VIA Rail

[Bordercollie]

Would be interesting to know if Rocky demanded any sort of exclusivity from Stadler to prevent VIA from being able to acquire an identical coach.

If VIA had also ordered some bilevels from Stadler it might have cascaded enough stock off West Coast service to allow some of the spending on the refresh of the HEP stock to be forgone, and provide a robust rolling stock complement for Montreal long haul services. But that wouldn't have allowed the sprinkling of job announcements to various refurbishment shops. Amtrak is still saying they intend to replace some Superliner Is, and whatever they pick may be an opportunity for VIA to piggyback on a modified option order.

I don't know why a double decker type train was not chosen for the corridor fleet but it makes sense from an economic perspective. VIA pays railways on per axle, and the more bums you can fit between those axles should make operating costs lower.

I don't think RMR could make Stadler make the design exclusive, with such a small order.

How do those bombardier multi levels ride at 90mph? GO transit only gets up to about 70mph so we don't get to ride Bi-levels at those higher speeds.

 

[Urban Sky]

I just noticed that not all of the all-stop Ottawa-Toronto trains stop in Smith Falls. Is this because of scheduling conflicts with CP due to the at grade crossover?

I'd have to guess which trains you mean with "all-stop Ottawa-Toronto trains", but almost all which somehow qualify already stop in SMTF (note that there are 12 intermediary stations between OTTW and TRTO: FALL, SMTF, BRKV, GANA, KGON, NAPN, BLVL, TRNJ, CBRG, PHOP, OSHA and GUIL):

In the regular schedule:

• Train 48 (TRTO@18:40, OTTW@23:16) stops at all 12 stations
• Train 643 (OTTW@08:40, TRTO@13:16) stops at 11 stations (no stop in GANA) [operates on Saturday and Sunday only]
• Train 54 (TRTO@17:40, OTTW@22:07) stops at 9 stations (no stop in GANA, BRKV and SMTF) [operates Monday to Friday]
• Train 59 (OTTW@18:26, TRTO@23:07) stops at 9 stations (no stop in GANA, NAPN and PHOP)

I assume you are referring to train 54, but that train is followed by train 48 which stops in SMTF and operates only one hour later.

That said, there have been indeed conflicts with CP about stops at SMTF, but these have been resolved by moving the station from the CP mainline to a new station in Montague (just one kilometer north). One scheduling constraint which remains at SMTF is that the station also doubles at a siding which doesn't have any platform access, which means that you need to ensure that there is plenty of time between two subsequent station stops (at least between trains running in opposite directions), to avoid that a late train causes two trains with scheduled station stop in SMTF reach the station at the same time...

It would be interesting to know what the traditional through ridership was through London, versus the transfer ridership. I wonder if ridership followed the changes in service, or vice versa.

I would expect that VIA would try to keep the maximum people in a single seat. Logically, with today's population that would imply some T-K-L-W runs.

I don't think this matters as TRTO will always remain orders of magnitudes more important as destination than any other station. If the northern and southern route offered comparable travel times, then the clear preference would be to route through train via the northern route, but as long as the time penalty is anywhere close to the full hour at present, it will always be the southern route...

You are correct, my concern is completely without supporting data.....except.....for the 1981 timetable you cited for Toronto-London. Where are all those trains today? Forty intervening years where VIA was trimmed back, and back again, is my point.

It's "use it or lose it": had VIA not been forced by budget cuts to cut frequencies in 1981, 1990 and 2012, I'd assume that VIA would still operate nine frequencies per day on the southern and five frequencies on the northern route, as every new timetable period is a process in which the previous timetable is the default new timetable and every change needs to be negotiated between VIA and the host railroad.

I'm sticking by my conspiracy theory. CN is remarkably accommodating of VIA east of Toronto, but that is very likely because they appreciate that a tribunal would not accept their desire to shed the sole passenger route that links Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. But when VIA has its own parallel route, and the question is serving the smaller communities rather than the main cities.....they may feel they have more leverage.

Compared to today, CN gains significant operational improvements on the Kingston Sub with HFR, as the VIA trains will decrease in frequency (by eliminating duplication between MTRL-TRTO and OTTW-TRTO frequencies), operate at slower average speeds (due to more stops) and have wider gaps inbetween them. At the same time it is difficult for a host railroad to retaliate against legal or political action taken by its tenant if that tenant has a corridor on which said host railroad doesn't control the dispatching. Also have a look at what is said here about Section 152 of the CTA:

Smith said Via did have some protections in legislation, before CN was privatized in 1995. At that point, all mention of passenger rail was removed from the act so it wouldn’t hinder CN being sold, Smith said.

