ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Bob_McBob]

I heard earlier they plan to run "ice trains" throughout the night. Looks like all the freezing rain missed us though.

[ijmorlan]

I don’t understand. The process of coupling is more involved than one might assume, or a coupled pair has to do extra work before starting every time? By “in the coupling”, do you mean standing on the track between the 2 coupled vehicles?

If the latter, that’s stupid. The system is eventually supposed to operate routinely with coupled pairs, and the main reason for doing so is to avoid paying more drivers when increasing capacity. Whatever they will do when it operates routinely they should be able to do now. Enough with the safety paranoia.

I mean the process of getting them coupled while in service is complicated. Every pair of trains has to be parked and individually visited by LRV Maintenance while other trains bypass them. Once they're coupled, Control gives the two operators specific instructions. The operator of the rear train sits in the front cab and monitors the coupling. Before every station departure, they have to visually confirm there isn't anybody in the coupling area and relay this to the operator of the front train, who then has to explicitly confirm they heard before proceeding.

I still don’t get it. First you say that the answer to my question is the first alternative: “I mean the process of getting them coupled while in service is complicated.” Then you say that they have to do something before every station departure, which is the second alternative: “ Before every station departure…”. So it sounds like the answer to my question is, in effect, “both”.

So what is the plan when we routinely run pairs of trains? The reason for double trains is to save on labour costs compared to running them singly: the system can easily handle trains every 5 minutes in each direction, and could go more frequently than that with some adjustments to the operation of the crossing protection systems.

[danbrotherston]

I mean the process of getting them coupled while in service is complicated. Every pair of trains has to be parked and individually visited by LRV Maintenance while other trains bypass them. Once they're coupled, Control gives the two operators specific instructions. The operator of the rear train sits in the front cab and monitors the coupling. Before every station departure, they have to visually confirm there isn't anybody in the coupling area and relay this to the operator of the front train, who then has to explicitly confirm they heard before proceeding.

I still don’t get it. First you say that the answer to my question is the first alternative: “I mean the process of getting them coupled while in service is complicated.” Then you say that they have to do something before every station departure, which is the second alternative: “ Before every station departure…”. So it sounds like the answer to my question is, in effect, “both”.

So what is the plan when we routinely run pairs of trains? The reason for double trains is to save on labour costs compared to running them singly: the system can easily handle trains every 5 minutes in each direction, and could go more frequently than that with some adjustments to the operation of the crossing protection systems.

Indeed...that seems like yet another safety insanity policy on our system (just like running trains at 10km/h for two blocks, or running trains 10km/h below the speed limit between lanes of speeding traffic).

The problem with safety is that we are unwilling to actually make meaningful changes in safety. 95% of the incidents involving the LRT involve drivers failing to obey signage or signals. We could stop probably 10-15% of the collisions with the LRVs by restricting cross traffic at a handful of redundant intersections (Agnes, St., Mt. Hope., Pine St.). Instead we do nonsense like this.

[ac3r]

Meanwhile in India you can couple a train while the engineer stands inches from it and immediately gets between the two while a whole crowd watches: https://youtu.be/SSHuv_7s9TY?t=88

Sometimes we have way too much obsession with safety over here. And that's why people ignore it very often which is a contradictory effect. I was at a job site recently atop a very tall building. Technically we're supposed to harness in and all that. Do you think that always happens? Unless you're about to stand on the edge of a beam, people will ignore it. But at least we're not doing stunts like this anymore even tho that is extremely based.

Trains are extremely dangerous tho and in bad weather like that it's expected they'll be careful coupling trains. I've done freight train hopping across a bit of the country and it's wild how much sheer power trains have. When you're sitting behind a shipping container on an intermodal going at high speeds you really get a sense of what you're dealing with.

[ijmorlan]

Meanwhile in India you can couple a train while the engineer stands inches from it and immediately gets between the two while a whole crowd watches: https://youtu.be/SSHuv_7s9TY?t=88

Sometimes we have way too much obsession with safety over here. And that's why people ignore it very often which is a contradictory effect. I was at a job site recently atop a very tall building. Technically we're supposed to harness in and all that. Do you think that always happens? Unless you're about to stand on the edge of a beam, people will ignore it. But at least we're not doing stunts like this anymore even tho that is extremely based.

