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GO Transit
I was out near Ira Needles, and made a detour at Glasgow St. The rail crossing there has obviously new signage saying in emergency to contact CN.

Despite the "other" listed on the map, whomever stated it was CN I will crown as absolutely correct. Wink

Coke
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In related railway news, does anyone want to go splits on a used trainset to do a proof of concept of more frequent east-west train service in Waterloo Region (and possibly to Guelph and/or Stratford)? The City of Ottawa no longer needs their Bombardier Talent trains.

For years now, I've wondered about the feasibility of working with the railway companies that use the CN line through Kitchener to add a short rail service that runs between New Hamburg and Breslau and points in between. A sample route might be:
- New Hamburg
- Baden
- (Petersburg)
- West Kitchener (ie around the Boardwalk)
- King St/Victoria
- (Bingeman's/River Road)
- Breslau
- And return

To keep things simple and to avoid the need to cross Regional boundaries, the service would be limited to stops in Waterloo Region.  If the service became popular, it might even stretch west to Stratford and east to Guelph.
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(03-03-2021, 10:55 PM)nms Wrote: In related railway news, does anyone want to go splits on a used trainset to do a proof of concept of more frequent east-west train service in Waterloo Region (and possibly to Guelph and/or Stratford)? The City of Ottawa no longer needs their Bombardier Talent trains.

For years now, I've wondered about the feasibility of working with the railway companies that use the CN line through Kitchener to add a short rail service that runs between New Hamburg and Breslau and points in between. A sample route might be:
- New Hamburg
- Baden
- (Petersburg)
- West Kitchener (ie around the Boardwalk)
- King St/Victoria
- (Bingeman's/River Road)
- Breslau
- And return

To keep things simple and to avoid the need to cross Regional boundaries, the service would be limited to stops in Waterloo Region.  If the service became popular, it might even stretch west to Stratford and east to Guelph.

Shame to see those transets go to waste, but I suspect the biggest capital cost would be the stations, and operationally, it's a single track, you either have to make a massive capital investment of twinning some sections, or have extremely infrequent service, and man, that's assuming GO and CN let you make exclusive use of the tracks during your service hours.

But it is a nice dream, that would be a useful service.
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(03-04-2021, 12:23 AM)danbrotherston Wrote:
(03-03-2021, 10:55 PM)nms Wrote: In related railway news, does anyone want to go splits on a used trainset to do a proof of concept of more frequent east-west train service in Waterloo Region (and possibly to Guelph and/or Stratford)? The City of Ottawa no longer needs their Bombardier Talent trains.

For years now, I've wondered about the feasibility of working with the railway companies that use the CN line through Kitchener to add a short rail service that runs between New Hamburg and Breslau and points in between. A sample route might be:
- New Hamburg
- Baden
- (Petersburg)
- West Kitchener (ie around the Boardwalk)
- King St/Victoria
- (Bingeman's/River Road)
- Breslau
- And return

To keep things simple and to avoid the need to cross Regional boundaries, the service would be limited to stops in Waterloo Region.  If the service became popular, it might even stretch west to Stratford and east to Guelph.

Shame to see those transets go to waste, but I suspect the biggest capital cost would be the stations, and operationally, it's a single track, you either have to make a massive capital investment of twinning some sections, or have extremely infrequent service, and man, that's assuming GO and CN let you make exclusive use of the tracks during your service hours.

But it is a nice dream, that would be a useful service.

It's a little over 30km from New Hamburg to Breslau, so 30 minutes seems like a reasonable one-way runtime for a DMU that tops out over 100km/h. If you time it right, you could probably get away with a single passing loop near the middle of the line and have service every half hour each way.

Obviously it wouldn't fly with CN though.
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I've thought for awhile that a kind of triangle DMU service operating hourly or so would be handy, with service between New Hamburg and Guelph (New Hamburg, Boardwalk, Kitchener Central, Breslau and Guelph), Guelph and Cambridge (Guelph, Hespeler, Preston, Galt @Hespeler Rd), and then Cambridge to Kitchener (Galt, Preston, Fountain, Kitchener Central). CN and CP would likely never go for it, although I don't think any of those are busy lines for them.
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(03-04-2021, 12:54 AM)jwilliamson Wrote: It's a little over 30km from New Hamburg to Breslau, so 30 minutes seems like a reasonable one-way runtime for a DMU that tops out over 100km/h. If you time it right, you could probably get away with a single passing loop near the middle of the line and have service every half hour each way.

