reaperexpress
Senior Member
They ordered pizza to Kingston station one time my train was severely late. Here is a photo of the pizza I received:
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VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
Bordercollie
Senior Member
One cold slice. Great
Bordercollie
Senior Member
Given these recent problems in the corridor what are some possible solutions?
More spare crews?
Better incident management?
Placement of spare consist at Ottawa Station?
IF crews were available could they have used one of the consists for the morning to go to Brockville and transfer the passengers and bring them to Ottawa?
Additional passing track at Brockville? Could they exted one of the tracks at Chelsea Siding to the main line bypassing the station track? This would also allow two trains to occupy the station at the same time (provided that they are allowed to cross the track at grade).
More spare crews?
Better incident management?
Placement of spare consist at Ottawa Station?
IF crews were available could they have used one of the consists for the morning to go to Brockville and transfer the passengers and bring them to Ottawa?
Additional passing track at Brockville? Could they exted one of the tracks at Chelsea Siding to the main line bypassing the station track? This would also allow two trains to occupy the station at the same time (provided that they are allowed to cross the track at grade).
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Comments like that make me seriously wonder how many folks people here believe are working at VIA’s Operations Control Center (OCC) at nighttime to expect them that they could book hotels and Ubers/Taxis for hundreds of passengers at virtually no advance notice, all while also planning service recovery and communicating the steps taken to the crews on the trains and other stakeholders…
micheal_can
Senior Member
It feels like as horrible as it was, they have learned from previous times to do what they can do as soon as they can do it. Now if they can do it faster, that would be ideal.
Bordercollie
Senior Member
Their job is to provide transportation from point A to B safely and within a timeline.
When rural services are cancelled customers are taxi'd to their destination on VIA's dime.
The same should be in the corridor. Giving me my money back and leaving me to fend for myself is useless.
Same with airlines. They have to provide compensation if the trip is cancelled.
I can understand that one thing went wrong and they had one solution and that didn't work. The problem is that it happens too often. It happened last year and I believe there have been others this year but not to the scale.
Bordercollie
Senior Member
So I guess the question that they have to figure out was why did they have trouble coupling and decoupling the trains and what can be done to prevent it in the future. Also how did they get it to Brockville but could not return to Ottawa or get to Toronto?
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Sure, and as with every job, it’s impossible to deliver on the job expectations 100% of the time.
Sure, but that’s dealing with a hand full passengers at a time, not 3 trainloads full of passengers and a service disruption which will affect the entire Corridor over the next 24 hours.
Sure, but even the best-trained employes would be bound to the constraints of the real world.
That’s what VIA did.
VIA operates some 70 trains per day (quick estimate after quite a few beers), which adds up to 25,000 trains per year. Even 10 stranded trains per year represent only 0.04% of all departures. We can strive towards mitigating and minimizing risks, but we will never eliminate them entirely. There are just too many things which can happen and many of these things are just beyond our control…
crs1026
Superstar
Rash assumptions all round.
The disabled train was moved from Mallorytown (population 300, no train station, no amenities or railway support infrastructure) to Brockville (pop 22,000, with train station, municipal and commercial infrastructure with some support infrastructure possible from CN). That seems like a pretty sensible operating decision, and positioned VIA to provide some level of urgent assistance to passengers. Spotting the train there does not imply that the line was blocked, nor does it imply that VIA was unable to load or debark passengers from other trains.
Why did it not go further? Ottawa makes no sense in terms of repair capability. There is no reason to assume the train could be moved safely at more than 10-15 mph, if at all. The dead parrot speech likely applies - this was a dead train.
Incompatibility of equipment is a shot in the dark. A jammed or frozen operating lever, or a frozen angle cock, is enough to prevent the trains from uncoupling. The news report implies that at least some heat and light was available, which implies that the prime mover was running and delivering HEP.. But possibly the "could not uncouple" is a media replacement for "thought it unwise to uncouple" while the rescue train was supplying power or air to the dead trainset.
I'm not sure that Uber can provide mass transport capacity to Brockville, even the number of taxis is pretty small. We know little about what measures VIA did deploy, but this is not as serious an event as last year's train-stuck-in-blizzard-with-no-help scenario. I would give VIA the benefit of the doubt that something more effective was executed. The operating moves needed to have 48 rescue the train and move it to Brockville would be complicated and suggest effective communication and cooperation between VIA Operations and the CN dispatching center - that's to the good.
Winter is winter, trains do break down.
- Paul
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lenaitch
Senior Member
Brockville is about 22K. A very quick Internet search reveals it has no rideshare, and unknown number of taxis and about 300 hotel rooms. No clue about the occupancy rate, taxi availability or food service capacity - no doubt it would depend on the time of day, time of year, etc. No clue about VIA RTC's capacity to have somebody always available to sit down and start calling around to find food and accommodation. Even with a comprehensive, nation-wide contact list, somebody still has to make calls. If people want some kind of standing agreements to hold rooms, provide food, etc. in every burg, it's gonna cost.
