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  #81  
Old Posted Feb 5, 2019, 3:51 PM
Ottawaresident Ottawaresident is offline
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Electricfy it! The European railroads were electrified by I believe the 1950s! Also, normally I'm concerned about where the money comes from. Why not now?
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  #82  
Old Posted Feb 5, 2019, 3:59 PM
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Electricfy it! The European railroads were electrified by I believe the 1950s! Also, normally I'm concerned about where the money comes from. Why not now?
The CP railway through the Rockies is one of the most difficult projects this country has ever completed. Building another twin track electrified 200km/h railway alongside will cost an astronomical amount. Who's paying?
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  #83  
Old Posted Feb 5, 2019, 5:22 PM
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That was 150 years ago. The railway could be a private public partnership, the govt holding 51 percent and funding and private shareholders could raise money.
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  #84  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2019, 8:56 PM
Bellinghamgreg Bellinghamgreg is offline
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I use to work on the CNR ( Maintenance of Way gangs) from my high school years through college ( between Boston Bar, BC and Jasper, Alberta). There are sections of that stretch that adding another track is near impossible and cost prohibitive. I don't see it happening anytime soon.
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  #85  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2019, 1:30 PM
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Not with the current political climate. Austria and Switzerland have built efficient high speed rail.
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  #86  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2019, 2:23 PM
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Originally Posted by Bellinghamgreg View Post
I use to work on the CNR ( Maintenance of Way gangs) from my high school years through college ( between Boston Bar, BC and Jasper, Alberta). There are sections of that stretch that adding another track is near impossible and cost prohibitive. I don't see it happening anytime soon.
CNR allows high-schoolers to work for them too? (I don’t mean it in a derogatory way.) That’s interesting.

I guess for similar reason, it may be financially infeasible to double track in Northern Ontario. (I even have a dedicated thread for that in the Ontario Subfurom.)
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Not with the current political climate. Austria and Switzerland have built efficient high speed rail.
Again, Canada was to blame for privatizing rail.
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  #87  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2019, 2:42 PM
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Not with the current political climate. Austria and Switzerland have built efficient high speed rail.
Austria and Switzerland are significantly more densely populated than the West of Canada, with 104 people/sq. km and 206 people/sq. km.
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  #88  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2019, 2:43 PM
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And one wonders why Canada’s priority’s anywhere else but infrastructure.

I mean, there can still be infrastructure improvement, but only locally/regionally, never too big.
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  #89  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2019, 3:46 PM
Bellinghamgreg Bellinghamgreg is offline
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Originally Posted by Dengler Avenue View Post
CNR allows high-schoolers to work for them too? (I don’t mean it in a derogatory way.) That’s interesting.

I guess for similar reason, it may be financially infeasible to double track in Northern Ontario. (I even have a dedicated thread for that in the Ontario Subfurom.)


Again, Canada was to blame for privatizing rail.
I'm showing my age when I say this but my high school years were in the late 70's. Kids were as young as 16 that worked on the gangs - obviously something that wouldn't be allowed in this day and age. It was a great summer job.
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  #90  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2019, 4:57 PM
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Originally Posted by Bellinghamgreg View Post
I'm showing my age when I say this but my high school years were in the late 70's. Kids were as young as 16 that worked on the gangs - obviously something that wouldn't be allowed in this day and age. It was a great summer job.
My summer job after first year university was with the Agriculture Canada Research Station in Charlottetown. I was the "pest control officer", which meant I worked a split shit (6-10AM & 4-8PM) patrolling the test plots to keep the crows from eating the various different types of grain being grown. To do this they gave me a shotgun and told me to go shoot the crows. I never had the heart to do this. I just fired the gun in the general direction of the crows to frighten them off.

The problem is that the research station lay within Charlottetown city limits, and I was discharging this gun within 100 M or so of houses. I nearly got arrested once (I was up in the research building one evening taking a break when three cop cars suddenly came rushing into the field I formerly was patrolling). I laid low for the rest of the evening.

Of course nothing like this would be allowed these days, but back in the 70s, just about anything was allowed.

And, no, I did not receive any firearms training whatsoever..........
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  #91  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2019, 5:03 PM
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Gone are the days where a kid with a good work ethic and a willingness to learn can start at the ground floor and make a career. You now seem to need a PhD and 5 years experience to be able to fill out the application form and wait for the never-ending screening process to spin the roulette wheel and call your name!
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  #92  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2019, 5:12 PM
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Gone are the days where a kid with a good work ethic and a willingness to learn can start at the ground floor and make a career. You now seem to need a PhD and 5 years experience to be able to fill out the application form and wait for the never-ending screening process to spin the roulette wheel and call your name!
Tell me about it.

Anyway, let's get back to topic.
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  #93  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2019, 11:37 PM
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Originally Posted by Bellinghamgreg View Post
I use to work on the CNR ( Maintenance of Way gangs) from my high school years through college ( between Boston Bar, BC and Jasper, Alberta). There are sections of that stretch that adding another track is near impossible and cost prohibitive. I don't see it happening anytime soon.
I worked on a CN rail gang in the summer of 1977 re-laying track west from Edmonton to Gainford on the CN mainline in Alberta. At that time they were just constructing the 2nd track from Bissell to Stoney Plain. Much of the roadbed had been constructed already between Edmonton and Jasper. When Hunter Harrison was CEO he ripped out 67 km of double track paid for by you and me as taxpayers between Edmonton and Red Pass. Obviously all the sections with the roadbed already built is low hanging fruit which could be doubled with minimal expense. There was and is still plenty of track that could be doubled without too many construction difficulties between Blue River, BC and Portage la Prairie, MB. The same is true on the route between Winnipeg and Toronto.

