Quote:In the tribunal report, representatives for CNR said “a derailment could lead to progressive collapse of the planned towers in the proposal akin to the 911 terrorist attack in New York.”

(12-19-2021, 11:49 AM)ac3r Wrote:

Quote:In the tribunal report, representatives for CNR said “a derailment could lead to progressive collapse of the planned towers in the proposal akin to the 911 terrorist attack in New York.”

Oh give me a break. That just sounds stupid. This is barely a shunting yard or anything, what could cause a catastrophic derailment that could lead to a 9/11 style disaster? This yard is only used to store extra "junk" cars that are eventually coupled to the CP trains that carry autoracks from the Toyota plant. Barely anything moves in and out of that yard besides empty grainers and hoppers. Anytime there IS movement, it's very slow and done by one or two low powdered switcher locomotives. 

If CN, CP and GO Transit can run trains through much denser areas throughout the GTA then I don't see the issue.

Edit: Same goes for their objection to The Metz. CP almost never uses that spur because all it does is connect to the CN Guelph Subdivision and while GEXR/CN owns most of the tracks in the yard, they don't really use it for car storage since it's CP that owns the spur that connects the yard to the CN tracks. The tracks are rusty most of the time.

(12-19-2021, 12:19 PM)Bjays93 Wrote: The CN objection is here stupidly unbelievable. CIBC square in Toronto is a massive building going up on both sides of the railway. 

Also there's a hill between this lot and the railyard, I doubt a derailed train would come anywhere near knocking the foundation of the building, nor would a train be going through here with any amount of speed.

(12-19-2021, 05:11 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:

(12-19-2021, 12:19 PM)Bjays93 Wrote: The CN objection is here stupidly unbelievable. CIBC square in Toronto is a massive building going up on both sides of the railway. 

Also there's a hill between this lot and the railyard, I doubt a derailed train would come anywhere near knocking the foundation of the building, nor would a train be going through here with any amount of speed.

I think the development is intended to excavate much of the hill. My guess is the footings would be more or less level with the yard.

That being said, the objection is still absurd on its face. Maybe if it were a high speed rail line but it isn’t and never can be. Even if it were, it’s easy to mitigate: just build a suitably engineered concrete barrier along the tracks to redirect any derailments along the line and keep them away from the foundation.

I wonder what is really going on here? They must have decided they don’t want the development, but for some reason they’re presenting absurd reasons. Do they really believe this is a possible scenario? Do they want to buy the land themselves for cheap? Is there some other reason they can’t or don’t want to present in public?

I suppose in principle I should at least entertain for a moment the idea that a progressive collapse of the type envisioned is really possible and infeasible to prevent except by not building the development, but it just doesn’t compute.

(12-19-2021, 06:17 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:

(12-19-2021, 05:11 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: I think the development is intended to excavate much of the hill. My guess is the footings would be more or less level with the yard.

That being said, the objection is still absurd on its face. Maybe if it were a high speed rail line but it isn’t and never can be. Even if it were, it’s easy to mitigate: just build a suitably engineered concrete barrier along the tracks to redirect any derailments along the line and keep them away from the foundation.

I wonder what is really going on here? They must have decided they don’t want the development, but for some reason they’re presenting absurd reasons. Do they really believe this is a possible scenario? Do they want to buy the land themselves for cheap? Is there some other reason they can’t or don’t want to present in public?

I suppose in principle I should at least entertain for a moment the idea that a progressive collapse of the type envisioned is really possible and infeasible to prevent except by not building the development, but it just doesn’t compute.

I agree, they have some other motivation and are trying to justify it.  It's hard to say if this is just some insane level of groupthink, where they are so out of touch with reality that they think this is a real problem. Or whether they believe that they can make ridiculous claims like this and cloak them in the aura of "expert" and make them unassailable.

FWIW...I fear that regardless of their actual thinking, that some folks in some agency in some government, may believe them.

(12-21-2021, 09:29 AM)cherrypark Wrote:

(12-19-2021, 06:17 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I agree, they have some other motivation and are trying to justify it.  It's hard to say if this is just some insane level of groupthink, where they are so out of touch with reality that they think this is a real problem. Or whether they believe that they can make ridiculous claims like this and cloak them in the aura of "expert" and make them unassailable.

FWIW...I fear that regardless of their actual thinking, that some folks in some agency in some government, may believe them.

I think its worth wondering what hours of the day they are running trains through here and if the yards are used for shunting at night. If the GO train yard at Park St. is an indication they could be appealing to these unrealistic scenarios as more "high impact / risk" options to just block having noise complaints and threat to some continuing operations there?

(12-21-2021, 09:29 AM)cherrypark Wrote: I think its worth wondering what hours of the day they are running trains through here and if the yards are used for shunting at night. If the GO train yard at Park St. is an indication they could be appealing to these unrealistic scenarios as more "high impact / risk" options to just block having noise complaints and threat to some continuing operations there?

(12-21-2021, 09:29 AM)cherrypark Wrote: I think its worth wondering what hours of the day they are running trains through here and if the yards are used for shunting at night. If the GO train yard at Park St. is an indication they could be appealing to these unrealistic scenarios as more "high impact / risk" options to just block having noise complaints and threat to some continuing operations there?

(12-21-2021, 11:14 AM)ac3r Wrote:

(12-21-2021, 09:29 AM)cherrypark Wrote: I think its worth wondering what hours of the day they are running trains through here and if the yards are used for shunting at night. If the GO train yard at Park St. is an indication they could be appealing to these unrealistic scenarios as more "high impact / risk" options to just block having noise complaints and threat to some continuing operations there?

They do most of the shunting during the day as it's safer to couple trains in daylight, but it's not every day. They then generally pick up the cars at night. The train usually makes its way from this yard to drop them off at the Maple Grove Road yard around midnight each night. Overall it's not a very noisy process...a slight rumbling of the train and maybe a few bangs as the sets of cars couple, but it's quite muffled due to the lower elevation.

Using noise issues as a way to block the project seems unlikely for that reason. The tracks run parallel to King, going as close to 40 meters to single family houses that are along Morgan and Morrison and even that isn't all that noisy apart from the horn when they cross a couple streets. CP tracks also snake their way through lots of residential areas in Cambridge which they run on very often as they need to go through them to bring all the cars to the Galt mainline in the south of the region. They have a huge yard on Samuelson as well, which is dead centre in the middle of a low density residential area. So really, I'm not sure what their objections are truly about.

(12-21-2021, 04:40 PM)ac3r Wrote: The risk profile is absurd because they suggest a derailment could lead to a 9/11 style catastrophe. That's just...? Nonsense. You'd almost need to literally drive a freight train full of explosively reactive chemicals right into the buildings to bring them down.

Not sure how many people here are also train foamers like I am, but there's places in the US (and elsewhere) where they regularly run freight trains underneath tall buildings within urban areas. There's also countless street running trains in smaller towns that literally run huge trains full of things like intermodal units, hazardous chemicals to coal down the middle of city streets, next to homes and businesses that shut down roads on a regular basis (like this: https://youtu.be/x9StLsUtDkw) and serious disasters are extremely rare. Hell, GEXR runs trains down from Elmira full of chemical cars that go right next to offices, the university, student apartments, condos and uptown Waterloo so they can link up with CN trains.