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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

TOareaFan said:
As I have said before (and I think there is some who agree) the mix of via/freight on the KW line is not that much different than during the 4 decades or so that GO ran hourly off peak on the Lakeshore W line (ie. more freight on KW but way less via).
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That is completely incorrect.

The whole reason why GO was able to be started in 1967 was because CN had built a new freight yard north of the City and had pulled virtually all of their freight trains off of the lines that GO was then able to use. GO needed the capacity and track time on those lines that the freight trains occupied.

The section of track between Georgetown and Bramalea now sees about 30-40 freight trains a day, on top of the GOs and VIAs that run up there. Since the opening of MacMillian Yard in 1965, CN has run maybe 5 or 6 freights a day on average on the sections of the Kingston Sub and Oakville Sub where GO has been providing hourly service, and they've run even fewer trains on average in the past 20 years.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
smallspy said:
CN has run maybe 5 or 6 freights a day on average on the sections of the Kingston Sub and Oakville Sub where GO has been providing hourly service, and they've run even fewer trains on average in the past 20 years.
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Indeed, these days its very rare to see a through freight on the Lakeshore anymore and Oakville yard is the only place where there's daily activity in between the Junction & Bur West these days.
 
vegeta_skyline said:
Indeed, these days its very rare to see a through freight on the Lakeshore anymore and Oakville yard is the only place where there's daily activity in between the Junction & Bur West these days.
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Don't forget CP did run some of their trains on the Lakeshore, but don't know when they stop doing it.

There is 1 train for CN going west that pass Union Station between 12-1 pm on the weekday going to Aldershot/Oakville using the Stouffville line for CN that I know of and seen. Have seen CN trains used the RH line from time to time. Most CN trains are local moving goods from either Aldershot/Hamilton to Oakville, Burlington or Clarkson. When servicing Burlington, track 3 is out of service. All of the Lakeshore lines needs to be 100% 4 track and that will happen over time in the west since it will see more service than the east. The east needs to be 4 tracks as far as Pickering.

Most of the 3rd track is in place on the Milton Line that was supposed to be completed by 2011, but was never done. Regardless, there should be 4 tracks and something CP wants now and to be done by 2021-23. The Georgetown area needs to be 4 tracks with a few section upgrade from 2 to 3 since they are pinch points on the line. KW area only needs to be 2/3 since very little freight or VIA trains use the line in the first place. Barrie and Stouffville lines only need to be 2 tracks.

Once GO goes west/south of Hamilton to NF, there needs to be 2 track where there is a single track.
 
drum118 said:
Don't forget CP did run some of their trains on the Lakeshore, but don't know when they stop doing it.

There is 1 train for CN going west that pass Union Station between 12-1 pm on the weekday going to Aldershot/Oakville using the Stouffville line for CN that I know of and seen. Have seen CN trains used the RH line from time to time. Most CN trains are local moving goods from either Aldershot/Hamilton to Oakville, Burlington or Clarkson. When servicing Burlington, track 3 is out of service. All of the Lakeshore lines needs to be 100% 4 track and that will happen over time in the west since it will see more service than the east. The east needs to be 4 tracks as far as Pickering.

Most of the 3rd track is in place on the Milton Line that was supposed to be completed by 2011, but was never done. Regardless, there should be 4 tracks and something CP wants now and to be done by 2021-23. The Georgetown area needs to be 4 tracks with a few section upgrade from 2 to 3 since they are pinch points on the line. KW area only needs to be 2/3 since very little freight or VIA trains use the line in the first place. Barrie and Stouffville lines only need to be 2 tracks.

Once GO goes west/south of Hamilton to NF, there needs to be 2 track where there is a single track.
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Any insight to how many tracks are needed for RH, Barrie and Stouffville lines? Any reason to have more than 2? I thought they were underused by freight.
 
smallspy said:
That is completely incorrect.

