VIA Rail

[lead82]

Does CN not want to restore their services asap? How bad is it actually? This is further proof that via needs it's own corridor. 9/10 derailments are freight trains. On that note why is it that North America has so many derailments every year that it would just be shrugged off as a meh moment? Is it due to honking behemoth trains running on poorly maintained track?

I would think they would. Why is there no information about the CN derailment?

 

[EnviroTO]

Lessons that should be learned but I'm not optimistic will be:
1. Incident response centre that operates 24/7 and can dispatch a rescue to all areas where VIA operates. This would require an action plan that outlines the course of action to be taken by location and time and ensure primary contacts and backup contacts.
2. Federal regulations and union policy should be flexible on work hours when stranded passengers are being rescued. It is unreasonable to have a bunch of night crews in the corridor when there are no night trains. The other alternative would be to operate night trains... this would require full recline seats which maybe be useful on the Atlantic as well.
3. The railways need to do a better job of maintaining their right of way. The right of way used to be cleared back to a distance that trees shouldn't have the opportunity to fall on trains.
4. We can't have Transport Canada trust CN and CP (or VIA) blindly like the FAA did Boeing. Transport Canada should investigate both of these incidents and have actions that CN and VIA need to produce evidence for that this will not happen again.

 

[lenaitch]

You say that but if those people are essential in ensuring that the service will keep running then it's not a waste.

So you would rather have the train wait 2,3,4,5 hours to drive from Toronto to Kingston or from Montreal to fix a light bulb? Or a wiper blade? Maybe a fuse?

I don't know what engineers and conductors are allowed to repair but with that many trains in the corridor on a daily basis something is going to go wrong no matter how well you maintain the equipment.

That's like saying there is no point in having extra staff on standby during bad weather events because you may not need them. So then the train gets delayed and the crew runs out of hours and there is nobody to replace that crew. Then you have 200 angry passengers not to mention you still need to get the equipment to where it's supposed to be for the next run or you need to cancel that one too.

Or having fire fighters sitting at the fire hall is a waste because they are only needed for two hours a day on average. It's only until your house catches on fire that you realize how important they are

There needs to be a balance between proactive spending and reactive.

Otherwise you can just forget about using the train as a reliable means of transportation.

I'm not convinced incidents like this in conditions like this will have a major hit on VIA's reputation. It's not like the alternatives were faring any better.

 

[Bordercollie]

I would think they would. Why is there no information about the CN derailment?

Train Derailment Grafton December 24, 2022:

 

[Bordercollie]

Lessons that should be learned but I'm not optimistic will be:
1. Incident response centre that operates 24/7 and can dispatch a rescue to all areas where VIA operates. This would require an action plan that outlines the course of action to be taken by location and time and ensure primary contacts and backup contacts.
2. Federal regulations and union policy should be flexible on work hours when stranded passengers are being rescued. It is unreasonable to have a bunch of night crews in the corridor when there are no night trains. The other alternative would be to operate night trains... this would require full recline seats which maybe be useful on the Atlantic as well.
3. The railways need to do a better job of maintaining their right of way. The right of way used to be cleared back to a distance that trees shouldn't have the opportunity to fall on trains.
4. We can't have Transport Canada trust CN and CP (or VIA) blindly like the FAA did Boeing. Transport Canada should investigate both of these incidents and have actions that CN and VIA need to produce evidence for that this will not happen again.

There should be crews on standby as long as trains are running. If the time it took for crews to be dispatched resulted in crews already been sent home for the night and it wasn't until the morning when the morning crew showed up did they dispatch then they should have dispatched crews sooner.

Just because it doesn't meet their schedule doesn't mean that you leave passengers stranded for 18 hours.

The priority should have been getting another train to rescue the stranded train and tow it to a station to let passengers off.

If not a VIA train then perhaps call CN to dispatch a locomotive to tow the disabled train. I'm sure they don't want it holding up the main line for 18 hours.

 

[DSC]

There should be crews on standby as long as trains are running. If the time it took for crews to be dispatched resulted in crews already been sent home for the night and it wasn't until the morning when the morning crew showed up did they dispatch then they should have dispatched crews sooner.

Just because it doesn't meet their schedule doesn't mean that you leave passengers stranded for 18 hours.

The priority should have been getting another train to rescue the stranded train and tow it to a station to let passengers off.

