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VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
CapitalSeven
Senior Member
Fascinating. If you look at the "Plan" page that train doesn't show up, but on the "Reservations" page it does. Clearly they haven't updated some pages yet with the service increases. I suspect it was added recently and someone made a typo in the schedule. Kingston to Fallowfield in 87 minutes seems pretty fishy to me, as the earlier express train takes 103 minutes. My guess is the Fallowfield times are off by about 20 minutes. Even VIA wouldn't plan a train to run that fast and then crawl into downtown Ottawa at 11 mph.
reaperexpress
Senior Member
Yeah the new timetables aren't up yet either.
Kingston to Fallowfield in 87 minutes would be an average speed of 135 km/h, which is physically impossible due to the 15 mph speed restrictions through Brockville and Smiths Falls. So you're almost certainly correct that the time in Fallowfield is off by about 20 minutes.
Which means that the meet between 644 and 647 would occur about 10 minutes west of Fallowfield at a location where one of the trains needs to sit in a siding to wait for the other to pass.
Upgrading Fallowfield with a second platform to allow efficient train meets there would reduce the need to schedule inefficient train meets out on the line away from stations.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Interestingly, a travel time of 90 minutes between Kingston (dep.) and Fallowfield (dep.) has already been achieved with Train 42 in the January 2014 schedule. Even more ambitious, however, is the planned travel time of 83 minutes between Fallowfield (dep.) and Kingston (arr.) for train 43, which already achieved 90 minutes for the last few pre-covid years:
Compiled from: own VIA Rail timetable archive
More generally, we are up to 93.3% of pre-Covid timetable volumes:
Compiled from: own VIA Rail timetable archive
This is an older, incorrect version of above table, as pointed out in the two posts following this post:
More generally, we are up to 93.3% of pre-Covid timetable volumes:
Compiled from: own VIA Rail timetable archive
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reaperexpress
Senior Member
Wow that 83 minute travel time for the new VIA 43 is absolutely wild. That's a 141 km/h average, which seems quite unrealistic given those slow zones in Brockville and Smiths Falls. And unlike VIA 644 where the ambitious Kingston-Fallowfield segment is followed up by abundant padding, the rest of VIA 43's schedule to Toronto seems very ambitous.
And what's happening in 2012-01-24? In the table there is only one train per day from Fallowfield to Kingston, but in the timetable from your archive, I see:
VIA 41: dep 05:55, arr 07:30 | MTWTF__
VIA 641: dep 06:58, arr 08:34 | MTWTF_S
VIA 51: dep 08:56, arr 10:31 | MTWTF__
VIA 643: dep 09:20, arr 10:55 | ______S
VIA 55: dep 12:45, arr 14:35 | MTWTFSS
VIA 657: dep 15:32, arr 17:13 | MTWTF_S
VIA 649: dep 18:36, arr 20:20 | MTWTFSS
So 6 trains per day on weekdays, 2 on Saturdays and 5 on Sundays.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Thanks for pointing this out! I had "indirect trains" (e.g. T-O-M trains) deactivated, which is only useful when you don't want T-O-M trains show up for queries like MTRL to TRTO. I've swapped out the table, but kept the old table in a Spoiler for reference purposes...
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nfitz
Superstar
I'd assume it's a typo.
reaperexpress
Senior Member
To get a sense of how much time could be saved by fixing up the tracks between Fallowfield and Ottawa, I made a quick model of the line assuming linear 0.3 m/s/s acceleration and 0.6 m/s/s deceleration
Here's the existing conditions:
I looked at a few scenarios:
- Fix up the tracks from the Rideau River to Ottawa Station to be 60 mph instead of 45 mph, which is already possible with the existing alignment.
- In addition, get the Rideau River bridge up to 50 mph, which was its historical speed according to @crs1026.
- Get the whole thing up to 80 mph somehow, which would include lots of infrastructure work namely a new bridge.
For each option I also separated out a sub-option where the limit within Ottawa Station is raised to 20 mph rather than 10 mph.
The main takeaway here is that there are diminishing returns as track speeds increase. The biggest bang-for-the-buck appears to be fixing up the Ottawa Station rail corridor to allow 20 mph, since that saves nearly a minute with what is presumably only signal work. Replacing the bridge with a new alignment doesn't seem like a worthwhile expense given that most of the savings can already be achieved with the existing alignment which would be orders of magnitude cheaper to upgrade.
