Megaton327
Senior Member
For the few remaining off peak/weekend trains, and once they reintroduce the bulk of that service, there should be significant improvements to on-time performance and they may be able to tighten the schedules a bit. I haven't taken the train since before the pandemic but used to take it weekday offpeak and weekends frequently before that. The vast majority of those trips, both directions, we'd stop for between 5 and 15 minutes to wait for a freight train at the diamond; I don't recall this ever having been an issue for rush hour trains as I expect GO had an agreement with the freight line to have those times to themselves, but offpeak was a different story and it was extremely rare to make the trip without a lengthy delay (relative to the ~50min scheduled trip time). Actually, even the rare occasion that my train wasn't delayed at the diamond, it's exactly as @Willybru21 said, the trains need to meet at the Rutherford siding--I recall times I was on a southbound train and we stopped at the siding for about 10 minutes waiting for the northbound train which had been held up at the diamond. Of course, there were more severe issues affecting the line e.g. almost every Monday and Thursday the trains were cancelled, at least north of Maple, between about 10AM-2:30PM for the freight service to the lumber yard just north of King City GO; this persisted for years and Metrolinx kept those trains on the schedule despite the fact they were cancelled at least 90% of the time. But the diamond's 5-15min delay affected nearly every single offpeak/weekend train I took, and the removal of that routine delay will allow for better adherence to the scheduled meet near Rutherford.