“Sometime later I was successful in persuading people that we should put in section 152 (of the Canada Transportation Act,” Smith said. “It gives Via Rail the right to go to the Canadian Transportation Agency with complaints about service from the railway.”

But Via has only taken advantage of that once. Gormick said he understands why.

“(Via Rail complained about) CP when they didn’t want to honour an agreement about the number of trains going through a junction in Smiths Falls (Ontario). They took them to the CTA and Via Rail won,” Gormick said. “But they won’t do it with CN because 83 per cent of all their train miles are run on CN.”

Gormick said that Via Rail is concerned that if Via Rail complains to the CTA over one route, CN will retaliate.

I can't comment on VIA's relationship with CN (other than that it is already much more cooperative and constructive than certain "passenger rail advocates" let it appear), but I think we can agree that having a dedicated passenger corridor linking VIA's three busiest stations will alter the power relation with its most important host railroad...

And, I'm not confident that VIA has contractual language that would maintain the 100/95 mph top speed after HFR. Or prevent CN from taking some sections of double track out of service, particularly east of Brockville.

As far as I remember only P42 locomotives and LRC cars are allowed to reach 100 mph and there are hardly any corridor trains which are formed by just these two fleet types, but anyways, the more often Lakeshore services stop, the less the top speed would matter anyways, even if CN were to downgrade the tracks to Track Class four (i.e. 80 mph for passenger trains). Similarly, I don't see CN going down to single-track anywhere along the Kingston Sub, as it would be impossible to do so with drastic impacts on their own freight operations. Freight traffic on the Kingston Sub is much more intense than on the Winchester/Belleville Subs and than passenger traffic that eliminating some of the only 10-12 passenger trains per day between Brockville and Coteau will barely make a difference...

While CN runs plenty of freight on the Kingston line, they run higher volumes on the rest of their transcontinental network with plenty of single track. They will want full return on any excess capitalization that supports VIA.

Freight trains on the Kingston Sub are much shorter, faster and more frequent than out west - and I would expect CN to have very good reasons for operating in that way...

We can agree to differ on this.... a cheap bottle of wine bought today will have aged to perfection before we know. It's a safe wager

I don't mind having opinions, I'm just getting tired of unsubstantiated speculation presented as "this is going to happen"...

I may not have made that point well. VIA does a clever job of spreading local stops across its trains, such that a particular train stops only once or twice, thereby preserving the express timings and effectively giving the local stops "express" service. Post HFR, I imagine there will be few express timings. As already discussed, the timings will suffer. The question is, does that slower timing matter?

In absence of the necessity to serve the primary markets, which will shift the focus from aggressive trip times to increased connectivity between the various cities along the Lakeshore. Therefore, average speed will be lower, which will naturally decrease friction between passenger and freight operations (by decreasing their speed differential).

I'm strictly a guy in the bleachers, but I'm still hung up on trip time. Highway timings are highly variable with lots of horror stories.... but auto users have a funny way of remembering their best driving time and believing their next trip will be that good. VIA needs to provide service which is demonstrably faster than the auto, period, or the auto will prevail.

- Paul

HFR will be highly time-competitive against the car. As for the Lakeshore services, the issue is not travel time - it's the lack of reliability and frequencies (especially on the intermediary markets) and on both counts, post-HFR service will provide massive improvements which will easily outweigh the additional stops...

I have attached the speed/time and speed/distance graphs below. The recording was only started as the train left Gare Centrale on the viaduct but before it reached the Lachine canal.
View attachment 285938
View attachment 285939

As you can see, this travel time was achieved despite several slowdowns that could likely be removed with the ~150m dollars for this leg of HFR.

You can go on Reservia and replace the train number and date (in the URL) with the journey for which you recorded the speed. Despite what you recorded, you can safely assume that your train never exceeded 100 mph (and probably not even 95 mph)...

By the way, you can always verify your (or any) train's current speed on TSI mobile:

Follow your train in real time

Be informed of our departures and arrivals: follow your train in real time.

tsimobile.viarail.ca

 

[kEiThZ]

HFR will be highly time-competitive against the car.

