VIA Rail

[crs1026]

Paul, I love you, but you are very, very wrong here.

I may be making some different conclusions (but the love is appreciated, and back at ya).

- CN's abnormally low shunt voltage means that it more susceptible to continuity problems with dirty track or dirty wheels. This is why there are all sorts of rules in their rulebook about requiring more than 12 axles in order to allow a train to proceed at track speed (fewer axles are limited in speed in order to ensure that they to shut all of the track circuits).

This is where I think we have to take the longer broader view. CN has run its idiosyncratic signal design for many decades, and never has a regulator or government told them to get with the plan and standardise with other railways away from the low voltage designs. So effectively, what they are doing is legitimised technically and in a regulatory sense. Signal engineers on other railroads may roll their eyes and mutter, but if CN's practice has never been challenged, it "meets code" just as well as what the other railroads do. Hence my view that there has been an elephant in the room all along.

The first issue is a known problem in the sense that the railways have all been here before - although never with a trainset as long as the Ventures + Chargers - and has a known solution. Amtrak out of Chicago has been dealing with CN on this issue for a couple of years now, and their way around it was to tow additional cars in each consist in order to get enough wheels to ensure continuity. Historical, CN resolved this problem with their RDCs - which also don't have any tread brakes - by installing "scrubbers", a small brake shoe that sat on the top of each wheel by gravity with the sole purpose of wiping down each wheel face and making sure it was clean. But even with scrubbers installed, CN still required a minimum of 3 RDCs in order to operate at track speed in any territory that had signalling.

Again, when CN made these demands in the US, nobody told them to smarten up. CN's infrastructure was there first. Amtrak may have caved, er, conceded.... but they added the extra cars instead of seeking support from say the FRA. I don't know the details of CSX's involvement, but one assumes they had some signalling that was of like kind or they had similar experiences.

VIA's bulletin indicates that they are reluctant to start messing with lengthened Venture consists, but it's a pretty obvious and pragmatic solution, and is just an extension of that older RDC and light engine rules doctrine.

We both have enough photos in our collections of 2-car CN and VIA RDC consists in signalled territory to know that CN cut itself some slack in past decades when convenient. That's what has changed.... these days, once the problem is admitted, it cannot be downplayed by management, regulators or by company lawyers, even once in a while. Zero public tolerance.

The second issue is far, far harder to fix - in fact, considering the size of CN"s network it may well be impossible. While increasing the shunt voltage would resolve a lot of continuity issues, it may well require the replacement of hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of additional signalling components.

This is the thing. Directing CN to pull up its socks would likely be a huge legal fail. Possibly as PTC has rolled out and newer flavours are being implemented, CN has positioned itself to gradually solve this problem - but I suspect that to CN shareholders, this ain't broke and doesn't need fixing: Just tell Amtrak/VIA to go away.

So, what to do? In the short term, I can't help but think that sourcing and installing scrubbers on the Ventures + Chargers will help resolve the situation.

I would love to see the graph that shows that 24 axles is not acceptable but 32 is. How is that threshold determined? As a non-engineer, possibly scrubbers plus 28 axles would bean interesting calculation.

(Want to be really nasty about it? Make CN pay for their development, design, production and installation.)

As per above, I can't imagine this would ever happen.

It should be noted that the Chargers and Ventures are running in lots of other places in the US, and on multiple different railways - sometimes in shorter consists. CN's network is the only one where they have these issues. As well, I have not yet heard of one instance on the Kingston Sub where a Charger has failed to activate a signal or level crossing, so this may be a situation of "an abundance of caution" versus a singular or small multiple of actual instances.

I am taking the high road here and accepting CN's concern as bona fide, although one wonders if they are simply playing a trump card as a strategic paper cut against passenger trains on their network. I alluded to CN pushing other agendas - the summer heat speed restrictions on jointed rail is one I would point to, as possibly a vast overstatement of the risk of sun kinks. Whole lot of knowledgeable railroaders scratching their heads about that one, doesn't help that CN exempts itself from those rules in some locations. So maybe this is a bit of malicious compliance, but I think CN may hold the winning cards.

- Paul

 

[dowlingm]

VIA’s own tracks (Brockville-Ottawa-Coteau, Chatham-Windsor) are ex-CN, right? Is it reasonable to assume their detection technology has not been changed out since? There were those crossing issues in Ottawa a few years back but I don’t remember what root cause was assigned to those

 

[Urban Sky]

VIA’s own tracks (Brockville-Ottawa-Coteau, Chatham-Windsor) are ex-CN, right?