The whole reason why GO was able to be started in 1967 was because CN had built a new freight yard north of the City and had pulled virtually all of their freight trains off of the lines that GO was then able to use. GO needed the capacity and track time on those lines that the freight trains occupied.

The section of track between Georgetown and Bramalea now sees about 30-40 freight trains a day, on top of the GOs and VIAs that run up there. Since the opening of MacMillian Yard in 1965, CN has run maybe 5 or 6 freights a day on average on the sections of the Kingston Sub and Oakville Sub where GO has been providing hourly service, and they've run even fewer trains on average in the past 20 years.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
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Thanks...always appreciate your input and knowledge....must say that bolded part stuns me. I am not a train spotter and I can't say I have specifically "counted" trains but (picking the midpoint of your 30 -40) that a freight train every 40 minutes....I know there have been times where I have been downtown for periods of time longer than that and never seen a train so it leads me to the question...are they concentrated at certain times? Certainly the "feel" you get visiting downtown is that it is a busy freight line but I would never have guessed `35 a day.

So 35 freight and, what, 4 VIA (I think it is down to 2 return trips per day through there)......so 39/40 non GO trains using the corridor.

When LSW was hourly offpeak was it 6(ish) freight and how many via? That is the comparison I would be interested in....what is the difference in the number of non-GO trains running through them and is that difference enough to prevent hourly AD2W service?

Thanks in advance.
 
EnviroTO said:
It is understandable that they wouldn't want to use sidings for service. One delayed train would automatically lead to two delayed trains, and an early train would lead to people thinking they were delayed. Anyone on a transit vehicle during a scheduled stop which is only a few minutes due to early arrival will know the looks on people and how often people are checking their watch... and this is vehicles on time. If a train is sitting an extended period on a siding for a late train there could be mutiny.
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The O-Train in Ottawa has bidirectional service on single-track with passing sidings and it has a 98% on-time performance rate.
 
O train has multiple sidings on an 8km route with a 12 minute end - end travel time, not a single siding on a 30km route with a 40 minute end - end travel time, with the siding barely longer than 4 train lengths.
 
robmausser said:
Any insight to how many tracks are needed for RH, Barrie and Stouffville lines? Any reason to have more than 2? I thought they were underused by freight.
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It is my understanding Barrie and Stouffville lines see freight traffic local during the night and therefore only need 2 tracks. Weston Sub sees about 1 trains a night doing a to/from Lambton Yard run and a local to the waterfront when require.

RH line down the Don Valley only needs to be 2 tracks. Rest of the line needs to be 4 tracks, as it is CN mainline for getting to/from the west.

Most of the lakeshore & Milton has to be 4 due to ridership and different type of service that exist today, but more for the future service yet to come. Going west of Aldershot has a number of issues getting to Hamilton Hunter for having 4 tracks and will be costly. Getting to Hamilton TH&B station can only be 2 tracks and a huge capital cost for the tunnel.
 
1overcosc said:
The O-Train in Ottawa has bidirectional service on single-track with passing sidings and it has a 98% on-time performance rate.
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C'mon, you can't really think its that simple. As innsertnamehere mentioned, there's a BIG difference between the two. Aside from that you really shouldn't make such generalizations since there are many factors that effect the type and frequency of service that can be provided on different lines. All the following and more have to be taken into consideration; track speeds, the location number & length of sidings, the acceleration and deceleration profiles of the equipment and the effect that the physical characteristics of different areas of the line have on it, station dwell times, signal blocks lengths and sightlines, the time it takes for switch & signals to changeover, the length of the equipment, delays due to other speed restriction such as trains entering and exiting sidings at slow speed or crossing over tracks, etc, etc.
 
I know that scheduling is not easy...I get that.....but when GO decided that one special return trip per day on the Kitchener line was appropriate for the labour day weekend....why would they have the return home trip leave the Ex before one of the biggest crowd drawing event on the grounds on the 30th (the TFC match) ends?

It is almost like the only thing that matters is their own resource allocation (and that matters but not in exclusivity) and no one looks at the schedule and says "now, how does that fit in with what people might actually be doing").

