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VIA Rail

kEiThZ said:
Just FYI there's a term for this among engineers:

en.wikipedia.org

Bathtub curve - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Agreed. And to be clear, there is also a difference between infant failures and design faults. Design faults can be corrected so that future generations don't seen them, but even mature products can have infant failures. That is why in mission critical applications they will often put the product through a "burn in" period to try and catch those infant failures, so they won't see them in the field. The issue is it both costs money and reduces the life of the product as you are that much closer to the "wear out" phase. This is different from Environment Stress Testing, which is done on both new products (to try and catch design faults) and on a sample basis during production (to catch manufacturing process issues).
 
smallspy said:
They are having teething issues, which is bound to happen with any new rolling stock.
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Agreed, but VIA had taken steps in acquiring Ventures which should have significantly insulated them compared to new model stock e.g. LRC's rollout. It was certainly one of the reasons that I thought it made sense to go with them rather than try and engineer a solution with more made-in-Canada content, such as having Thunder Bay build something for Alstom similar to what Connecticut are getting - we desperately needed new, reliable equipment to displace the Rens and LRCs and what we bought needed to be as quick an introduction as practicable.

Venture, with the exception of cab cars, had lots of North American mileage, and Siemens were providing maintenance. Now, it may be that the Siemens employees were insufficiently trained or insufficient numbers of American based staff brought in to leaven the inexperience, but how much VIA specific components can be ascribed to be troublemakers resulting in a failure of the trainset?

One has to wonder just how far Siemens have come since the ACS-64, about which some critical comments were made on railroad.net by Amtrak LEs about poorly constructed cab switches and stuff like that.
 
I'm surprised that VIA would have renderings available this early in a process which will have a great deal of co-development with vendors. Perhaps some vendor has offered these as an early suggestion, or VIA wanted something in a picture (that says 1,000 words) just to woo doubting Parliamentarians without too much specific detail to them.

Having said that, I'm happy to see the dome-ish rendering - the others were pretty generic, but the dome one implies that someone is proposing or advocating for that amenity. The dome experience definitely sets the traditional Canadian apart from other long distance trains, I had feared that VIA might settle for Amtrak-ish rolling stock. Hopefully this idea stays alive.

- Paul
 
Given that these speed restrictions are going to be in place for the foreseeable future, should they not change the schedule to reflect actual run times?
 
robmausser said:
I honestly am starting to believe CN is just letting it rot because they want GO and VIA to take it off their hands.
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If it's any consolation, I'm at The Hydrocut mountain bike trail system quite often, and saw there was big pile of ballast dropped off and a tamper working on the line there (just west of Kitchener approaching Petersburg) in the past few weeks, so they're not completely letting it go.
 
There was a Jtrain with a P42 leading an LRC consist with a Siemens set in tow on the Bala sub today.

It seemed to be struggling to hit 30mph, and the charger locomotive was in idle only. Is this because this consist cannot be MU'd? So basically the P42 was pulling the Siemens train dead in tow? That section I believe is 45mph for passenger trains.
 
The issue with the signals and number of axles - why is it the RDC does not have this problem? Is it only because it is on CP trackage?
 
micheal_can said:
The issue with the signals and number of axles - why is it the RDC does not have this problem? Is it only because it is on CP trackage?
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Yup. They tested them on the Chatham sub to see if it would work to be deployed to Windsor but they decided not to. Likely because they are not heavy enough to trigger the Crossing.
 
Bordercollie said:
Yup. They tested them on the Chatham sub to see if it would work to be deployed to Windsor but they decided not to. Likely because they are not heavy enough to trigger the Crossing.
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IIRC, this was exactly the issue why RDCs could not be deployed on the Corridor. They would have been a great match for Train 85/88…
 
Urban Sky said:
IIRC, this was exactly the issue why RDCs could not be deployed on the Corridor. They would have been a great match for Train 85/88…
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So, this has been a known thing. That says this is on Via then.They knowingly bought something incompatible, and did not make it compatible on day one.It is almost like people in Via do not know what they are doing, or are trying to get it shut down.
 
micheal_can said:
So, this has been a known thing. That says this is on Via then.They knowingly bought something incompatible, and did not make it compatible on day one.It is almost like people in Via do not know what they are doing, or are trying to get it shut down.
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Have you missed the last month of conversation? This has been covered here ad nauseam in multiple threads. And you participate in most of them.

Rather than making another one of your vastly incorrect pronouncements, I would suggest doing some reading.

Bordercollie said:
Yup. They tested them on the Chatham sub to see if it would work to be deployed to Windsor but they decided not to. Likely because they are not heavy enough to trigger the Crossing.
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Weight has nothing to do with it. This too has been covered many times now.

Dan
 
smallspy said:
Have you missed the last month of conversation? This has been covered here ad nauseam in multiple threads. And you participate in most of them.

Rather than making another one of your vastly incorrect pronouncements, I would suggest doing some reading.
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I don't recall anything said about the RDCs, and it was a cancellation due to a breakdown of them that jogged my mind. And,yes, it has been talked about a lot, and with good reason.@bordercollie answered it well for me.
 
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