I would agree with this on most trips. But I'm not sure it's highly competitive on the longer trips (Toronto to Montreal, or Ottawa to Quebec City). Trips pushing 4-5 hrs, it's only a bit faster than a car. It'll the fares, schedules and reliability that make these longer trips work.

As for the Lakeshore services, the issue is not travel time - it's the lack of reliability and frequencies (especially on the intermediary markets) and on both counts, post-HFR service will provide massive improvements which will easily outweigh the additional stops...

Will reliability improve substantially with Lakeshore service still using CN track with no priority?

And while I can see substantial gains for most communities, this seems to be proportionally less gains on frequencies for Kingston. And a longer trip time. But a better spaced scheduler and departure ms originating in Kingston.

 

[roger1818]

That's not how this works. You are the one making the assertion. Burden of proof is on you. We have examples where more than 3 car DMUs are used routinely. You say this is uneconomical despite real-life examples of just such a practice. So furnish the evidence that shows this to be the case. Unless you want us to believe that the rail operators elsewhere running more than 3 car DMUs are purposefully deploying uneconomical trainsets.

I did and you used hand waving to dismiss it. I am asking you to disprove my evidence.

I have repeatedly said that there may be O&M reasons why operating a small trainset loco pulled fleet may be cheaper. What I don't buy is your allusion that there's a hard crossover point as low as 3 cars, all based on the rough idea that maintaining three power packs is more expensive than one.

What do you beleive the crossover point to be? I do expect that the crossover point will vary depending on a variety of factors, but there should be an average.

Also, once we start discussing deploying a unique type (DMU or otherwise) from the Kingston hub, it's not exactly a small type anymore. That's a hub that's going to require at least 12-15 trainsets based on what the mayor of Kingston suggests the schedule might be. So if similar trains are deployed on a few other operations, we're in a unit count that would be more than half of what the current Siemens order is.

Even if you assume that DMUs are best for trains to/from Kingston (I am still not convinced that Kingston-Toronto wouldn't be better served by conventional, bidirectional trains), your assertion that VIA would need 12-15 trainsets is an overestimate. Assuming the 3 legs are run completely independently (no sharing of trains between legs for optimisation).

Kingston-Toronto:
The pre-Covid schedule had the first train out of Kingston at 5:32 and the last one at 21:15, which is just under a 15:43 span. Eastbound, the span was only 12:55, so lets take the rounded average of the two and say 14:30. With 12 trains a day, that would be a train every 1:18. If you assume a maximum 3 hour travel time (train 651, which stopped at every station, was just under that), that is a 6 hour round trip (plus a bit of dwell time at the ends). So by the time the first train gets back to Kingston, 4 other trains would have departed and there is 30 minutes remaining for dwell times at either end (15 minutes each end), so 5 trainsets is all that is needed.

Kingston-Ottawa:
If you assume the same span as Kingston-Toronto of 14:30 and 6 trains a day, the interval would be 2:51. The slowest train was Train 643 at 2:16. That is 25 minutes less than the interval, so 2 trainsets would be adequate.

Kingston-Montreal:
Once again, if you assume the same span as Kingston-Toronto of 14:30 and 6 trains a day, the interval would be 2:51. If you ignore train 51 (which travels via Ottawa), the slowest train was train 64, with a travel time of 2:50. That is too close to the interval to be done with 2 trainsets, but could easily be done with 3.

That is a total of 10 trainsets (not the 12-15 you said.) and with a bit of schedule optimization between the three legs, you might even be able to cut that down even more (or keep it the same to increase the frequency of peak departures). Is 10 trainsets (plus a couple for use elsewhere in the country) enough to justify buying and maintaining a completely new type of trainset? I am not sure, especially considering the Siemens trainsets will be more efficient than what we are using today (especially compared to the Renaissance trains).

If Siemens was able to make Venture cars into sleepers for VIA for use on the Ocean, and VIA ordered a couple extra small Siemens trainsets for use in Northern Quebec, VIA's Montreal maintenance facility could be optimized to work on only Siemens Chargers and Ventures. That would certainly be worth something and could compensate for the extra cost of operating short conventional trains to Kingston and in Northern Quebec.

 

[cplchanb]

I would agree with this on most trips. But I'm not sure it's highly competitive on the longer trips (Toronto to Montreal, or Ottawa to Quebec City). Trips pushing 4-5 hrs, it's only a bit faster than a car. It'll the fares, schedules and reliability that make these longer trips work.

