ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Coke6pk]

Have a little faith in engineers, eh? The tunnel is quite tall.  Remember, the trains are 2.65 m wide, but the catenary (OCS) is around 5.2 m up from the rails.

(Countdown to someone bringing up the SNCF fiasco in 3... 2... 1...)

Glad the livery will fit thru!  LOL 

It appears I am right to question these things... I had to Google the SNCF thing, but for the others: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...outes.html

Coke

[ijmorlan]

I drove by here the other day, and these pictures give me the same impression.  Not sure if it's an optical illusion (or my eyes are getting old), but the tunnel under the 7/8 looks very narrow for two tracks... I assume twin tracks will fit thru there.  [I'm too lazy to hike down the tracks to look at it up close]

You can get much closer using Overland Dr. or Ardelt Pl. (which I believe used to be one continuous route; until construction began, there was a pedestrian railway crossing there). The tunnel looks much wider close up.

[Square]

Excavation of Laurel Creek started today after all the water was drained. There was a sizeable trench dug across the channel when I walked by around 5. The signs suggest the trails in the area are closed for 3 weeks.

Also, they were installing the concrete cover of a newly installed duct bank across the west side of William at Caroline.

Hello,

This might sound silly but where is this Laurel Creek construction?

Thank you.

[mpd618]

This might sound silly but where is this Laurel Creek construction?

Right here, in Waterloo Park.

[Markster]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Laurel Creek has been completely shut off at the trail bridge; gravel for new rail bridge foundation has been placed. <a href="http://t.co/6e1WG65XqI">pic.twitter.com/6e1WG65XqI</a></p>&mdash; Mark Jackson-Brown (@Markster3000) <a href="https://twitter.com/Markster3000/status/618184337880649728">July 6, 2015</a></blockquote>

[KevinL]

  Not sure if it's an optical illusion (or my eyes are getting old), but the tunnel under the 7/8 looks very narrow for two tracks... I assume twin tracks will fit thru there.  [I'm too lazy to hike down the tracks to look at it up close]

The tunnel you see is only for the freight tracks. An entirely separate new tunnel has been dug just east of it (to the left from this view) for the twinned Ion tracks. I tried to fit it into the shot, but the sheer length of the corridor combined with the greenery at the far end means it couldn't be easily shown.

And yes, there will be triple tracks in the corridor from Ottawa to Hayward; the freight tracks here get too busy to share with Ion trains like the Waterloo spur will.

[rangersfan]

The Laurel Creek construction was going full force at around 4:30 when I biked by, it looks like a big job.

Also it was great seeing the parallel sets of tracks across Columbia for the first time.
Track was being laid near UW Engineering V today as well.

[Canard]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Laurel Creek has been completely shut off at the trail bridge; gravel for new rail bridge foundation has been placed. <a href="http://t.co/6e1WG65XqI">pic.twitter.com/6e1WG65XqI</a></p>&mdash; Mark Jackson-Brown (@Markster3000) <a href="https://twitter.com/Markster3000/status/618184337880649728">July 6, 2015</a></blockquote>

To clarify for those who haven't seen it yet, it has not been completely shut off; there is substantial pumping equipment and giant pipes which are maintaining the flow from one side to another.

[Square]

Thank you for the replies. I thought that's where it was, but growing up I always thought of this place as Silver Lake.

[Coke6pk]

The tunnel you see is only for the freight tracks. An entirely separate new tunnel has been dug just east of it (to the left from this view) for the twinned Ion tracks. I tried to fit it into the shot, but the sheer length of the corridor combined with the greenery at the far end means it couldn't be easily shown.

And yes, there will be triple tracks in the corridor from Ottawa to Hayward; the freight tracks here get too busy to share with Ion trains like the Waterloo spur will.



Here's a shot that I took last winter just after construction was finished. It will be wide enough for two trains. The single track tunnel is to the left of this one.

Thanks all for the clarification!

[belmont]

Shot of the new rails out by UW Engineering V:

[Canard]

Hmm... I'd say that's old rails, not new... the wooden sleepers (ties) and jointed rail are old. New track has concrete sleepers, eClips and very long sections of rail that will be welded together. So I'm not quite sure what's going on there.  The ballast (rocks) is certainly for the new alignment, however.  Great shot!

[Markster]

The track realignment through UW to make space for the *real* track is a complicated process, it seems. It's curved, and has more obstacles, so just dragging it over as they did north of Columbia doesn't seem to cut it. They probably want to be relatively gentle around that new retaining wall.

[MacBerry]

If Bombardier wants to continue to have Mexico in their supply chain, they are going to have to teach the Mexicans how to get the job done properly. They can't afford to have layoffs in Thunder Bay because the Mexican plant has screwed up.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-ba...-1.3127363

Exactly why I am concerned.

Bombardier is competing against giants in the aerospace industry.  They need cash to buy time to get their new planes out for successful sales (hopefully).   The way they are doing this is by selling part/all of its rail unit and by cutting costs.

This has a direct impact on ION.   What assurances/penalty clauses are in place?    Byford and the TTC found out the hard way that on a $1.2 billion contract, a $50 million penalty clause gets them a morning meet and greet and a GTFO from Bombardier.

Boeing learned this the hard way about 10-15 years ago. They had a difficult time getting contracts in the early 2000s as was posted here about the possible future of Bombardier.

Really short version: Boeing's plan was to have the 787 built in various pieces in various cheapest producer regions in the world (mainly China and the other east Asia countries) would ship all the components to Seattle or Long Beach: wings, tail, landing gear and so on.

When they tried to fit all the pieces together, just like Bombardier, the pieces didn't fit. They had to basically start over and choose the best manufacturers and bring most back in house. They also lost lots of manufacturing intelligence to the world's largest country and then began to worry they were putting the company out of business.

Late planes and a refocus back on the Seattle manufacturing plant saved them ... for now.

I think you overstate your case on Bombardier's get out of Thunder Bay comment as most accountant/figure ferrets do ... but you could be right and we will see in two years.

[timio]

Pieces of the culvert for Laurel Creek in Waterloo Park were being delivered this morning.  There's a large crane set up to move them into place.

The only issue seems to be that with yesterday's rainfall, the previously dried out section of the creek bed now has at least 6" of water in it, more where they had excavated.