Trains are extremely dangerous tho and in bad weather like that it's expected they'll be careful coupling trains. I've done freight train hopping across a bit of the country and it's wild how much sheer power trains have. When you're sitting behind a shipping container on an intermodal going at high speeds you really get a sense of what you're dealing with.

Good ‘ol link-and-pin, along with the huge buffers perfectly made for squishing someone flat. That’s an area where modern coupling systems are definitely better. I don’t think I want to go back to the older coupling systems. Now dinner on a beam… that might be fun!

[ac3r]

Now dinner on a beam… that might be fun!

Modern workers regularly recreate the famous Lunch atop a skyscraper photograph! It must be a fun thing to do. Of course they're all harnessed in these days (rightfully so). I'm not afraid of heights but when I'm up on a building for work, it's still a bit nerve-wracking when you look down and realize you're hundreds of feet in the air. Psychologically it's a totally different experience than being inside a completed building on the 50th floor, as opposed to standing on the top of something still under construction. You know you can't fall (well, you'd hope) but looking down you're still like "yikes".

It seems that back in those days, people got quite a rush from doing ridiculously dangerous tasks on skyscrapers. Fine dining, sword fights, performative dance and just dangling on cranes and cables. These days you'd be fired and probably charged haha. You usually can't even hold a tool when you're that high up unless it's strapped to you, since obviously you don't want it to fall on someone's head. Back then nobody cared, you could just sit on a beam with your lunchbox, a thermos with tea and take a break. Wasn't even that long ago it was still acceptable to not use any safety measures. Fred Dibnah was a famous steeplejack who also got into demolishing old chimneys. This is a fascinating short clip of him knocking down a huge chimney at an old mill, all by hand, brick by brick. No harness...nothing. He'd climb the ladders (which he installed himself, section by section and were only attached with some rope) with a sledgehammer and just wack bricks apart while standing on wooden planks that were held in by nothing by a few spikes he hammered into the bricks and tied with rope. A total different breed of man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKPApAsJbj4

Some fascinating images: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...dings.html

Don't mean to hijack the thread, I just find the old days fascinating.

[Bob_McBob]

If anyone wants to check it the deicing procedure, they're set up to do it at Waterloo Public Square Station again.

[Bob_McBob]

"...please be advised, trains are starting to get some power issues..."

[Bob_McBob]

At least one LRV reporting total power loss. Signals are starting to have issues too; Block Line Station arms have been down for 10+ minutes.

[Bob_McBob]

509 about to go into service equipped with a scraper.

[Bob_McBob]

504 and 509 coupled, same procedure as before. They will be running trains all night to break up ice.

[taylortbb]

The Record is now covering the disruption from freezing rain, https://archive.is/lcZN4 . It's a Terry Pender article, not an Outhit one, so I think it's fair. There's legitimate questions that need to be answered, but it also fairly represents it as well used and reliable in other seasons. Apparently there's a report on the issues coming to regional council in early March, presumably the March 7 planning and works committee meeting. 

[Rainrider22]

I like Terry Pender, as soon as I saw his name on it, I actually read the article with an open mind...

[danbrotherston]

Yeah, Terry is a solid reporter. It kind of bugs me how much I hear from Outhit (and others) when the record does have solid journalists. Is it a matter of controversy being more widely talked about? Or do they just not get the same amount of space to these topics? Or...are those things linked?...Probably they're linked.

There absolutely are legitimate questions. I think the positioning of this issue should be that this is a failure of the P3 process. There is no technological issue here, the same thing would happen if a P3 private operator was operating buses and didn't equip them with snow tires or...whatever is needed to make buses work in winter.

I'm not philosophically opposed to P3s but I'm not impressed by the performance here.

[Bytor]

It could be a procurement issue, also, if the Region simply didn't buy enough (or any) catenary scrapers to go along with the 14 trams.