VIA Rail

[lenaitch]

If CP could offer an overnight trip from somewhere around Sudbury to somewhere east of Winnipeg, for piggyback trucks/trailers and AutoTrain, so you can go from the Prairies to southern Ontario it might be quite attractive, particularly in winter, but they'd have to be able to do it in one sleep to attract significant traffic off the highways (with dinner and breakfast, ~12 hours maximum acceptable running time?) which would require huge infrastructure investment and be a multi-billion-dollar gamble.

Which would also require CP to get back into the passenger business.

How did this evolve into a piggyback service?

I was just making a comparison between the Canadian and a similar multi-day Australian cross-country passenger run. It wasn't mentioned in the show but I assumed the autorack service was end-to-end only.

 

[roger1818]

That's not an easy thing to resolve though. Technically, the nearest existing facility to Union would be the old piggyback ramps at Obico - and to be honest those haven't even been used in 20 years, and new equipment at the facility would have to be purchased. (Nevermind the fact that track would have to be relaid and that a lease would need to be signed with the current property owner.)

Where in Montreal is Obico? The only reference I see for Obico is in Toronto.

Optimally, as I said in my original post, it would be on the south shore to allow you to bypass downtown, but both CN and CP have Auto Rack facilities in Côte Saint-Luc yard (CP's seems unused according to Google Maps). CN also seems to have an Auto Rack facility in Moncton.

And ramps at Union would be a non-starter. If you wanted to have a single facility to handle everything the train would have to start and end at a new facility outside of downtown - with all of the resultant discussions about connectivity to the existing network.

By Union I assume you mean Central Station and I agree and never suggested that.

 

[sacred]

Where in Montreal is Obico? The only reference I see for Obico is in Toronto.

Optimally, as I said in my original post, it would be on the south shore to allow you to bypass downtown, but both CN and CP have Auto Rack facilities in Côte Saint-Luc yard (CP's seems unused according to Google Maps). CN also seems to have an Auto Rack facility in Moncton.



By Union I assume you mean Central Station and I agree and never suggested that.

I think it’s clear they’re talking about Toronto

 

[roger1818]

I think it’s clear they’re talking about Toronto

But you replied to my post about Montreal to NB.

 

[crs1026]

^And in any event, Obico was levelled some years back, so it no longer has a ramp to offer.

The ramp used by CN back in the Car-Go-Rail days was actually close to Lansdowne Ave on the Weston/Barrie corridor. Long gone.

- Paul

 

[Northern Light]

^And in any event, Obico was levelled some years back, so it no longer has a ramp to offer.

This seems rather tangential to VIA, but in the spirit of being useful........

Obico:

A closer look: 9looks like at least some of the rails are still there, albeit buried under gravel/ballast.

But if they're in the same condition as the still visible track beside CANPA, I don't imagine they could be redeemed.

Side note: Given the discussion over auto-trains.................interesting current use.

 

[smallspy]

Where in Montreal is Obico? The only reference I see for Obico is in Toronto.

Optimally, as I said in my original post, it would be on the south shore to allow you to bypass downtown, but both CN and CP have Auto Rack facilities in Côte Saint-Luc yard (CP's seems unused according to Google Maps). CN also seems to have an Auto Rack facility in Moncton.

By Union I assume you mean Central Station and I agree and never suggested that.

The original conversation seemed to revolve around reinstating a previous service - Toronto to Edmonton.

If you wanted to start an all-new service on The Ocean, fine. Halifax would be relatively easy, pending the ownership of the land around the station. Hell, even Moncton has a lot of land around the station where a loading facility could be located. Where would you load autoracks near Central Station, however? MMC, maybe? And again, is VIA then responsible for getting people from the loading facility to the station?

Dan

 

[Allandale25]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1390392188211712004

 

[roger1818]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1390392188211712004

A very interesting read. Some things that stood out to me were:

A business class car with 2+1 seating and two accessible spaces, which will have standard coupler at one end to connect to the locomotive

I hadn't seen any evidence to indicate if the trains would have a standard or semi-permanent coupler between the front car and the locomotive. I had assumed the latter, but it was never clear. It explains why every train has exactly one Business 3A car.

an intermediate business class car; an economy class car; and an economy car with additional galley space. Both types of economy car will offer accessible spaces and washrooms. The cab cars will also have a galley space, but do not feature a space for checked baggage or packages,

Interesting to read what facilities each car type will have. Strange the way it says the cab cars "do not feature a space for checked baggage or packages" yet there is no mention of space for checked baggage or packages in any of the other cars. Does that mean they do, but it isn't mentioned, or were they trying to say the trains won't have it? If a standard coupler is indeed used between the locomotive and the first car, I guess they could use a HEP Baggage car on some trains.