IMO toronto to montreal or ottawa to QC must go under 4 hours in order to be competitive with car and bus. Not only do you factor in the costs but also the convenience factor as well. with car people can still drive around whereever they want to at the destination while youre stuck at the train station once you arrive unless you take a cab or other forms of transit, both which will add time and cost to the final journey. The speed of the train will be needed to offset the inconveniences of additional connector trips. iirc back in the lrc days, sub 4 hr trips were a norm. What does via need to do to restore that type of speed?

 

[smallspy]

Would be interesting to know if Rocky demanded any sort of exclusivity from Stadler to prevent VIA from being able to acquire an identical coach.

If VIA had also ordered some bilevels from Stadler it might have cascaded enough stock off West Coast service to allow some of the spending on the refresh of the HEP stock to be forgone, and provide a robust rolling stock complement for Montreal long haul services. But that wouldn't have allowed the sprinkling of job announcements to various refurbishment shops. Amtrak is still saying they intend to replace some Superliner Is, and whatever they pick may be an opportunity for VIA to piggyback on a modified option order.

VIA would not be interested in the Stadler design as it currently is. The cars are taller than the Superliners which already have enough potential sizing headaches on VIA's network.

Should Stadler modify the original design to make it a better physical fit than perhaps it may be an option. There may be issues with this, however - they may not own the design.

Dan

 

[dowlingm]

I don't know why a double decker type train was not chosen for the corridor fleet but it makes sense from an economic perspective. VIA pays railways on per axle, and the more bums you can fit between those axles should make operating costs lower.

Can't use 'em in Montreal Central as they have no low floor platforms there, and now a high floor platform is going into Ottawa too.

 

[gweed123]

Can't use 'em in Montreal Central as they have no low floor platforms there, and now a high floor platform is going into Ottawa too.

Could the doors not be placed on the intermediate level instead of the lower level? That would line up with the high platforms, would it not?

Bi-levels are certainly intriguing, but they would make food and drink service a fair bit more complicated.

 

[kEiThZ]

I did and you used hand waving to dismiss it.

Because I don't count an opinion in a blog, without any numbers to substantiate their claim as "evidence".

It was literally just a random dude who writes about trains saying that about 4 seems to be optimal because that's what the Irish use. And then, for some reason, you cut that down to 3.

I am asking you to disprove my evidence.

When you present evidence, we can discuss it.

What do you beleive the crossover point to be? I do expect that the crossover point will vary depending on a variety of factors, but there should be an average.

Since we're going on opinion, I'd say 3-5 is probably about it. It depends on the operating profile of a given route and whether or not unpowered/undriven carriages are included in the consist. For a dozen DMUs out of a Kingston hub? I think DMUs could well be economical up to 4 cars.

Even if you assume that DMUs are best for trains to/from Kingston (I am still not convinced that Kingston-Toronto wouldn't be better served by conventional, bidirectional trains), your assertion that VIA would need 12-15 trainsets is an overestimate.

The pre-Covid schedule

First off, DMUs are probably great for the Kingston hub because of the number of stops they are including. Being able to accelerate back to cruising speed quickly is certainly an asset when the route has a stop every 30 km on average. Next, I based my math on your post from Kingston's mayor about 12 trains a day to Toronto and 6 each to Ottawa and Montreal, and assuming reciprocal service at the start of each day.

https://twitter.com/x/status/890579315255123968

Given that the average trip time of these trains is 2.5 hrs +/- 15 min, with turn around times, a very generous estimate is 3 hrs per run or 6 hrs per roundtrip. That's at least 4-5 trainsets for Toronto-Kingston and 2-3 each for Kingston-Ottawa and Kingston-Montreal. Toss in a spare or two and another for the maintenance pipeline and it's easily in the 12-15 range.

That is a total of 10 trainsets

In a world with no spares and no longer term maintenance scheduling.....

If Siemens was able to make Venture cars into sleepers for VIA for use on the Ocean, and VIA ordered a couple extra small Siemens trainsets for use in Northern Quebec, VIA's Montreal maintenance facility could be optimized to work on only Siemens Chargers and Ventures. That would certainly be worth something and could compensate for the extra cost of operating short conventional trains to Kingston and in Northern Quebec.