Right now CN is only installing double track in locations where no bridges are required due to the cost of building bridges. At some point in time they will have to start building new bridges.
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  #94  
Old Posted Feb 9, 2019, 12:02 AM
Bellinghamgreg Bellinghamgreg is offline
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I had heard that they ripped up all that double track years ago and sold it off to railways in the US. Between Jasper and Blue River the valleys are wide so there is room to double track. Some area's between Red Pass and Mt Robson ( Foster and Old Foster sidings) are steep and rugged and require extensive mountain moving to put a second track. Once you get into the Ashcroft Subdivision it's labor intensive to build - especially around White Canyon and the Fraser River ( Jackass Mountain) area.

https://youtu.be/DrSJwoD3dls

Last edited by Bellinghamgreg; Feb 9, 2019 at 12:25 AM.
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  #95  
Old Posted Feb 9, 2019, 12:51 PM
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Originally Posted by Bellinghamgreg View Post
I had heard that they ripped up all that double track years ago and sold it off to railways in the US. Between Jasper and Blue River the valleys are wide so there is room to double track. Some area's between Red Pass and Mt Robson ( Foster and Old Foster sidings) are steep and rugged and require extensive mountain moving to put a second track. Once you get into the Ashcroft Subdivision it's labor intensive to build - especially around White Canyon and the Fraser River ( Jackass Mountain) area.

https://youtu.be/DrSJwoD3dls
Most of rail was ripped up and sent to the US to repair the Illinois Central Railroad which Hunter Harrison had been the CEO of prior to the purchase by CN. Some of the rail was used to extend sidings in Canada. This was not the only rail removed as the London-Sarnia route and the Hamilton-Niagara Falls route single tracked. At the time the CN executive said that with the addition of Centralized Train Control that they could handle any increase in volume for years to come. When you start running longer, heavier and slower trains especially in areas without frequent stretches of double track and extended sidings your capacity decreases even though you have fewer train starts. This is why Via's "Canadian" is almost always late, especially in Northern Ontario where there are few extended sidings and negligible sections of double track. Transcontinental passenger service will never survive in this environment until the majority of all sidings are extended or or linked to form sections of double track.

Thank goodness CN has seen the errors of the past and is now investing more significant capital into expansion projects. The past obsession with the Operating Ratio and short term profits has not been good for the company or the shareholders in the long run of which I am one. This is what happens when short term investors want immediate payback and are not really investing for long term returns.
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  #96  
Old Posted Feb 9, 2019, 3:53 PM
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A question that’s been on my mind for a decade:
Why can’t locomotives in North America look as fancy and assorted as those in Europe or in Asia? Is it simply because of climate? The ones here look so dull to me.
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  #97  
Old Posted Feb 9, 2019, 4:29 PM
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Originally Posted by Dengler Avenue View Post
A question that’s been on my mind for a decade:
Why can’t locomotives in North America look as fancy and assorted as those in Europe or in Asia? Is it simply because of climate? The ones here look so dull to me.
Most locomotives in NA are freight locomotives not passengers. Freight locomotives do not go fast so aerodynamics are not relevant. It is more important to have easy access to repair or replace mechanical parts, particularly on the engine.

If you look at recent NA passenger locomotives, they are becoming more aerodynamic but they don't go any faster due to track quality and freight train congestion.
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  #98  
Old Posted Feb 9, 2019, 4:41 PM
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Expanded VIA cost equivalent to 50,000 TESLA’s

Put VIA Rail in perspective, ridership is reported as 4.4 million passengers per year,. Close to 90% of this volume is on the Quebec to Windsor corridor, which is about 11,000 passengers per day (or 15,000 per day if we don’t count weekends). VIA says it is only capturing 5% of the passenger volume in the corridor and for $4 billion dollars of investment it could increase this to 15% or about 45,000 passengers per day.

$4,000,000,000.00 Canadian could also buy 50,000 Tesla model 3 cars with long range batteries and enhanced auto pilot. So for this amount of money VIA could have an electric almost self driving car for every one of their tripled ridership, a government owned ride sharing company, lets make it a club and call it VIA2GO! Put 2 riders in each car and voila 90,000 passengers per day! And I’m sure Musk would throw in a few 100 superchargers for the $4 billion.

https://3.tesla.com/en_CA/model3/design?#payment. Pricing doesn’t include yellow Via logo!

https://www.viarail.ca/en/about-via-...ng-growth-2017
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  #99  
Old Posted Feb 9, 2019, 9:53 PM
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Mr. Clueless dino-mind that disbelieves the veracity of anthropogenic climate change is back again.

anyone care to dig up how much money is spent on the road network every year? If we actually invested in VIA maybe we would have a competitive system that would come closer to paying for itself, rather than the antiquated/unreliable system that shares all tracks with freight trains.
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  #100  
Old Posted Feb 9, 2019, 10:36 PM
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Mr Calgary friend also does not understand how Highway 401 is one of the busiest highways in North America.

And the 45,000 per day is not the same people every day. That might represent 5,000,000 different people over the year. How are those 50,000 Tesla's going to be distributed amongst those 5,000,000 people?

At this point, more travel choices are needed in addition to expensive short haul flights and driving privately on the increasingly congested single major highway that links 3 major cities and which is dominated by thousands of big trucks.
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