 

[Bureaucromancer]

I suspect VIA doesn't particularly want to do checked baggage at all. It's honestly not a common service for corridor services at all..

 

[roger1818]

I suspect VIA doesn't particularly want to do checked baggage at all. It's honestly not a common service for corridor services at all..

You are probably right that VIA doesn't want to do checked baggage, but having one train a day on each route with checked baggage for oversized items does have some value. The new fleet having bike racks will help reduce that need though.

 

[Bureaucromancer]

You are probably right that VIA doesn't want to do checked baggage, but having one train a day on each route with checked baggage for oversized items does have some value. The new fleet having bike racks will help reduce that need though.

It's a nice service, but the only way I see it as being worth the effort would be some sort of package express service along the lines of what Greyhound used to do... and that would demand much more of a network to be worth anything.

Although I have mused that a Post Bus service could be a decent path to a national bus plan, at which point merging VIA into Canada Post starts to sound sensible...

Joking.

Mostly

 

[tmlittle]

You are probably right that VIA doesn't want to do checked baggage, but having one train a day on each route with checked baggage for oversized items does have some value. The new fleet having bike racks will help reduce that need though.

I think it would be a shame if Via got away from checked baggage since I think that's one of the big advantages for them over GO trains or coach travel, and I imagine there would be more demand if there was a substantive shift away from domestic flights to rail for routes like Toronto-Montreal. However for HFR which feels like an extended regional rail plan, I imagine a more GO-like commuter and "light travel" orientation would be more practical. I think it's also a question of how we reintroduce/improve station services in Canada (something that I consider one of the poorest parts of intercity rail travel right now) while frequencies and ridership are low, with it being a bit of a catch-22 that poor station services probably also suppress ridership to an extent, and don't necessarily cost as much as big infrastructure improvements on lines.

I think you're right to highlight bikes here because they're likely going to be a big part of car-free leisure travel going forward and these are the kind of people who would help put butts in seats from, say, Toronto to Cobourg, Toronto to Stratford, etc. on weekend and summer runs. The value of being able to just bring bikes onboard is huge especially because it gives a lot more freedom to visit a rural area or small town and not be restricted by poor/nonexistent local transit, so in the long run it could help with numbers for the kind of small-town eastern Ontario stations that see a lot of trains pass through but probably not as many people get on or off.

It's a nice service, but the only way I see it as being worth the effort would be some sort of package express service along the lines of what Greyhound used to do... and that would demand much more of a network to be worth anything.

Although I have mused that a Post Bus service could be a decent path to a national bus plan, at which point merging VIA into Canada Post starts to sound sensible...

Joking.

Mostly

I think there's a conversation to be had that if train speeds and frequencies go up again, an argument could be made for the reintroduction of a Railway Post Office type system and reintegrating postal and railway systems, just like I believe we have room to be more vigorous about rail freight and not letting the trucking industry eat it up. But that would require quite a bit of political will and I imagine you would have institutional resistance in places like Canada Post to an outside-enforced way of doing things. We're also far off from the situation like Germany where they are moving toward rebuilding their freight rail network by having new industrial parks be rail-connected, and simplifying/expediting the process for existing industrial parks to get rail connections retrofitted into their design. Unfortunately, Canada Post has moved to the classic trucking-enabled industrial park distribution centre model and the solution would probably have to be to bring the rail to them, at least in the short term, while also finding some regulatory/incentive-based framework to encourage rail use.

 

[lenaitch]

The Railway Post Office of olde wasn't just carting mail from A to B: it was an actual rolling post office with sorting, mail dropped and picked up enroute and, I believe staffed with postal employees and had a relatively high level of security. With centralized and automated sorting I don't see that happening. Even if it was just some kind of mail cartage service, it would have to be either a piece of rolling stock that is marshalled into/out of the train or hand-bombed at both ends.

 

[crs1026]

^At today’s labour rates, any mail or parcel business would have to be intermodal to minimise handling and manual sorting. I can’t imagine VIA acquiring enough capital to underwrite the sorting and tracking equipment. And such a business would be a huge managerial distraction, even if it brought in revenue.
Railway Post Office cars (and storage mail cars, of which there was plenty but less apparent - just boxcar style bulk haulage) made sense while the train station was adjacent to a main post office, but once one adds a first mile/last mile trip.....

- Paul