If not a VIA train then perhaps call CN to dispatch a locomotive to tow the disabled train. I'm sure they don't want it holding up the main line for 18 hours.

I think the line was already blocked by the CN train derailment.

 

[Bordercollie]

I think the line was already blocked by the CN train derailment.

To the west it was. To the east it's not.

 

[crs1026]

^Transit properties have “spare board” positions where operators’ assignment is to wait in the lunchroom until handed an assignment. It works, because there are enough variables with dead buses, sick calls, and service disruptions that the “couch drivers” don’t actually sit idle to a degree that would be offensive to the taxpayer.

I’m not sure that VIA needs that degree of redundancy in its operation. But railroading seems to be an extreme case where (perhaps because operating workers are deployed irregularly in the routine moments, with no one having any consistency or predictability in hours) rail workers slide off the face of the planet at quitting time, and the inability to achieve call-ins prevents quick response to incidents.

If one compares to say municipal and provincial Hydro workers, one seldom hears that a blackout in bad weather is extended because the workers couldn’t be called in. I could cite plenty of situations where, when the power went out town-wide, such workers just headed to work on the assumption that they would be needed to get the lights back on (of course, their own power might have been off as well, so it was somewhat self-motivated…)

Back in the days of pagers (amazing how dated that now seems), as a management guy I was required as a condition of employment to carry a pager 24/7 on a 2 weeks on/4 weeks off rotation, with the requirement to be able to reach the plant within 90 minutes, fit for duty….. to hold a role in the plant’s emergency contol centre. There was a small stipend paid for this but that’s all.

To be balanced, I am aware of railway RTE’s who have spent this Christmas in a bunkhouse in an away terminal because this week’s weather forced freight operations to be suspended also…. no way to get them home. I’m not suggesting rail workers have it easy, but VIA sits in the middle of these working extremes with most of its crews working a predictable schedule such that the requirement to respond occasionally in emergencies is not unreasonable.

Someone needs to revisit this, because while the knee-jerk reaction of “it was a holiday, so nobody could be reached” may be indicative of current railway culture, it isn’t a valid norm for a service industry where service stoppages can put customers’ health and well being at risk…. nor is it a modal condition of employment in other regulated, unionised industries.

- Paul

 

[Bordercollie]

^Transit properties have “spare board” positions where operators’ assignment is to wait in the lunchroom until handed an assignment. It works, because there are enough variables with dead buses, sick calls, and service disruptions that the “couch drivers” don’t actually sit idle to a degree that would be offensive to the taxpayer.

I’m not sure that VIA needs that degree of redundancy in its operation. But railroading seems to be an extreme case where (perhaps because operating workers are deployed irregularly in the routine moments, with no one having any consistency or predictability in hours) rail workers slide off the face of the planet at quitting time, and the inability to achieve call-ins prevents quick response to incidents.

If one compares to municipal and provincial Hydro workers, one seldom hears that a blackout in bad weather is extended because the workers couldn’t be called in. I could cite plenty of situations where, when the power went out town-wide, such workers just headed to work on the assumption that they would be needed to get the lights back on (of course, their own power might have been off as well, so it was somewhat self-motivated…)

Back in the days of pagers (amazing how dated that now seems), as a management guy I was required as a condition of employment to carry a pager 24/7 on a 2 weeks on/4 weeks off rotation, with the requirement to be able to reach the plant within 90 minutes, fit for duty….. to hold a role in the plant’s emergency contol centre. There was a small stipend paid for this but that’s all.

To be balanced, I am aware of railway RTE’s who have spent this Christmas in a bunkhouse in an away terminal because this week’s weather forced freight operations to be suspended also…. no way to get them home. I’m not suggesting rail workers have it easy, but VIA sits in the middle with most of its crews working a predictable schedule such that the requirement to respond occasionally in emergencies is not unreasonable.

Someone needs to revisit this, because while the knee-jerk reaction of “it was a holiday, so nobody could be reached” may be indicative of current railway culture, it isn’t a valid norm for a service industry where service stoppages can put customers’ health and well being at risk…. nor is it a modal condition of employment in other regulated, unionised industries.

- Paul

100%!

Maybe 4 hours to resolve the issue would be reasonable. 18? NOT.

 

[cplchanb]

100%!

Maybe 4 hours to resolve the issue would be reasonable. 18? NOT.

Agreed. Imagine there was a medical emergency aboard or it was a serious accident. Via and CN would be guilty of multiple counts of negligence causing injury or death.

