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VIA Rail

Urban Sky said:
Until CN is willing to sell it - which in the case of Halwest-Silver or London-Sarnia will probably never happen…
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How about seperate the fact that the Sarnia train uses the Northern line and just have the northern line run from Union to London?

Have the train from Sarnia run on the Dundas sub?

Why does the train need to run on the northern line and go to Sarnia?
 
Bordercollie said:
How about seperate the fact that the Sarnia train uses the Northern line and just have the northern line run from Union to London?

Have the train from Sarnia run on the Dundas sub?

Why does the train need to run on the northern line and go to Sarnia?
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We’ve been through this multiple times already: either you extend 82/83 beyond London (for an extremely early 5:30 departure out of Sarnia) or you swap Windsor for Sarnia for an existing service (despite Chatham alone having a larger CMA population than Sarnia) or you somehow succeed in extracting an additional frequency from CN…
 
Urban Sky said:
We’ve been through this multiple times already: either you extend 82/83 beyond London (for an extremely early 5:30 departure out of Sarnia) or you swap Windsor for Sarnia for an existing service (despite Chatham alone having a larger CMA population than Sarnia) or you somehow try to somehow succeed in extracting an additional frequency from CN…
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Or build a passing tracks at Stratford with a second platform?
 
Bordercollie said:
Or build a passing tracks at Stratford with a second platform?
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That would provide some sorely needed timetable flexibility, but it doesn’t address the fact that during the daylight hours there are only 3 one-hour gaps (at approximately 9am, noon and 3pm) through which you can sneak VIA trains past Georgetown…
 
Bordercollie said:
How much longer until Metrolinx buys the corridor so they retain control of the corridor?
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Urban Sky said:
Until CN is willing to sell it - which in the case of Halwest-Silver or London-Sarnia will probably never happen…
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Yup.
Saddly will probably never happen as the government is more than content to continue kowtowing to lobbyists and big business in secret behind closed doors over the interests of the general public and making preparations for Canada to be competitive and continue prospering going forward into the 21st century.
 
innsertnamehere said:
something interesting in UT's article is that the new trains will apparently result in about a 5% increase in train speeds over today, even without HFR. Which is very interesting to me, I wasn't aware the new trains would result in faster travel times.
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I finally found the time to watch the accompanying video to this article and in conjunction with the reply to the rant video of “Not Just Bike” and other video’s of @Reecemartin, I really had to revise my previously negative opinion (and at times overly and unfairly harsh criticism) of his work! :)

As for the “5% increase in train speeds over today” mentioned in his UT article, I assume that he refers to the difference between 95 mph (152 km/h) today and 100 mph (160 km/h) on Track Class 5 in the future (note that even though P42s and LRCs can already reach that speed today, hardly any Corridor sets have been formed by these two fleet types only during the last few years). The construction of HFR would allow to push this to 110 mph (177 km/h), thus 16% faster than currently, but that’s an entirely separate project…
 
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Other than a change in speed limit, there's two ways I can think of, off hand, in cutting travel times with new trains.

One is faster acceleration.

The other is running faster on curves. As far as I know, the tilting equipment has been locked, if not removed, on the LRC cars for decades - and that's what I see mostly on the Kingston sub along with 1950s equipment. Not sure what Renaissance cars.

How do the new cars work?
 
nfitz said:
Other than a change in speed limit, there's two ways I can think of, off hand, in cutting travel times with new trains.

One is faster acceleration.

The other is running faster on curves. As far as I know, the tilting equipment has been locked, if not removed, on the LRC cars for decades - and that's what I see mostly on the Kingston sub along with 1950s equipment. Not sure what Renaissance cars.

How do the new cars work?
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Faster acceleration for sure results in faster travel times, but the quantitative impact on average speed will vary widely from service to service, depending on the frequency of stops and of changes in speed limits.

