ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Canard]

I don't have any good photos (it's 11:30pm, and the flash on my phone isn't helping), but Water has been completely repaved and painted. Sidewalks are also in on the south side of Duke between Water and Francis, and are in the middle of being built on the North side. Also: LRT curbs are going in on this same stretch! The track crossing at Water may not be going in during this closure, but it seems track might be laid along Duke and then down Francis first. I'm thinking, considering the Francis closure only took maybe 3 weeks with catpole foundations going in almost immediately, there must not have been any utilities running along Francis. Would've sped things up quite a bit! Looking forward to seeing these done, maybe even withing the next few weeks.

Could it be that the utilities are right down the centre? So, since the track is off to the side here, perhaps they didn't need to be relocated.

Here are some photos from this past week, looking down King from between Kitchener and Waterloo:

   

   

   

[Canard]

   
Work progresses on the trackwork at the intersection of Caroline and Allen.

   

   

   
Preparing the foundation for a TPSS, which will be installed on June 23.

[Canard]

Facebook reminded me what the corridor through Waterloo Park looked like when I took this first photo 4 years ago.

   

Here it is today:

   

I am sad we lost all those trees.  While it's going to be great seeing trains fly through here, the math of -Trees and +Fence aren't quite what I had hoped for, from an aesthetic outcome standpoint.

[tomh009]

Earlier this morning, near Charles & Stirling:

[tvot]

I am sad we lost all those trees.  While it's going to be great seeing trains fly through here, the math of -Trees and +Fence aren't quite what I had hoped for, from an aesthetic outcome standpoint.

Yeah. It seems like improving those fences is a lost cause for now. For Waterloo Park, maybe it can be brought up repeatedly in their promenade discussions, not sure how to approach getting rid of it on other parts of the route.

About the cut down trees on the non-path side, I always see plenty of vehicles parked or working back there, but I have no idea what they are doing back there. Does anyone know? It looks like the tracks, bridge, etc. are all close to done in that area and they did sewer & comms a few years ago in that area, so I'm not sure what else needs to be done. There are no plans to leave that area accessible as far as I can tell.

[KevinL]

A TPSS is going in there, and an access path across the tracks will be built. I don't think public access is intended, no.

[Pheidippides]

Miss a few days and so much to catch up on!

First, I have seen in various articles that the maximum penalty Bombardier is liable for is $3.3 million. My question is, is that per LRV or total for all 14? Capping it $3.3 million total seems like a pretty modest incentive. I think based on the revised, revised, schedule they would owe nearly $5 million without a cap:
   

Second, as for the location of the TPSS in Waterloo Park, it seems to be asking for trouble to be building something electrical in nature on a flood plain (one that floods quite regularly even with a heavy summer storm). That said it does look like they are taking additional precautions compared to the other TPSS’s installed to date.

Third, something doesn’t seem completely transparent about the latest delay from Bombardier. They have a good history of innovative and quality products, but are definitely having a tough time delivering on their promises at the moment. According to media reports everything was fine as May 13 and then suddenly as of May 19 there are new and unexpected and considerable delays. How could they not see a delay of this magnitude one week out?

Fourth, I saw that quote from Councillor Galloway in The Record saying construction as being behind schedule, but CTV quoted him as saying no construction delays are expected. So one of them got it wrong. If I had to guess I think what he probably said was there are certain areas of construction that are behind schedule (e.g. King/Victoria underpass), but that they expect to get caught up by the construction deadline.

Fifth, is there a publicly accessibly list of who is currently in Bombardier’s queue for each factory and where our vehicles are in that queue?

Finally, perhaps Bombardier could send some pallets for us to use as personal rapid transit until our LRVs are ready:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wfuvysl-UI

[timc]

Third, something doesn’t seem completely transparent about the latest delay from Bombardier. They have a good history of innovative and quality products, but are definitely having a tough time delivering on their promises at the moment. According to media reports everything was fine as May 13 and then suddenly as of May 19 there are new and unexpected and considerable delays. How could they not see a delay of this magnitude one week out?

If I read things correctly, there was a change in management before the May 13 report came out. I work in the software world, not hardware, but if I had to guess, they put out a preliminary warning and then had a week of meetings to assess where things really are and came up with the new timeline. If that is the case, then the new dates may be more trustworthy than we have had up until now. But it comes down to how well the project management team can get things together and deliver on their promises.

[dunkalunk]

Had to stop by Henry's for a camera bag. Took some photos with the camera on the way back to the terminal...
(click-through for Flickr album)


King and Northfield: mostly-graded


Quick and dirty in-camera panorama (bonus truncated vehicles)



The TPSS is big, grey and imposing. I personally think it needs more bears, or some other sort of colourful mural.


Piles of asphalt, aggregate, dirt, and jackhammered sidewalk make the bus entrance to Conestoga Mall impassable for busses. Stairs to platform look almost ready to be poured.


A view from the endzone Conestoga Station platform. TPSS still needs more bears.