At least in the case of the Brockville Sub (Smiths Falls to Brockville), this shouldn’t be a problem, as that line is ex-CP, not ex-CN.

 

[nfitz]

It's completelyl absurd how they are noticing this now, in operational trains with passengers, but didn't notice it when they were running empty during tests?

GIven this gross incomptence appears to be entirely CN's fault, the temporary solution shouldn't be to slow trains. It should be to post CN staff at each and every impacted level crossing, so as to manually close the gates when VIA trains are approaching.

Hopefully VIA Rail get's cost recovery from CNR.

 

[Allandale25]

Will this be an issue for Ontario Northland on the portion between Washago and North Bay?

 

[Urban Sky]

It's completelyl absurd how they are noticing this now, in operational trains with passengers, but didn't notice it when they were running empty during tests?

As I wrote on groups.io, not all issues can be detected during testing:

Some issues are so rare (e.g., once-in-a-million train-miles travelled or level crossings encountered) that they don’t get detected during testing or even after years of operations, but once they are detected, they are so potentially dangerous that they require additional safety procedures (such as automatic warning devices at level crossings which don’t get activated when required).

Testing catches a large number of issues you’ll never hear about (because they have been resolved before the first passenger sets foot into them), but others are just so infrequent they only surface after years of revenue operations…

Re: Ventures-Shunt

groups.io

GIven this gross incomptence appears to be entirely CN's fault, the temporary solution shouldn't be to slow trains. It should be to post CN staff at each and every impacted level crossing, so as to manually close the gates when VIA trains are approaching.

For someone who understands less about rail operations and safety than quite a few other commenters here, your comments here appear to me as strikingly opinionated and judgemental…

Hopefully VIA Rail get's cost recovery from CNR.

My understanding is that both side have waived the right to demand compensation from each other in the case of accidents and you can find examples for when that presumably worked in favour of CN (Hinton) or of VIA (Burlington)…

 

[nfitz]

For someone who understands less about rail operations and safety than quite a few other commenters here, your comments here appear to me as strikingly opinionated and judgemental…

My understanding is that both side have waived the right to demand compensation from each other in the case of accidents and you can find examples for when that presumably worked in favour of CN (Hinton) or of VIA (Burlington)…

Do you have a source for that agreement?

In the case of Hinton, why would two different federal government corporations start suing each other? That would simply be a Ministeral decision on who pays. In terms of fault, I don't see how it wouldn't have been 100% CN.

In terms of the Burlington crash, neither company was blameless. Little point in suing. While the two engineers were VIA employees, they'd had mostly CN experience until VIA hired them. The primary factor of forgetting that the signals they had passed 5 minutes or so earlier was certainly those engineers fault, but most of the contributing factors CN was responsible for. The board was very quick and clear to point out that CN had not taken action on their 2001 recommendation to employ additional backup safety systems. And good grief - what kind of incompetent railroad only puts signals before a station, not afterwards!

We've known since at least Hinton that CN prioritized money and loyalty over safety, given CN's behaviour in the Hinton investigation.

The government and VIA have never taken the kind of hardline that is necessary with CN. However, I should point out my Conflict of Interest - I am a CNR shareholder.

 

[dowlingm]

Will this be an issue for Ontario Northland on the portion between Washago and North Bay?

Why stop at Washago? Presumably CN uses the same detection technology all the way to Toronto, and Metrolinx may not have changed it out at Pottery Road.

 

[crs1026]

Why stop at Washago? Presumably CN uses the same detection technology all the way to Toronto, and Metrolinx may not have changed it out at Pottery Road.

While the restriction is system wide, There may be less impact where track speed is only 50ish (versus 100 in the Corridor) as the requirement to approach crossings able to stop and protect does not require so much deceleration and added time.

- Paul

 

[smallspy]

This is where I think we have to take the longer broader view. CN has run its idiosyncratic signal design for many decades, and never has a regulator or government told them to get with the plan and standardise with other railways away from the low voltage designs. So effectively, what they are doing is legitimised technically and in a regulatory sense. Signal engineers on other railroads may roll their eyes and mutter, but if CN's practice has never been challenged, it "meets code" just as well as what the other railroads do. Hence my view that there has been an elephant in the room all along.

