. WestBahn, CD vs. RegioJet, DB vs. FlixTrain, Thalys vs. ICE/TGV, ...)?

 

[cplchanb]

If the time taken to turn these seats was really the only drawback from having rotating seats, how do you explain that virtually zero rail companies across Europe bothers with them, despite the fierce competition they often find themselves against each other (Trenitalia vs. Italo, ÖBB vs. WestBahn, CD vs. RegioJet, DB vs. FlixTrain, Thalys vs. ICE/TGV, ...)?

probably $... it is a bit of a premium to buy and maintain, but it is acceptable to them at the expense of passenger comfort. its also possibly a east vs west ego thing as well.. you can see it virtually all asian railroads but not for western trains...
tough pill to swallow for europeans to admit that asian trainsa run things better than they do.

 

[Urban Sky]

probably $... it is a bit of a premium to buy and maintain, but it is acceptable to them at the expense of passenger comfort. its also possibly a east vs west ego thing as well.. you can see it virtually all asian railroads but not for western trains...
tough pill to swallow for europeans to admit that asian trainsa run things better than they do.

It's a bit frustrating that the moderators just deleted my entire message as "ad hominem" rather than giving me the chance to remove some of the admittedly unnecessary saltiness, but let me give it a more constructive try:

Just because you struggle to imagine any of the operational and commercial constraints which having rotating seats imposes on a railway service, doesn't mean that they don't exist and as the most visible European in this thread, I might take your remarks about "not wanting to admit" slightly more personal than they were intended.

I get it that you prefer to sit forward-facing and without staring at strangers and even though this preference is probably shared by a majority of travellers in any part of the world, there are many which prefer the inverse: be it to face their family members or friends with which they travel or just to watch how the scenery disappears into the horizon.

I have had the pleasure to travel extensively in Japan during a three-week vacations and even though I have no problem admitting that Japan's (and presumably also South Korean, Taiwanese and many Chinese) trains are much faster (but only where it pertains the Shinkansen!), cleaner, more frequent and of course reliable than in Europe, I was severely disappointed by their "one-seat-fits all" approach (without tables at quads) and the near-complete lack of any food or beverage options while on board. Like almost everyone, I fell in love with the Ekiben (bento boxes ubiquitous at all major stations), but many journeys were too long to realistically stock up hours ahead of actual meal times.

In short, just like I keep reminding people here that our trains really don't compare nearly as pathetically with European trains as many of us like to believe, I don't believe that Japanese railways do everything better than European ones. In terms of revenue management (using fares to divert demand towards less popular trains), Japanese railroads trail Canadian ones by more than a half-century (red-white-blue fares, anyone?)...

I hope that this response was more constructive than my previous one and I would like to apologize for some of the latter's unnecessary harshness...

Have a great weekend!

 

[ManyQuestions]

probably $... it is a bit of a premium to buy and maintain, but it is acceptable to them at the expense of passenger comfort. its also possibly a east vs west ego thing as well.. you can see it virtually all asian railroads but not for western trains...
tough pill to swallow for europeans to admit that asian trainsa run things better than they do.

Based on my (limited) experience traveling by train in East Asia and general online observations, rotating seats are very uncommon and limited to only a few Shinkansen trains in Japan. I don't have expert knowledge about that area but I did spend the bulk of my time traveling through China by train facing backwards in assigned seats on bidirectional intercity EMUs. As for adopting practices from Asian railways, not all practices are directly applicable to all areas; while I really do like that the REM project is adopting many better practices that are standard in East Asia but absent in North America, I am puzzled by the decision to carryover longitudinal seating onto this regional metro project.

 

[cplchanb]

It's a bit frustrating that the moderators just deleted my entire message as "ad hominem" rather than giving me the chance to remove some of the admittedly unnecessary saltiness, but let me give it a more constructive try:

Just because you struggle to imagine any of the operational and commercial constraints which having rotating seats imposes on a railway service, doesn't mean that they don't exist and as the most visible European in this thread, I might take your remarks about "not wanting to admit" slightly more personal than they were intended.

I get it that you prefer to sit forward-facing and without staring at strangers and even though this preference is probably shared by a majority of travellers in any part of the world, there are many which prefer the inverse: be it to face their family members or friends with which they travel or just to watch how the scenery disappears into the horizon.

I have had the pleasure to travel extensively in Japan during a three-week vacations and even though I have no problem admitting that Japan's (and presumably also South Korean, Taiwanese and many Chinese) trains are much faster (but only where it pertains the Shinkansen!), cleaner, more frequent and of course reliable than in Europe, I was severely disappointed by their "one-seat-fits all" approach (without tables at quads) and the near-complete lack of any food or beverage options while on board. Like almost everyone, I fell in love with the Ekiben (bento boxes ubiquitous at all major stations), but many journeys were too long to realistically stock up hours ahead of actual meal times.

In short, just like I keep reminding people here that our trains really don't compare nearly as pathetically with European trains as many of us like to believe, I don't believe that Japanese railways do everything better than European ones. In terms of revenue management (using fares to divert demand towards less popular trains), Japanese trail Canadians one by more than a half-century (blue-white-red fares, anyone?)...

I hope that this response was more constructive than my previous one and I would like to apologize for some of the latter's unnecessary harshness...

Have a great weekend!

No worries, and I get where you're coming from. As long as our discussions and debates are on facts and not finger pointing its all fair game. I too have been traveling in Asia many times and I've seen both good and not so good railways. In China and Japan their express rail service is meant to compete with airplanes so they need to keep their service at top level and it shows. Their cabins, especially in first class mimics those found in jets. I do admit my experience with European rail is far less extensive, however I have watched enough reviews to get a general sense of what it's like. Obviously there are pluses and minuses for everything but I guess we should compare the marquee services which in general sense which for us is the corridor intercity services. Since these generate the most cash for VIA they need to pretty much be the best, fastest, and most comfortable. Comparing to other equivalent services around the globe, it's safe to say we need to really catch up

 

[Urban Sky]

As for adopting practices from Asian railways, not all practices are directly applicable to all areas; while I really do like that the REM project is adopting many better practices that are standard in East Asia but absent in North America, I am puzzled by the decision to carryover longitudinal seating onto this regional metro project.

The longitudinal seating is the direct consequence of misusing a low-capacity transportation technology which is most suited as a people mover (e.g. at an airport) for a high-density transit corridor, which basically forces you to squeeze as many people as possible onto the limited real estate these tiny trains offer, while simultaneously pushing the system towards extreme headways. If there is one Asian practice I can see them adopting then it would be employees pushing you into these trains...

When pigs fly...