As for tilting, the new trains aren’t equipped with it and there isn’t any need for it, as it would require CN to maintain their tracks to a much higher level, whereas for VIA’s own tracks, it will be cheaper to just increase the balanced super-elevation (i.e. the cant applied to the curves). Recall that tilting does only enable to operate with higher higher cant deficiency (unbalanced superelevation), while having no effect on the total superelevation which can be achieved on a curve. Tilting makes only sense on mixed-use infrastructure where the infrastructure owner is similarly interested in passenger and freight operations, which makes it an awkward fit with North American railroads (who own virtually all of its rail networks)…
 
Urban Sky said:
The easy answer is that 32 trainsets will only be sufficient to cover the Corridor service. Also, the on-board amenities (think: Business Class, but no insufficient storage for bulky cargo like canoes) are a clear mismatch with passenger needs on a remote service...
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Thank you. Makes sense. I was thinking they might use them, simply because of the fleet commonality coming out of Montreal.

I guess they could always exercise options later, for 2-3 trainsets and fit out the cars a little differently. Or just wait for HFR plans to be confirmed and then determine the future fleet disposition for the Siemens fleet, post-HFR.
 
cplchanb said:
I think their next acquisition would be to replace the ancient dinosaur long distance trains and rdcs. By that time many would be almost 100 years old which is quite laughable for main line rolling stock for a developed country. Hell even third world countries have newer trains than us....
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Via has already sold or scrapped most of its RDCs. The only service still running them is the Sudbury - White River train. The long distance trains are indeed next on the list, and that will be an interesting acquisition.
Urban Sky said:
Until CN is willing to sell it - which in the case of Halwest-Silver or London-Sarnia will probably never happen…
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Clearly we were not talking about CN selling their own mainline. We were talking about CN selling the London-Kitchener railway which they barely use - and hence barely maintain. Personally I think that Metrolinx would be a better fit as track owner than VIA, but either way there would certainly be many oportunities to improve London-Kitchener-Toronto service if that dilapidated line were fixed up to its original state (70 mph instead of 30 mph) and a couple more passing sidings were added:

1: GO could easily increase service (potentially up to hourly) by extending Kitchener trains to London. Those trains already have slots secured through CN's mainline east of Georgetown.
2: GO or VIA could operate short-turn services from London to Guelph (or possibly Georgetown) timed to meet VIA trains in London
3: VIA could use all 3 of the aforementioned gaps between GO trains, instead of just one (subject to CN approval)
 
reaperexpress said:
Via has already sold or scrapped most of its RDCs. The only service still running them is the Sudbury - White River train. The long distance trains are indeed next on the list, and that will be an interesting acquisition.

Clearly we were not talking about CN selling their own mainline. We were talking about CN selling the London-Kitchener railway which they barely use - and hence barely maintain. Personally I think that Metrolinx would be a better fit as track owner than VIA, but either way there would certainly be many oportunities to improve London-Kitchener-Toronto service if that dilapidated line were fixed up to its original state (70 mph instead of 30 mph) and a couple more passing sidings were added:

1: GO could easily increase service (potentially up to hourly) by extending Kitchener trains to London. Those trains already have slots secured through CN's mainline east of Georgetown.
2: GO or VIA could operate short-turn services from London to Guelph (or possibly Georgetown) timed to meet VIA trains in London
3: VIA could use all 3 of the aforementioned gaps between GO trains, instead of just one (subject to CN approval)
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Many of the smaller routes with a loco towing only 2 to 3 cars are much better suited for dmus. It's a big waste of a loco for 3 cars and even those aren't even full all the time. What is out there that can is acceptable for to meet iur draconian fra requirements?
 
cplchanb said:
Many of the smaller routes with a loco towing only 2 to 3 cars are much better suited for dmus. It's a big waste of a loco for 3 cars and even those aren't even full all the time. What is out there that can is acceptable for to meet iur draconian fra requirements?
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The UPX trains, although I keep hearing they are crap quality.
 
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