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Orangeville-Brampton Railway (OBRY)

lenaitch said:
I do wish people would give up on this. Unless both are designed concurrently, grade and curve requirements are totally different.

In this case, there is no way to feasibly run rail up Hwy 10, even if the space existed in the ROW. Gaining altitude up the moraine, roads can do it much more abruptly. That's why rail lines of full of reverse curves, horseshoe curves, etc. unless a lot of bridging is employed.
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At the least, there’d have to be a very long viaduct or earth fill between Sligo Hill and the Escarpment itself. Really, the fastest route between Orangeville and Toronto is via the old TG&B route through Bolton, though it’d need some major rerouting in sections to get around Caledon Village and the Horseshoe Curve.
 
ShonTron said:
Hey. I know we disagreed on this on Twitter as well. I don’t like being doom and gloom, but even if OBBY was still operating, the corridor was in no shape to handle GO trains at a speed that would come close to the existing buses on Highway 10. Unlike Brantford, Bolton, and London, there’s almost no public or political support for GO trains, especially in Orangeville itself. It’s very different than GO rebuilding the derelict yet still intact Newmarket Sub to Barrie.

I am very skeptical of Bonnie Crombie still, and it sounds like there was very little thought into saying “a GO train to Orangeville!”
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Hi. Part of my bias here is my connection to Grey County - the whole area is growing rapidly and the OBRY is really the only viable route into Toronto if say by 2060, train service is warranted further along the Owen Sound Sub right of way. I know we both agree abandonment back in 2021 was an error, and I want to fight to do my best to make sure the corridor remains.

I also drive Highway 10 on a weekly basis (weekdays and weekends), and it’s rough. Extremely busy, bad accidents, and bad weather especially in the winter. Even if it’s slower, a rail link would be appreciated by some.

Of course I agree that the alignment isn’t ideal. What is a darn shame is that there wasn’t some sort of proper analysis done on the corridor, to see if some creative solutions could be identified. Using smaller and lighter trains like Stadler FLIRTs plus banked tracks on curves could potentially yield some speed improvements. Other issues like the Brampton Diamond could be fixed with a trench, and a capped park right in downtown Brampton.

I was recently privy to a study on reactivating another rail corridor in Canada (sorry can’t say which), that estimated $2.5 million per kilometre for a complete rebuild from the sub-base up. Compared to LRT and subways, this is a steal. As I know you know, Brampton and Caledon are booming, and the OBRY could be a great local transit corridor too. If the Milton Line ever gets RER’d, the OBRY is a great branch.

Anyways, time will tell what happens.
 
ssiguy2 said:
Please God not another stupid GO train expansion to London. If they just resurrect the recently panned GO service with a couple more trains, Londoners will lovingly embrace it as much as the last one. If she knew what London actually needed, the trains would be for London commuters and head into London as opposed to into Toronto and entice VIA to do the heavy lifting for the inner-city travel between London & Toronto of which there is a LOT.

The 3 counties that make up the London commuter shed {Middlesex, Oxford, Elgin} have a combined population of 750,000 and the number of those commuters moving around that region and into London itself is probably one hundred to one compared to the number heading to Toronto. This is what happens when you have a Toronto politician making transit policy for cities outside of Toronto.
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I believe if the province had put GO trains from London at times that actually competed or replaced the cancelled Greyhound bus, including weekends, it would have been popular.

Instead they touted it as a commuter train, and NO one is going to sit on a train for 8 hours a day in this WFH post lockdown world.

While they mucked about with this useless train, Flixbus came in and replaced Greyhound.
 
robmausser said:
I believe if the province had put GO trains from London at times that actually competed or replaced the cancelled Greyhound bus, including weekends, it would have been popular.

Instead they touted it as a commuter train, and NO one is going to sit on a train for 8 hours a day in this WFH post lockdown world.

While they mucked about with this useless train, Flixbus came in and replaced Greyhound.
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Don't forget that the VIA option via Brantford was something like a hour faster and came five times per day.
 
robmausser said:
I believe if the province had put GO trains from London at times that actually competed or replaced the cancelled Greyhound bus, including weekends, it would have been popular.
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Agreed. If they launched hourly service from London to Aldershot they'd likely be talking be planning additional runs at some parts of the day, and considering longer-term railway corridor upgrades for comparable speed service with more capacity.
 
