VIA Rail network developments

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

There's very little freight traffic on the corridor's "Ottawa spur" (from Brockville through Ottawa and down to Coteau). The entire spur, save for a very small section through Smiths Falls where it travels through a freight rail yard, is now owned by VIA.

I believe the Canadian Northern Ontario Railway Federal Bridge over the Rideau River (Mile 5.8, subdivision Beachburg) is owned by CN. They don't have much freight traffic along the Beachburg subdivision, so it isn't much of an issue.

I'm pretty sure that rail yard is the only place in the entire Ottawa spur that VIA actually interacts with freight;

The other place VIA regularly interacts with freight is on the Alexandria subdivision where it crosses the CPR Winchester Subdivision, but similar to Smiths Falls, no amount of sidings or double track will solve that, as VIA has to cross to the other side. Grade separation is the only solution in both cases.

So on the Brockville, Smiths Falls, and Alexandria subdivisions, the only issue is VIA trains waiting for each other, which can be fixed with 7km sidings.

While an improvement, I am not convinced 7km is enough for the faster trains VIA operates. I'm not even sure if a train could switch onto a siding at 160 km/h without slowing down.

Even if you assume all this is okay, looking at the Alexandria Subdivision, for example, they would probably want at least 3 sidings (probably more) so that they could have several choices of locations to pass. That would be a minimum of 21 km of sidings. Given that the entire subdivision is about 125 km from Ottawa to the Junction with the Cornwall Subdivision, I still say why not double track all but the most expensive bits to maximize flexibility.