 

[dowlingm]

Agreed. Imagine there was a medical emergency aboard or it was a serious accident. Via and CN would be guilty of multiple counts of negligence causing injury or death.

Emergency services reached the train at 10.30pm, presumably commensurate with an non-casualty incident response triage when causality incidents were occurring on roads all over Ontario. striking this as it was what I recalled reading earlier in the week but can’t find supporting documentation for it now (and one piece I did find indicated the tree strike was after that time)

 

[cplchanb]

Emergency services reached the train at 10.30pm, presumably commensurate with an non-casualty incident response triage when causality incidents were occurring on roads all over Ontario.

What time was the incident?

 

[dowlingm]

To the west it was. To the east it's not.

that’s assuming that there were enough unoccupied tracks for a rescue locomotive to reach the train, and engineers with enough hours to reach it from the locomotive starting point. This is the new modern railroad, not an era of yards in every hamlet and a switcher to service them, and engineers who weren’t already maxed out on fatigue to meet shareholder demands.

 

[smallspy]

Questions for ya Dan (or anyone else who would know)

1) Would it not be normal to prioritize a full passenger train, over a freight; and one stuck for many more hours w/o adequate supplies/working toilets? One certainly doesn't have the impression of priority here.

The RTC can only identify a passenger train from a freight by its symbol, and alpha-numeric jumble of characters that shows up on their screen above the line that is indicated by the train with each block. On each screen, the occupied block(s) show up in pink versus light grey (regardless of train type), with other colours used to indicate other situations (block occupied due to track work, train in emergency, etc.).

So while yes, we all want them to prioritize passenger over freight the reality is that when the calls are coming in they don't actually know who is calling until they interpret what they are being told.

2) I don't know, but assuming the toilets stopped working due to the tanks filling up. In an emergency situation is there no way to empty on to the ballast? Whatever clean-up is later required is surely preferable to no working bathrooms.

I believe that this is impossible without specially-made (or jury-rigged) equipment. The tanks require pumping to remove the waste, and much like the fuel tanks there are a series of contacts on the hose and outlet that need to connect and talk to each other before the process begins.

3) I assume (again don't know) that trains don't carry significant surplus liquid beyond what they expect to provide for routine meals/snacks etc. I get where carrying vast amounts of surplus potable water is a hassle/cost; but it seems like they ran out quite early, is it your perception that more potable water/liquid should be on-board than is routinely the case?

There is a Transport Canada rule that states that there needs to be additional water for X amount of time beyond a "scheduled trip" at a full load. I don't know what that X is, but I have always seen lots bottles of water around on my trips.

There is also a substantial amount of onboard clean water (although it is technically no longer "potable") on each car. This could also be used in theory, as it used to supply the onboard drinking water. I don't know the reasoning behind that change.

4) Its my understanding that after being hit by the tree, the crew was able to maneuver the train under its own power to a nearby siding. If that was possible, and not safety risk, would it not have made sense to get it to the nearest station?

That really depends on how far the next station is, and whether the track beyond the siding was passable.

I'm still gathering all of the facts from that event, so I don't know the answers to it as yet.

Dan

 

[Northern Light]

The RTC can only identify a passenger train from a freight by its symbol, and alpha-numeric jumble of characters that shows up on their screen above the line that is indicated by the train with each block. On each screen, the occupied block(s) show up in pink versus light grey (regardless of train type), with other colours used to indicate other situations (block occupied due to track work, train in emergency, etc.).

So while yes, we all want them to prioritize passenger over freight the reality is that when the calls are coming in they don't actually know who is calling until they interpret what they are being told.



I believe that this is impossible without specially-made (or jury-rigged) equipment. The tanks require pumping to remove the waste, and much like the fuel tanks there are a series of contacts on the hose and outlet that need to connect and talk to each other before the process begins.



There is a Transport Canada rule that states that there needs to be additional water for X amount of time beyond a "scheduled trip" at a full load. I don't know what that X is, but I have always seen lots bottles of water around on my trips.

There is also a substantial amount of onboard clean water (although it is technically no longer "potable") on each car. This could also be used in theory, as it used to supply the onboard drinking water. I don't know the reasoning behind that change.



That really depends on how far the next station is, and whether the track beyond the siding was passable.

I'm still gathering all of the facts from that event, so I don't know the answers to it as yet.

Dan

Thanks Dan! Insightful, as always!