Construction hasn't yet uprooted this landscaping. Bonus points if you can tell me what kind of shrubbery this is.

[panamaniac]

Bridle Wreath, a type of spirea, no?

[Markster]

There is light at the end of the Queen/Charles tunnel!

They've laid a lot of the communication ducts, and soon it will be time to fill in the hole and tamp the earth, and then finally curbs, the station platform, and then finally the rails and road!

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Underground utility work at Queen/Charles looks almost complete! Finally fill/curbs/tracks/etc can begin. <a href="https://t.co/oBRD4GEq8O">pic.twitter.com/oBRD4GEq8O</a></p>&mdash; Mark Jackson-Brown (@Markster3000) <a href="https://twitter.com/Markster3000/status/736715094374162432">May 29, 2016</a></blockquote>

[Canard]

Today, I toured the TTC's brand new Leslie Barns facility, which is home to their new fleet of Bombardier FLEXITY Outlook LFLRV's. I've posted some photos in the Toronto Transit Projects thread.

[tomh009]

First, I have seen in various articles that the maximum penalty Bombardier is liable for is $3.3 million. My question is, is that per LRV or total for all 14? Capping it $3.3 million total seems like a pretty modest incentive. I think based on the revised, revised, schedule they would owe nearly $5 million without a cap:

Your calculation assumes that the penalties kick in the day after the originally projected delivery date.  We haven't seen the contract, so we don't know whether this is actually the case.

[Canard]

Can I nerd out and talk about fixed-bogie articulation for a moment?

   

This is a bogie, or "truck" from Toronto's new fleet of FLEXITY Outlook LRV's - substantially similar enough to our trains (FLEXITY Freedom) for sake of discussion. It's the frame that holds the wheels and motors - one motor per axle. You can see the motor and gear reducer on the left for the axle in the foreground; the motor for the rear axle is on the right, rotated 180 degrees. The disc brake assembly is on the far side of the near axle.

I was very happy to finally get to see a bogie out on its own like this, because I finally answered some of my own questions about how exactly the articulation is accomplished between modules on the FLEXITY series of trams.

These trains are a configuration known as "fixed bogie". Unlike the older Toronto fleet (called CLRV and ALRV's), where each bogie can turn under the car, these bogies are "fixed" with respect to the car (or module) that they are attached to. On the 5-module trains, modules A, C and E have bogies, and modules B and D are suspended between them.

So, the orientation in free space of module A, C and E is defined by the position of the bogie, which is tangent to the line drawn between the two axles on each bogie (ok, ever so slightly inboard, if you want to get picky!). The modules in between fall in line since they have an articulation point (hinge) fore and aft.

So that's fine for horizontal curves, and everything works great - but, in real life, you also have to deal with vertical curves, and even compound curves with twisting (roll), too. Think of the transition of Southbound track through Charles/Benton - this is a particularly aggressive section of track.

I have learned through watching the operation of the new TTC LRV's that the train is actually configured as such: Module A-B-C have only yaw between them, and module D-E can yaw, and then there's a full 3-axis articulation between C and D. So it's as if they've taken a 3-module train and put a 2-module trailer on it.

Again, this is all great... But any roll has to be taken up - and that's where my discovery yesterday was made. The modules sit on the bogies on four coil springs, which you can see in this photo. Just outside of them are four metal discs with a urethane element behind them - In the automation industry, we'd call this configuration a moment compensator. Essentially, it allows the module to bounce up and down, roll left and right, pitch forward and back... But inhibits yaw, which is exactly what we need - since yaw is what we need to fully define the orientation of each module relative to the track!

As a kinematic system, it all works out. This has been bothering me for 2+ years and I've never been able to get a straight answer out of anyone on how exactly is set up, so I was overjoyed to be able to finally crack the nut, so to speak!

[Canard]

Just one photo from me for the weekend here in town:  Ballasted track is going in now along the Hydro Right-of-Way parallel to Fairway Road.

   

I'm very curious how, and when, they'll tamp (align) this track. All tamping so far has been done on track which is either connected to or replacing existing rail lines, so moving the tamping and blasting equipment to the location of the track has been easy. Here, the track is isolated - separated from the main railway line it eventually connects to by embedded track, with three very tight radii turns. The Harsco Mark IV tamper surely can't navigate those curves (it has fixed axles on a very long frame), so I'm quite curious how they plan on doing maintenance on this section of track in the long term.

Also, here's a great little video clip from Matt Morris on Twitter, showing how they're doing the embedded track when the rapidway runs down the centre, and the concrete between the rails is lower to make room for the flanges.  Neat custom device!

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-partner="tweetdeck"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">This is how they finish the cement for <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wrLRT?src=hash">#wrLRT</a>.  Hard working crew working in the heat outside KCI. <a href="https://t.co/g9KfeAMdvD">pic.twitter.com/g9KfeAMdvD</a></p>&mdash; Matt Morris (@Matthew_Morris) <a href="https://twitter.com/Matthew_Morris/status/736335528732286976">May 27, 2016</a></blockquote>