Fuel and other running costs (would CN cut a deal for less heavier rolling stock?) are usually much higher than maintenance costs. So the savings from commonality would have to be substantial along with minimal efficiency gains from deploying DMUs for this to be true.

Is 10 trainsets (plus a couple for use elsewhere in the country) enough to justify buying and maintaining a completely new type of trainset?

Look at how many types VIA has now. In a world where they are down to just Chargers, Venture coaches and a DMU fleet, their operations and workforce would be substantially more streamlined than today. What this is then down to debating is specifically going even further to exactly one model of locomotive and one family of coaches.

 

[dowlingm]

Could the doors not be placed on the intermediate level instead of the lower level? That would line up with the high platforms, would it not?

For a commuter car like the AMT Multilevels yes but the diagrams in PRIIA 305-001 Revision C.1 (Next Generation Equipment Committee spec for Superliner/Surfliner/California Car successor - if someone can figure out where Nippon Sharyo went wrong and can build one) don't look to me like they allow for it

VIA would not be interested in the Stadler design as it currently is. The cars are taller than the Superliners which already have enough potential sizing headaches on VIA's network.

Dan, where were you thinking between VMC and TMC that a pinch point might arise on such a car? I had (somewhat carelessly) assumed that VIA had plate K clearance to work with on its existing Western routes and was assuming single level only east of TMC.

 

[crs1026]

I can't comment on VIA's relationship with CN (other than that it is already much more cooperative and constructive than certain "passenger rail advocates" let it appear), but I think we can agree that having a dedicated passenger corridor linking VIA's three busiest stations will alter the power relation with its most important host railroad...

The relationship gets badmouthed, I agree. I'm sure it's fundamentally businesslike and respectful. Nevertheless, that pessimism may, unfortunately, accurately predict business outcomes. CN is not unprincipled, but on any given day its operational people will put CN's business interests ahead of VIA's, to the extent that the service agreements permit. That's their job, after all. As will CN's lawyers when agreements are negotiated.

The issue for Kingston and other Lakeshore communities is whether that relationship gives appropriate consideration to their interests, given that there is no competing rail line that local rail service can be moved to, as is being accomplished via HFR for through service.

As far as I remember only P42 locomotives and LRC cars are allowed to reach 100 mph and there are hardly any corridor trains which are formed by just these two fleet types, but anyways, the more often Lakeshore services stop, the less the top speed would matter anyways, even if CN were to downgrade the tracks to Track Class four (i.e. 80 mph for passenger trains).

That's an interesting point. My knee-jerk reaction as a demanding spectator is, why isn't VIA configuring exclusively around 100 mph (the Challengers may lead to this) and then squeezing every possible second out of its timings?

They did just so, actually, back when the Metropolitan was conceived. Didn't last.

If it turns out that due to other considerations, (such as freight interference, dispatching through crossovers, slow orders, etc) that 100 mph capability just can't be leveraged, well that really is something my mindset just hasn't processed.

In poker, if you are trying to build a flush, you may have to discard your Aces in other suits. It just feels wrong, but it may have its reasons and its rewards.

Similarly, I don't see CN going down to single-track anywhere along the Kingston Sub, as it would be impossible to do so with drastic impacts on their own freight operations. Freight traffic on the Kingston Sub is much more intense than on the Winchester/Belleville Subs and than passenger traffic that eliminating some of the only 10-12 passenger trains per day between Brockville and Coteau will barely make a difference...

One can be certain that the finance side of the business will point to the extra capitalization on this line, relative to CN's busier single track lines handling equal ton-miles. That certainly was my experience about managing capital. And railway management is pretty ruthless about forcing cuts to extract excess capital. I have too much respect for CN as a business to believe they don't work this way.

If VIA is paying CN enough for that excess capitalisation, it may be moot for now. But if VIA runs fewer trains, presumably paying much less, the financial considerations will prevail. In that equation, taking track out of service is a very likely scenario.

Freight trains on the Kingston Sub are much shorter, faster and more frequent than out west - and I would expect CN to have very good reasons for operating in that way...

I really have to push back on this statement...... I believe it's factually incorrect. CN went to DPU on the Kingston Sub long before they did west of Toronto. A couple of the intermodal land barges from the west turn left at Doncaster and continue on to Montreal unaltered, as do grain and other unit trains. A key operational constraint CN experiences on the Kingston is the need to cross over VIA trains around long freights - the train handling required to slow a freight to crossover speed and the time required for a long freight to cross over and clear is unacceptable. So VIA has to be the one that slows down and crosses over. Trains on the Kingston Sub are every bit as long and heavy as elsewhere.

