The story of the flooded train on Monday. We stopped when we reached flooded tracks, the CSA announced the train will turn back to Union because the train can't operate on flooded tracks. Fine. But they have to change cabs and do a brake test. Uh-oh. After some wait that happened to be crucial, the train started backwards, but then the next wave of flooding came, so we had to stop after maybe 100 or 500 metres, this time for good. (A question to those in the know: if the engineer knew for sure the flood is coming, could he bypass the regulations and skip the brake test to get out of the flooded area before it's too late?)
CSAs called 911. The funny part, as told by the CSA: "We call them, tell them there's a flooded train. They tell us, ok, call us back
when it gets serious. Like, whoa? 1400 people stranded in a stream of water, isn't that serious enough?".
Apparently not. After 5 hours (of news such as "The police/firefighters/marines are here and they are
thinking how to get you out of here") the only thing they could
think of was 2 banana boats, each powered by 2 men grappling a zipline, and one or two motorboats. Each boat would take 3 passengers. Imagine how fast the process would go. The idea of calling some airline and borrowing an airplane raft (how much it can take? 50?) didn't even cross their mind.
Then they told us to wait for a TTC bus to take us to Oriole station. Why Oriole I don't know, maybe one of the trains that was supposed to deadhead was waiting there to get everybody further North to other stations. I didn't use that option and stayed downtown, so I don't know how and when the people boarding these buses made it home.
That question is exactly the reason I bicycled out in the rain to see this train. Unfortunately I gave up waiting thinking i'd missed it only to hear it behind me as I rode away. By the time I got to the tracks, it was sitting west of the junction.
I figure that since it went out of the wrong end of Union, the train would have been backwards compared to how GO would like it, so unlike the VIA train (which would do a backward southbound to westbound in order to face forward), I'm guessing they did a northbound to westbound turn.
It did a northbound to westbound turn and one change of direction. (As I understand, The Canadian changes direction twice: northbound to southbound, then westbound to eastbound, correct?) Then it proceeded east on the south track of the York sub.
Interesting thing happened later. The train was standing for half an hour waiting for the signal to cross the westbound (northern) track and turn North to Bala sub. First it was a freight train. Hoped to go after that, but no. Turns out, it was now waiting for the 4:30 and 5:30 deadhead trains (coupled into one train) to clear the Bala tracks and go back to Union. CN didn't want to give too much priority to GO with all these nonstandard "diversions".
Is Richmond hill back to normal? I might take it home today if it is still doing the diversion.
The line is back to normal operation on Bala sub, no more diversions. Sorry man, you've missed it.
