Bordercollie
Senior Member
Cheaper than buying coaches and faster. But CN can say it still doesn't qualify and continue the slow orders.
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VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
Bordercollie
Senior Member
Another train was cancelled and passengers were provided alternative transportation.
Transport minister ‘not happy’ with Via Rail after passengers spend night stranded on train
The federal transport minister says he is “not happy” with Via Rail’s response after more than 100 passengers spent the night stranded on a train in eastern Ontario.
www.ctvnews.ca
Trackside_Treasure
Active Member
Never thought the government was going to let VIA buy coaches, anyway. Lengthening trains doesn't solve the problem conclusively because CN can bring in different minimum axle requirements. I also don't agree it would be faster. This is untested and unimplemented technology in North America. But CN has said that Onboard Shunt Enhancers would solve the problem to their satisfaction. March, 2024: Michael Burgett (who left CN on November 29, 2024) was at that time CN's Senior Manager Engineering, Signal Design said it in an internal email:
Bordercollie
Senior Member
Until they change their policy again.
Trackside_Treasure
Active Member
Why would CN do this? They've hung their hat on the US experience and White Paper and used it to justify their speed reductions in Canada. Plus that policy is what's driven Amtrak to adopt OSEs through an FRA exemption. And we ALWAYS follow the States!
Bordercollie
Senior Member
Because they want to create barriers for VIA.
Trackside_Treasure
Active Member
You heard it here first, but OSEs are the only thing that looks like it will end this particular barrier imposed by CN on VIA.
micheal_can
Senior Member
I am no train mechanic...just a ship, but, why does winter sneak upon the railways? Why do the crew not have a propane torch and a hammer on board? Something frozen that is metal, apply heat to melt the ice and snow. Use a little persuasion and Success!Seriously,? And before anyone says propane is dangerous to store, I am talking a small container that could be strapped to the outside of the engine. I know back in the old days of steam heat, they would have that nice warm steam to melt all that would build up.And if a heat source is not feasible.the hammer would easily make short work out of freeing up frozen parts.
lenaitch
Senior Member
Have You worked in a union environment? Would operating rules even allow on-board crews to do that? I'm not sure we even know what the exact problem was. Somebody mentioned a coupler. I have no clue about the couplers used by the Siemens but a lot of the proprietary ones include data/comms connections. Not a great place for heat.
crs1026
Superstar
The average merchant or military vessel has a lot more resources on board to deal with some types of failures or problems than a Venture train does. But even ships have to call for a tow under certain circumstances.
A source has suggested that there was an unforeseen incompatibility between the two Venture sets involved. Maybe it wasn't just a frozen pipe after all. Just inside gossip, but quite credible.
If it was frozen something....having seen what gets done in freezing cold.... applying heat is what you do if you have sufficient time and patience and pure optimism and no other options to suggest and nothing left to lose. Asking a crew with minimal equipment and with defined hours of work to succeed by doing that, while their hours clock is ticking and they have a hundred miles yet to run before it expires, is a different matter. Sometimes cold wins.
- Paul
Bordercollie
Senior Member
I think more spare crews staged in different places might be a good idea especially in severe weather. Trains are going to be delayed, its inevitable so having extra crews on standby would help a lot.
crs1026
Superstar
Staging *something* along the corridor seems intuitively smart, yes.
But I would question whether crews can be staged in a useful way. VIA has to schedule people to maximise the amount of work they do within the very strict hours of work rules imposed by Ottawa. Adding contingency time to shifts would lower productivity. Having crews staged at midpoints would not work, as they would be conspicuously idle 95% of the time. And, when they are needed, weather and other factors might mean they couldn't reach the scene of the problem. Having crews "time out" on hours is hard to avoid when delays happen given their fairly tight scheduling.
The same is true of trains - VIA's need to cycle trainsets productively means that any delay cascades, as clearly happened recently.
Rapid-response of standby trains and spare board personnel from the existing terminals is possible, but the same productivity issues arise and travel time to the problem would still be problemmatic - if, indeed, a standby train could thread the needle thru blocked freight and passenger trains to reach the problem. Once you have a standby train, maybe it's better deployed to fill in whatever gap in the cycling the non-availability of the stranded train creates.
- Paul
Bordercollie
Senior Member
Is it better to have two crews do a half day rather than one do a full day and the other be on standby?
crs1026
Superstar
It is better still to have everyone do a full day's work. VIA can't afford a crew of two being paid to do nothing on the off chance that a train will exceed its hours once in a while.
To the best of my knowledge VIA does not have extra board workers sitting awaiting work at full pay (I know of transit propertiesthat do schedule spare board operators who sit in the lunchroom until needed). The standard "spare board" call requirement is to report two hours after they are called. VIA might have personnel at rest at away terminals who could report faster, but their availability would depend where they are in their rest hours regime at the time of the need.
(This sort of issue is why as a management guy I had a very healthy respect for unions and elected union reps. The question of who gets the idle hours would be very divisive in any bargaining unit. Union reps are elected, after all )
- Paul
Bordercollie
Senior Member
So if the spare crews is in Ottawa and the train runs out of hours in Kingston they have 2 hours to report to Ottawa and then travel 2 hours (4 hours in a snow storm) to Kingston to relieve the crew that ran out of hours? Hopefully they would have taken pre-emptive action and called the spare crew before they ran out of hours since that would mean at least a 6 hour delay for passengers.