And maybe this has been the problem all along, but people have been too afraid of calling CN out.

But it does need to be challenged. CN has had to institute arcane and seeming illogical rules that run contrary to the other railroads solely to account for the corner that it's painted itself into. And you know what, maybe it is a safety issue, and has been all along.

Hell, it is absolutely a safety issue in other respects - track equipment doesn't trigger the signal system, which has resulted in some rather spectacular photographic evidence - that both of us have witnessed - of what happens with a pickup truck when it runs into the coupler at the front of a loco. It's amazing considering the number of times that I've seen it happen that no one has been killed. Or maybe someone has, and we just don't know about it.

Again, when CN made these demands in the US, nobody told them to smarten up. CN's infrastructure was there first. Amtrak may have caved, er, conceded.... but they added the extra cars instead of seeking support from say the FRA. I don't know the details of CSX's involvement, but one assumes they had some signalling that was of like kind or they had similar experiences.

I'm not so sure that no one said anything. Sure, there certainly hasn't been much about it in the railfan press other than to write off the Siemens equipment as "cheap". Except it wasn't the equipment's fault at all.....

And maybe that's the problem - the issue is so poorly understood beyond a handful of professionals (and an even smaller handful of watchers, in which I include myself) that almost no one has been able to wrap their heads around it, or that the prevailing railfan logic of "all tracks are the same" simply precludes any further investigation.

VIA's bulletin indicates that they are reluctant to start messing with lengthened Venture consists, but it's a pretty obvious and pragmatic solution, and is just an extension of that older RDC and light engine rules doctrine.

Completely and totally agree.

We both have enough photos in our collections of 2-car CN and VIA RDC consists in signalled territory to know that CN cut itself some slack in past decades when convenient. That's what has changed.... these days, once the problem is admitted, it cannot be downplayed by management, regulators or by company lawyers, even once in a while. Zero public tolerance.

Sure - and we've both also heard enough stories from back in the day of "my train arrived at Kingston 40 minutes late", too.

This is the thing. Directing CN to pull up its socks would likely be a huge legal fail. Possibly as PTC has rolled out and newer flavours are being implemented, CN has positioned itself to gradually solve this problem - but I suspect that to CN shareholders, this ain't broke and doesn't need fixing: Just tell Amtrak/VIA to go away.

PTC doesn't fix this, though.

PTC needs to know where the train is in relation to the signals, and what those signals are. If the signal system is not detecting the train accurately, all the GPS in the world isn't going to make that signal green...... or red.

I would love to see the graph that shows that 24 axles is not acceptable but 32 is. How is that threshold determined? As a non-engineer, possibly scrubbers plus 28 axles would bean interesting calculation.

You and I, both. Plus how many scrubbers are needed? Every car? Every axle? Loco and cab car?

I am taking the high road here and accepting CN's concern as bona fide, although one wonders if they are simply playing a trump card as a strategic paper cut against passenger trains on their network. I alluded to CN pushing other agendas - the summer heat speed restrictions on jointed rail is one I would point to, as possibly a vast overstatement of the risk of sun kinks. Whole lot of knowledgeable railroaders scratching their heads about that one, doesn't help that CN exempts itself from those rules in some locations. So maybe this is a bit of malicious compliance, but I think CN may hold the winning cards.

- Paul

I can't help but think that if this is some transparent ploy to rid themselves of passenger trains that it's bound to fail miserably.

But from an operational standpoint, having passenger trains that operate at near-freight speeds (in terms of averages) would be a huge win to them in terms of their system throughput.

Am I being overly cynical?

Dan

 

[crs1026]

And maybe that's the problem - the issue is so poorly understood beyond a handful of professionals (and an even smaller handful of watchers, in which I include myself) that almost no one has been able to wrap their heads around it, or that the prevailing railfan logic of "all tracks are the same" simply precludes any further investigation.

Well, CN does not have a publicly visible track record of signal-related accidents, so.....arcane or otherwise, their signals work, sort of. I think it would be very difficult, or at least take a long time, to justify a change to the regs such that the CN design is no longer acceptable. CN would lobby about the unfairness of being singled out, and while there is reason for that, nobody will understand, and on face value it would be imposing a burden on CN alone. (Now, if there is ever a serious wreck, even one unrelated to signals, then the optics shift - Ottawa could announce the new reg, the public would be comforted, and CN would be the party on the defensive......)

PTC doesn't fix this, though.