At 0.1m/s² average acceleration (what HSR trains ins Europe usually do) to the maximum of class 6 track speeds (~177 km/h) takes about 12km worth of track and under 8.5 minutes of time, so you'd have about 2 minutes at speed before slowing down at the same rate, for about 19 minutes travel time.

At 0.3m/s² average acceleration (what commuter rail, LRTs, busses, often accelerate at) it takes about 4.6km and under 3 minutes, so about 7 minutes at speed before needing to start deceleration, for roughly a 12.5 minute trip time.
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Kitchener moves closer to enhanced GO Train service: https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/mobile/kitc...-1.5342469

Disappointing that it's still nowhere near a reality, but...baby steps, I guess?
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I'll take incremental progress. It'll get us there eventually. Faster progress would be better!
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(03-10-2021, 09:56 PM)ac3r Wrote: Kitchener moves closer to enhanced GO Train service: https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/mobile/kitc...-1.5342469

Disappointing that it's still nowhere near a reality, but...baby steps, I guess?

Do we know what they are doing that brings us closer to 2WAD?  I'm sure its not a second track.

On a side note, I drove by these locations on Monday... and they all have giant signs stating the road closure.  Behind those signs are a second giant sign stating something to the effect of "Railway crossing signals are not operational, do not attempt to cross"  I realize they are for the road closure, but still made me nervous as I legally crossed.  Leaving them up, uncovered for 2 weeks, is the opposite of effective.

Coke
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(03-11-2021, 10:13 AM)Coke6pk Wrote:
(03-10-2021, 09:56 PM)ac3r Wrote: Kitchener moves closer to enhanced GO Train service: https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/mobile/kitc...-1.5342469

Disappointing that it's still nowhere near a reality, but...baby steps, I guess?

Do we know what they are doing that brings us closer to 2WAD?  I'm sure its not a second track.

On a side note, I drove by these locations on Monday... and they all have giant signs stating the road closure.  Behind those signs are a second giant sign stating something to the effect of "Railway crossing signals are not operational, do not attempt to cross"  I realize they are for the road closure, but still made me nervous as I legally crossed.  Leaving them up, uncovered for 2 weeks, is the opposite of effective.

Coke

AFAIK Metrolinx no longer plans to twin the entire route as part of 2WAD GO (I personally don't believe Metrolinx currently has realistic plans for 2WAD GO to Kitchener but anyway), but the trackage in these locations is already twinned.
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(03-11-2021, 10:56 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: AFAIK Metrolinx no longer plans to twin the entire route as part of 2WAD GO (I personally don't believe Metrolinx currently has realistic plans for 2WAD GO to Kitchener but anyway), but the trackage in these locations is already twinned.

It doesn’t need to be twinned all the way anyhow. In particular, the last 1/2 of headway of any route can generally be single-tracked without imposing significant operational difficulties. For an hourly service, this means the last 30 minutes of the route. The track distance from King St. in Kitchener to Gordon St. in Guelph, where the track is doubled around the station, is less than 23km.

So as long as the trains are scheduled so that opposing trains meet in Guelph, no double-tracking is required between here and Guelph; and for that matter the first 30 minutes the other side of Guelph could be single-tracked as well, which gets all the way to Georgetown.

I’m ignoring freight here; those would have to be slotted in as well, meaning that hourly passenger service may require double-tracking. But every 2 hours passenger service definitely does not and depending on how flexible the timing of freight activity is it might be possible to move it to lower frequency periods of time.
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As an exercise, I wondered what was the historic maximum number of trains to between Kitchener and Toronto. According to this timetables page, it appears that the maximum that CN ever ran alongside their freight service was 10 passenger trains, evenly split East-West and West-East: two morning trains, two late afternoon trains, and one evening train. All the westbound trains terminated further west. The trip length between Kitchener and Toronto averaged between two and two and a half hours.
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(03-11-2021, 11:52 AM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(03-11-2021, 10:56 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: AFAIK Metrolinx no longer plans to twin the entire route as part of 2WAD GO (I personally don't believe Metrolinx currently has realistic plans for 2WAD GO to Kitchener but anyway), but the trackage in these locations is already twinned.

It doesn’t need to be twinned all the way anyhow.

Not twinning, however, makes it logistically very difficult to attain 30 minutes heads in both directions at the same time, as #2WADGO promised.

(03-11-2021, 11:52 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: In particular, the last 1/2 of headway of any route can generally be single-tracked without imposing significant operational difficulties. For an hourly service, this means the last 30 minutes of the route. The track distance from King St. in Kitchener to Gordon St. in Guelph, where the track is doubled around the station, is less than 23km.