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p_xavier
Active Member
China trains are good for that, you order food for station delivery on your train.
Trackside_Treasure
Active Member
VIA executives and government ministers were brought before the TRAN[sportation] committee after the VIA train 622 debacle on August 31, 2024. VIA has changed some things: bringing disabled trains into a nearby station, setting a time at which a seriously late train's problems are escalated up the org. chart, etc.
Calls to station food, drinks, taxis, buses, hotel rooms, spare equipment are not only unfeasible, taxpayers would not support the cost required to do so. Nor would VIA passengers. More here on the 622 debacle and the conversations, for those who think it has never been addressed adequately by VIA:
tracksidetreasure.blogspot.com
Calls to station food, drinks, taxis, buses, hotel rooms, spare equipment are not only unfeasible, taxpayers would not support the cost required to do so. Nor would VIA passengers. More here on the 622 debacle and the conversations, for those who think it has never been addressed adequately by VIA:
The Sad Saga of VIA Train 622
A major media black-eye for VIA occurred on Saturday, August 31, 2024 when VIA train No 622 was marooned for several hours at Laurier-Statio...
tracksidetreasure.blogspot.com
Mihairokov
Senior Member
When I originally heard the story my first thought was how Brockville was probably one of the worst places to break down in because it's not particularly close to any of Ottawa/Montreal/Toronto and just far enough from all of them to be the most annoying stop possible. After 7PM there isn't much going on and as you say there's no rideshare, no food service, and presumably not much for hotel availability. Not that any of these are really options for VIA in totality, but the one interview I saw the passenger said they were being fed and were heated which is more than I can say for times where my train has been stopped for an extended period of time.
VIA doesn't really have contingency for releasing passengers from the train during service, do they? It's a big liability issue if they just open the doors and let people off.
If you're putting people into hotel rooms in Brockville you'll need to keep in mind that there's usually more than 100 people on a trainset - good luck finding ~200 hotel rooms in Brockville that happen to be open and good luck trying to get strangers to room together if you can't, as well as ignoring the most obvious issue which was that it was snowing and blizzard conditions outside. Opening the doors to let passengers out seems like the worst possible decision to make in this instance. What happens when only 50 people can be roomed in a hotel and the others cannot? Either the option is available to everyone or not at all. What happens when the train is able to move again in the middle of the night? Is everyone recalled from their hotel rooms and put back on the train? Can the train not move until early morning so they can retreive all of the passengers? Seems like a nightmare scenario making things far more difficult than simply leaving people on the train.
It's tough enough finding Ubers in Ottawa during snow storms. You're never finding a taxi or uber in a snow storm in Brockville and you're definitely not finding one that's going to do that drive. I rode in an Uber on Tuesday night in Ottawa and the driver didn't have winter tires, and so we were sliding through intersections in the East End.
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lenaitch
Senior Member
If you think a city of 22K is bad place to break down, hold onto your hat when you take a close look at the entire corridor route environment east of Oshawa, and don't even look at the Canadian route. If it holds true that Alto will largely follow the old O&Q right-of-way, it's not exactly busting with population centres either. There's no magic to taking care of 100 people on a train vs 50 on a bus, except the bus is on a road (hopefully) - if it passible.
Trackside_Treasure
Active Member
At the news conference announcing construction of ALTO's high-speed rail line in 2029, a Le Devoir reporter asked Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon about CN freight trains having priority. "Are you afraid of CN or attacking CN? Why are you talking about 2029 why not force CN to let these passenger trains have priority?"
The Minister answered, "Because those tracks belong to CN and we are not a country where we just suddenly expropriate. We are working with CN at this time and you saw in the budget there is a minor provision that talks about adding equipment to VIA Rail locomotives that will allow them to not slow down on certain segments of the track. So we are trying to do small things and big things to improve that service. We continue to be dedicated to VIA Rail and the service it provides to communities and as Minister I want to see constant improvement. CN is helping us every single day. CN is an essential partner for us."
This has to be a reference to guesses that Onboard Shunt Enhancers were in the budget.
The Minister answered, "Because those tracks belong to CN and we are not a country where we just suddenly expropriate. We are working with CN at this time and you saw in the budget there is a minor provision that talks about adding equipment to VIA Rail locomotives that will allow them to not slow down on certain segments of the track. So we are trying to do small things and big things to improve that service. We continue to be dedicated to VIA Rail and the service it provides to communities and as Minister I want to see constant improvement. CN is helping us every single day. CN is an essential partner for us."
This has to be a reference to guesses that Onboard Shunt Enhancers were in the budget.