So my preference would be to upgrade the existing alignment to its fullest (highlighted).
Here's the existing conditions:
I looked at a few scenarios:
- Fix up the tracks from the Rideau River to Ottawa Station to be 60 mph instead of 45 mph, which is already possible with the existing alignment.
- In addition, get the Rideau River bridge up to 50 mph, which was its historical speed according to @crs1026.
- Get the whole thing up to 80 mph somehow, which would include lots of infrastructure work namely a new bridge.
For each option I also separated out a sub-option where the limit within Ottawa Station is raised to 20 mph rather than 10 mph.
The main takeaway here is that there are diminishing returns as track speeds increase. The biggest bang-for-the-buck appears to be fixing up the Ottawa Station rail corridor to allow 20 mph, since that saves nearly a minute with what is presumably only signal work. Replacing the bridge with a new alignment doesn't seem like a worthwhile expense given that most of the savings can already be achieved with the existing alignment which would be orders of magnitude cheaper to upgrade.
So my preference would be to upgrade the existing alignment to its fullest (highlighted).
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Bordercollie
Senior Member
And building a second platform at Fallowfield
TerryJohnson
New Member
For a reasonable cost of upgrading Fallowfield, Amtrak's Milwaukee airport station investment is probably a good comparison in terms of works and a fair pricing - $23.2 million in Canadian funds.
dailyreporter.com
In terms of what the future state looks like at Fallowfield, properly integrating LRT phase 3 would be my main concern rather than HFR, which clearly needs the two platforms and a bridge or tunnel and not more.
However, for considerably less money a south platform could be added at Brockville, accessed using the existing grade crossing, and he existing north platform extended east to accommodate 12 cars. This then allows eastbound J-trains to serve Brockville-Montreal and westbound J-trains to be assembled to balance the train paths and crewing... that could also be done at Kingston but if done there I believe the first train would have to hold for ~20 minutes which is too much lost time, and on main track.
Zenith Tech awarded $17.2M contract for new platform, pedestrian bridge at Milwaukee airport Amtrak station
The project is part of a WisDOT plan to build infrastructure for more Hiawatha trains and reduce conflicts with elongated freight trains
dailyreporter.com
However, for considerably less money a south platform could be added at Brockville, accessed using the existing grade crossing, and he existing north platform extended east to accommodate 12 cars. This then allows eastbound J-trains to serve Brockville-Montreal and westbound J-trains to be assembled to balance the train paths and crewing... that could also be done at Kingston but if done there I believe the first train would have to hold for ~20 minutes which is too much lost time, and on main track.
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roger1818
Senior Member
In terms of extending the double track east and west of Fallowfield station, one big factor is the grade separation of Fallowfield, Woodroffe and the Transitway. That project is on hold, waiting for Stage 3 of the O-Train (which has yet to be funded), as it would save money to build the O-Train grade separations (both across the VIA track and Fallowfield Rd) than building bus grade separations and then convert them to rail a few years later.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Considering the high variability in actual (vs. planned) travel times and that the number of TKM and TKO is pretty much capped at their current number for any foreseeable future (due to bottlenecks in Coteau and Smiths Falls), what exactly is the pressing issue which jaying westbound corridor trains would fix?
Bordercollie
Senior Member
In the HFR model how is the Smith Falls bottleneck going to be resolved? Building a tunnel or an overpass of some kind?
I thought moving the station to the other side was supposed to solve some of the conflicts.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
I unfortunately have the curse of (though at this point: woefully outdated) knowledge, but you might be able to figure out a possible solution if you stare a bit at the center point of this map
:Moving the station in Smiths Falls was only the precondition to increase the number of TKO trains to their current 10tpdd, not the resolution of said bottleneck…
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nfitz
Superstar
Would there be a HFR bottleneck at Smith Falls? You'd have to build a new curve from the VIA Smith Fall's subdivision to the CP Belleville subdivision, a bit north of Smith Falls.
The Kingston to Ottawa service would still bottleneck there - but I doubt that would change. Presumably the HFR tracks would stay north of the CP tracks from Smith Falls to Glen Tay - so no need for any crossing.