The Kitchener to Guelph time is 22 minutes, according to the schedule. That means if you have a train leaving Kitchener for Guelph at XX:00, the opposite direction cannot leave Guelph until XX:22, and then that means a second train cannot leave Kitchener until XX:44, which is well below the promised half-hourly peak service for #2WADGO to Kitchener. Guelph→Acton and Acton→Georgetown are 16 minute trips, which means that they can't be run at 30 minute schedules, either.

(03-11-2021, 11:52 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: So as long as the trains are scheduled so that opposing trains meet in Guelph, no double-tracking is required between here and Guelph; and for that matter the first 30 minutes the other side of Guelph could be single-tracked as well, which gets all the way to Georgetown.

It's not really the "last 1/2 of headway" that is the issue, it's the length of the length of the scheduling blocks and whether you require them to be uni- or bi-directional that is the logistical hurdle. And as shown above, it's impossible for the Kitchener→Guelph block to reach it's stated peak target for #2WADGO.

(03-11-2021, 11:52 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: I’m ignoring freight here; those would have to be slotted in as well, meaning that hourly passenger service may require double-tracking. But every 2 hours passenger service definitely does not and depending on how flexible the timing of freight activity is it might be possible to move it to lower frequency periods of time.

And every two hours is also well below the off-peak service promised by #2WADGO to Kitchener. 30 minute peak, 60 minute off-peak.
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(03-11-2021, 10:56 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: (I personally don't believe Metrolinx currently has realistic plans for 2WAD GO to Kitchener but anyway)

And since the Tories came to power and stopped everything except the tunnels in the 40X (I can never remember which ones) where were already in progress, I don't think they have any plans, either. They promised to do it faster than the Liberals, but I bet that it's going to be an election fruit for 2022 to try and flip the Region and Guelph with magically unchanged targets even though next to no work will have been completed and that zero announcements about resolving the Bramalea→Georgetown bottleneck will have been made.
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(03-12-2021, 11:19 AM)Bytor Wrote:
(03-11-2021, 11:52 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: It doesn’t need to be twinned all the way anyhow.

Not twinning, however, makes it logistically very difficult to attain 30 minutes heads in both directions at the same time, as #2WADGO promised.

(03-11-2021, 11:52 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: In particular, the last 1/2 of headway of any route can generally be single-tracked without imposing significant operational difficulties. For an hourly service, this means the last 30 minutes of the route. The track distance from King St. in Kitchener to Gordon St. in Guelph, where the track is doubled around the station, is less than 23km.

The Kitchener to Guelph time is 22 minutes, according to the schedule. That means if you have a train leaving Kitchener for Guelph at XX:00, the opposite direction cannot leave Guelph until XX:22, and then that means a second train cannot leave Kitchener until XX:44, which is well below the promised half-hourly peak service for #2WADGO to Kitchener. Guelph→Acton and Acton→Georgetown are 16 minute trips, which means that they can't be run at 30 minute schedules, either.

(03-11-2021, 11:52 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: So as long as the trains are scheduled so that opposing trains meet in Guelph, no double-tracking is required between here and Guelph; and for that matter the first 30 minutes the other side of Guelph could be single-tracked as well, which gets all the way to Georgetown.

It's not really the "last 1/2 of headway" that is the issue, it's the length of the length of the scheduling blocks and whether you require them to be uni- or bi-directional that is the logistical hurdle. And as shown above, it's impossible for the Kitchener→Guelph block to reach it's stated peak target for #2WADGO.

(03-11-2021, 11:52 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: I’m ignoring freight here; those would have to be slotted in as well, meaning that hourly passenger service may require double-tracking. But every 2 hours passenger service definitely does not and depending on how flexible the timing of freight activity is it might be possible to move it to lower frequency periods of time.

And every two hours is also well below the off-peak service promised by #2WADGO to Kitchener. 30 minute peak, 60 minute off-peak.

I think their proposal was to put a few 2 track segments (basically sidings right), which in theory allows trains to pass, but significantly increases the travel time and limits schedule flexibility (meaning delays will cascade) because trains must wait on the siding for the oncoming train.

Ultimately, I think we're in agreement.  Frankly, I just don't believe the claim that CN will just let us run frequent service through their mainline track.

We've seen with the 413, if the government wanted to move on something quickly, it could...but the right people aren't being paid off for this to happen.

Yeah, I'm absolutely blunt here, this is an issue of monied interests.
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