PTC needs to know where the train is in relation to the signals, and what those signals are. If the signal system is not detecting the train accurately, all the GPS in the world isn't going to make that signal green...... or red.

Agreed, and I didn't mean to imply that it would.... I was meaning to say (and did it badly) that with the considerable investment in new signalling that has happened thru PTC, plus CN's own replacement of end of life signals just about everywhere, maybe the newer equipment is more versatile/vanilla and can be more easily transitioned to a common industry spec if there were a will to do so.

A secondary solution might simply to start at Brockville and start converting signalling, one crossing at a time, westwards to Oshawa. Heck, half of the signals in that territory were paid for by Ottawa when the triple track went in. We don't need to undo CN's signalling system wide to clear the Corridor for Ventures. Just take the distances between crossings and figure out where changing a small number of devices would clear the longest full speed alleys.

I can't help but think that if this is some transparent ploy to rid themselves of passenger trains that it's bound to fail miserably.

Oh, I'm the conspiracy guy here, and I think their strategy will be incredibly successful.

Public opinion doesn't pay much attention or understands the issues when CN complains that Ottawa is being unfair or impacting their operation by having to host VIA....but......When the host railway says publicly, "we can't operate VIA's new trains safely on our system"..... does anyone in Ottawa dare to say "don't worry, CN is being silly, actually it's safe"..... and it isn't safe actually, because regardless of whose fault it is, the technical evidence suggests the trains do have vulnerability given CN's signal design.

And if CN can put the blame on VIA.... then any changes they do make can be billed to VIA.

Seems like somebody spotted an opportunity here, maybe not to kill passenger, but simply to grind Ottawa and see what can be extracted.

Am I being overly cynical ?

Heck no. I don't like what CN is doing, but it shows a certain perverse brilliance.

An old saying - when the going gets tough, the weird turn pro.

- Paul

 

[Bojaxs]

Questions;

1) This isn't an issue for GO trains on the RH line? How many axles is a 6 coach GO train? GO ran 4 coach trains on the RH line during covid.

2) This is only an issue for VIA's newer Siemens fleet? VIA ran their older fleet for decades and this never appeared to be an issue.

3) How many coaches would VIA need to extend their trainsets by inorder to reach 32 axles?

 

[Urban Sky]

Questions;;

1) This isn't an issue for GO trains on the RH line? How many axles is a 6 coach GO train? GO ran 4 coach trains on the RH line during covid.

The heavier the car, the more reliable the contact between the track and the wheel and thus the ability to conduct electricity through the wheel becomes. GO’s fleet of Bombardier Bilevels are among the heaviest passenger rail rolling stock available on this planet.

2) This is only an issue for VIA's newer Siemens fleet? VIA ran their older fleet for decades and this never appeared to be an issue.

Different wheel designs. Presumably, the wheel design chosen by Siemens is more optimized for passenger rail operations and thus less similar to the wheels CN uses (and VIA’s legacy fleet emulated).

3) How many coaches would VIA need to extend their trainsets by inorder to reach 32 axles?

Given that piece of equipment forming a Siemens Venture/Charger trainset counts 4 axles, you’d need 7 coaches and one locomotive. Unfortunately, VIA can’t lengthen their trainsets without canibalizing other Siemens trainsets, thus drastically reducing capacity and train frequency…

 

[crs1026]

Sounder Transit runs 2-car Bombardier bilevel trains.

Wikipedia says that a traditional LRC coach weighs 105,000 lbs, a Budd RDC weighs 109,000 lbs, a Siemens Venture coach weighs 112,000 lbs and a Bombardier bilevel weighs 132,000 lbs. So clearly wheel- rail contact, and not number of axles and/or weight alone, is material.

- Paul

 

[Bojaxs]

The heavier the car, the more reliable the contact between the track and the wheel and thus the ability to conduct electricity through the wheel becomes. GO’s fleet of Bombardier Bilevels are among the heaviest passenger rail rolling stock available on this planet.

What I suspected. Urbanists in Canada often wonder why our passenger trains are so massive and look nothing like European trains.

Different wheel designs. Presumably, the wheel design chosen by Siemens is more optimized for passenger rail operations and thus less similar to the wheels CN uses (and VIA’s legacy fleet emulated).

Can Siemens change the wheels on the Chargers to the older design? Or is that not possible? I rode both on a Charger set to Ottawa and a Legacy set back to Toronto, and I barely noticed a difference.