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Wm Perkins Bull said:
Don't forget that the VIA option via Brantford was something like a hour faster and came five times per day.
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Totally. However I think, as others have said, most of the trips would be London, Kitchener, Guelph.

Not to mention that with GO you can just show up, and VIA sometimes gets prohibitively expensive.

There are advantages to GO over VIA, especially for the budget conscious who would already be looking at a 3:45h ride on some of the buses.
 
robmausser said:
Totally. However I think, as others have said, most of the trips would be London, Kitchener, Guelph.

Not to mention that with GO you can just show up, and VIA sometimes gets prohibitively expensive.

There are advantages to GO over VIA, especially for the budget conscious who would already be looking at a 3:45h ride on some of the buses.
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I am honestly starting to think that with VIA and GO both behaving the way they do the most realistic shot at service that will really serve the corridor well would be giving VIA the boot and Waterloo Region taking the lead on a dual function London - Guelph regional service that also runs a truly frequent Guelph - Kitchener service as more or less a short turn.

The failure of the London schedules is well and truly the best example we've had of how hard it is to get Metrolinx away from Toronto centrism, while VIA has never really shown any interest in a regional or frequent service model... Letting them run entirely on the Dundas Sub and starting the process on HFR like options tailored for real intercity there and making the North Main entirely regional feels more achievable to me.
 
Bureaucromancer said:
I am honestly starting to think that with VIA and GO both behaving the way they do the most realistic shot at service that will really serve the corridor well would be giving VIA the boot and Waterloo Region taking the lead on a dual function London - Guelph regional service that also runs a truly frequent Guelph - Kitchener service as more or less a short turn.

The failure of the London schedules is well and truly the best example we've had of how hard it is to get Metrolinx away from Toronto centrism, while VIA has never really shown any interest in a regional or frequent service model... Letting them run entirely on the Dundas Sub and starting the process on HFR like options tailored for real intercity there and making the North Main entirely regional feels more achievable to me.
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I think it’s a stretch to call the London GO expansion an attempt at “non-Toronto centric” service. It strikes me more as a political venture, with non-Union bound trips being a positive externality if it worked out. And it didn’t, because it was never set up to do that or get people to Union well.

There’s two things I keep in mind with the London GO conversation. First, the rail service is not disappearing so much as VIA is seemingly taking it over/replacing it. Second, if Mx were serious about the service, they would be throwing more money at it in the form of buses to build ridership and looking at ‘easy wins’ to fix the track.

The ideal outcome is somebody operates an integrated service via both Kitchener and Brantford to London from Toronto. Both have merits, one has good ridership already, and neither only makes sense as solely an end-to-end route. With some investment, hourly or at least AD2W from London to Union via KW and Brantford would be well-used as a part of a larger system, nevermind the potential as it exists today.
 
I heard from somewhere that the tracks in Brampton are all ripped up. Is there anyone here who can confirm if this is true or not?
 
History fan said:
I heard from somewhere that the tracks in Brampton are all ripped up. Is there anyone here who can confirm if this is true or not?
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No, there have been a few road crossings that have been removed for other work (ex., Mayfield Rd) but apart from that the line remains mostly intact, at least on the northern end of Brampton and into Caledon.
 
tylerbell said:
No, there have been a few road crossings that have been removed for other work (ex., Mayfield Rd) but apart from that the line remains mostly intact, at least on the northern end of Brampton and into Caledon.
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Yep. All the railway crossing infrastructure (lights, gates, signage) is gone, and there are two crossings removed in Brampton (Mayfield and Bovaird) but otherwise the tracks remain in place. Expect more crossings to be ripped out next year.
 
The City of Brampton has paved over several former OBRY crossings near the downtown. I believe the track is just buried under asphalt and this is a temporary fix as the crossings have gotten rough.

McMurchy, Royce, Queen, Nelson, and Dennison have been paved over. At Vodden and Rosedale, the tracks were patched with asphalt.

The diamond remains intact, with the signals still active.

IMG_3667.jpeg
 
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