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VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
Bordercollie
Senior Member
So how does CN access their Windsor trackage? Via the Chatham Sub?
littlewill1166
Active Member
I doubt that VIA is going to double-track the Chatham sub. The real bottleneck is at Komoka where VIA has to wait for freights to/from Sarnia. Chatham and Glencoe stations could get second tracks though to eliminate double-stopping.
littlewill1166
Active Member
The Star's View: CN could compromise on noisy new trains
It's difficult to feel complete sympathy for people who choose to buy homes and live within a few metres of a busy railway track, then complain about the…
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crs1026
Superstar
Small nitpick….the Glencoe- Komoka segment has never been double track.
- Paul
- Paul
Bureaucromancer
Active Member
Wasn't a good deal of HFR supposed to be single track as of the latest information? I'd say there's about zero chance of it anywhere past London.
kEiThZ
Superstar
There needs to be a growth strategy in place. Maybe they can launch with single track and schedule freight at night. But they need a corridor wide enough to double track over time, and possibly even triple track, if it's still shared with freight.
Bordercollie
Senior Member
They could likely shave off 10-15 minutes by upgrading the track between Glencoe and Chatham to Continuous welded rail instead of jointed rail. Makes for a better ride too.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
I guess you could, but then, you only have 8 VIA trains per day, compared to 12 on the Alexandria Sub and 20 on the Beachburg/Smiths Falls/Brockville Subs...
Bordercollie
Senior Member
But when increasing the service to Windsor it would help ontime performance by upgrading the infrastructure to allow for faster speeds.
I think the turnouts are only rated for 50mph which also slows the train down.
nfitz
Superstar
How does CWR allow for higher speeds? VIA and CN used to run Montreal to Toronto in under 4 hours on jointed rail back in the 1970s.
(definitely makes for a better ride - I have an essay somewhere I wrote on a Sunday evening in the early 1980s on a train to Montreal - you can tell which pieces were written on jointed rail versus CWR!)
Bordercollie
Senior Member
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Again: you would have only 8 trains per day benefitting from this and only passengers going all the way to Windsor (or Glencoe) - which is considerably less busy than Ottawa...
kEiThZ
Superstar
I didn't follow this. Why would upgrading the physical track reduce capacity?
crs1026
Superstar
The question is, what would the ridership be if there were 16 trains a day on the line instead of 8. And could that be done with a line that has less than full double track.
I'm sure someone at VIA knows exactly what the remaining life in that jointed rail is. Installing CWR is not like repainting your kitchen. One doesn't replace the rail just because one is tired of the old stuff. Sure, jointed rail is a dated technology and CWR has benefits - but it's a huge cost. Any remaining life in the existing plant needs to be wrung out before upgrading. Maybe the rail can be cascaded to other use, but we don't know if that's possible, or at what cost.
It would be nice if the rail just happened to be worn out, and Ottawa had no choice but to replace.... but it's a big ticket capital item, not something one finds in the annual budget.
Realistically, there will have to be a HFR-level business case to redo the whole line to a higher standard. Like HFR, start with some reasonable initial state with an eye to incremental upgrades. Single track with more sidings is a credible starting point.
One has to believe that the business case for HFR to Windsor would be favourable, and we ought to be putting shovels in the ground quickly....but here we sit.
- Paul