Now, that said, a 1 hour and 9 minute trip to Brampton GO is not, on a weekend, competitive from a speed perspective for alternatives getting home (typical trip home for us after a TFC match is LSW to Long Branch then drive and we are home in under an hour). So if the resource management situation results in the only service you can offer being an uncompetitive one, are you not better off explaining that than running one special train that may not meet peoples needs? Or is the objective to "prove" there is no demand on the line?
 
drum118 said:
Don't forget CP did run some of their trains on the Lakeshore, but don't know when they stop doing it.
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CP ended their running-rights arrangement with CN on the Oakville Sub about 5 years ago. And the number that actually went that way was quite low, and averaged maybe 2 pairs of trains a week in the last 10 years or so of the agreement.

TOareaFan said:
Thanks...always appreciate your input and knowledge....must say that bolded part stuns me. I am not a train spotter and I can't say I have specifically "counted" trains but (picking the midpoint of your 30 -40) that a freight train every 40 minutes....I know there have been times where I have been downtown for periods of time longer than that and never seen a train so it leads me to the question...are they concentrated at certain times? Certainly the "feel" you get visiting downtown is that it is a busy freight line but I would never have guessed `35 a day.
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I can't say that they are concentrated per se, but they will definitely run in clumps over the course of the day as the RTCs will try and group trains together to get them through the single-tracked sections of the line south of Georgetown. But keep in mind too that the overall number will include some shorter trains in it - transfers and equipment moves from Aldershot to MacMillian Yard, local jobs, the GEXR run, for instance.

As an example, I work alongside the mainline in Markham in very close proximity to a level crossing, and in the time that I've typed this post I have noted two trains across the crossing.

TOareaFan said:
So 35 freight and, what, 4 VIA (I think it is down to 2 return trips per day through there)......so 39/40 non GO trains using the corridor.

When LSW was hourly offpeak was it 6(ish) freight and how many via? That is the comparison I would be interested in....what is the difference in the number of non-GO trains running through them and is that difference enough to prevent hourly AD2W service?

Thanks in advance.
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Funny thing about VIA - they (or CN or CP for that matter) have never run as many trips between Toronto and Ottawa-Montreal as they do today. Even when you go back to 1989, just before the infamous cutbacks of January 1990, they only had 11 trains in each direction east of Union - today they run 13 westbounds. The oldest timetable that I have here at work is the infamous combined CN/CP timetable of October 1976, and there were 9 roundtrips to the east of Toronto when you combine the through services to Ottawa, Montreal and the 3 daily trains to Kingston.

Dan
Toronto, Ont
 
drum118 said:
It is my understanding Barrie and Stouffville lines see freight traffic local during the night and therefore only need 2 tracks. Weston Sub sees about 1 trains a night doing a to/from Lambton Yard run and a local to the waterfront when require.

RH line down the Don Valley only needs to be 2 tracks. Rest of the line needs to be 4 tracks, as it is CN mainline for getting to/from the west.

Most of the lakeshore & Milton has to be 4 due to ridership and different type of service that exist today, but more for the future service yet to come. Going west of Aldershot has a number of issues getting to Hamilton Hunter for having 4 tracks and will be costly. Getting to Hamilton TH&B station can only be 2 tracks and a huge capital cost for the tunnel.
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Lakeshore, from Union to Willowbrook, and Union to the new East Maintenance Facility, will require more tracks for deadheading capacity, will they not? Things seem to be congested during rush hour.
 
DonValleyRainbow said:
Lakeshore, from Union to Willowbrook, and Union to the new East Maintenance Facility, will require more tracks for deadheading capacity, will they not? Things seem to be congested during rush hour.
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GO and Metrolinx have wanted to build a fifth track through there since the mid-2000s. The hold up is the City with the 4 bridges over the tracks in the South Parkdale area. Once those are replaced (Dufferin goes in 2016), they'll finally be able to do it.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
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