I don't mind having opinions, I'm just getting tired of unsubstantiated speculation presented as "this is going to happen"...

Touche. Perhaps some of us need a "we're just specators in the bleachers" disclaimer at the bottom of our posts.

Having said that, for most of my career I was the "what might go wrong" guy rather than the "let's all get on the bandwagon and shout rah-rah" guy. It worked for me.

And I think it is fair to articulate strong belief of probability. A lawyer friend recently lamented that people use the terms "shall, will, and may" interchangeably and incorrectly. Is there a single word that means "can't say for certainty, but pretty damn likely, if you ask me"?

In absence of the necessity to serve the primary markets, which will shift the focus from aggressive trip times to increased connectivity between the various cities along the Lakeshore. Therefore, average speed will be lower, which will naturally decrease friction between passenger and freight operations (by decreasing their speed differential).

Respectfully, this is the paradigm that resurfaces over and over again through the decades with respect to VIA service...."a few more minutes travel time won't hurt anything.....". What other business lets itself think this way? One would expect that VIA would insist on and articulate its vision of how the service can be improved.

For Kingston-Lakeshore, the limitations of the relationship with CN need to be acknowledged but not celebrated or baked into planning. Limiting service on the Lakeshore may be an unavoidable tradeoff in the push for HFR, but I would not represent it as an improvement or even status quo. There must be an ability to grow that service.


- Paul

 

[Urban Sky]

Could the doors not be placed on the intermediate level instead of the lower level? That would line up with the high platforms, would it not?

Bi-levels are certainly intriguing, but they would make food and drink service a fair bit more complicated.

How would you ensure accessibility within the train for wheelchair users who want to access their designated seats and toilet?

Dan, where were you thinking between VMC and TMC that a pinch point might arise on such a car? I had (somewhat carelessly) assumed that VIA had plate K clearance to work with on its existing Western routes and was assuming single level only east of TMC.

Certain maintenance can only be performed at MMC. If the car doesn’t fit into Gare Centrale, you’ll have to run a deadhead train every time you need to move an oversized car between TMC and MMC...

 

[kEiThZ]

Respectfully, this is the paradigm that resurfaces over and over again through the decades with respect to VIA service...."a few more minutes travel time won't hurt anything.....". What other business lets itself think this way? One would expect that VIA would insist on and articulate its vision of how the service can be improved.

This is a good point. And something I strongly suspect is more of a step function than a slope, when it comes to ridership.

I may not mind a few more minutes on the train. But if the travel time starts getting close to driving, the train will not be my first thought for the trip. And I always fear that VIA (mostly not through any fault of their own), is forced over the step in many situations. I can see this happening with HFR, for example, where Toronto-Montreal and Ottawa-Quebec and any combination of a 4 hr trip won't make substantial gains over driving as the ~3 hr trips would (because they are substantially competitive with driving and marginally competitive with flying).

Again though, I don't blame VIA for this, as much as the government for forcing them into such situations with inadequate funding and no legislative framework to leverage against the freight rail cos.

 

[kEiThZ]

IMO toronto to montreal or ottawa to QC must go under 4 hours in order to be competitive with car and bus.

I've said the same before. I wish they could get somehow get Toronto-Montreal closer to 4 hrs for HFR. I think the extra billion or two it would cost would really be worthwhile. With Ottawa at ~3.25 hrs, HFR will be decently competitive with air. Enough so that I think it'll divert a lot of flyers who aren't connecting or aren't doing a same day return trip. Especially if their starting and/or ending destinations are in the east end of Toronto or west end of Ottawa.

 

[dowlingm]

Certain maintenance can only be performed at MMC. If the car doesn’t fit into Gare Centrale, you’ll have to run a deadhead train every time you need to move an oversized car between TMC and MMC...

That might be true for the current fleet (and requiring at least some deadhead moves of domes and RDCs on the back of Corridor sets, IIRC) but it might make more sense for a western route only bilevel maintenance to happen in Toronto, no? There is a huge bilevel maint facility right across the tracks from TMC, after all, and whoever does West Coast Express' maintenance might be able to offer facilities for wheelset replacement or whatever on that coast.