OTTAWA, Ontario — VIA Rail Canada has trimmed trains from its Ottawa-Toronto schedule until at least March because of equipment availability issues, the transportation advocacy group Transport Action Canada reports.
In a post on its website, the group lists these trains as currently suspended:
— Daily trains No. 42 (a 12:17 p.m. departure from Toronto) and No. 55 (a 3:33 p.m. departure from Ottawa);
— The Monday operation of No. 645, a daily 2:32 p.m. departure from Ottawa;
— Friday and Sunday operation of train No. 644, an otherwise daily 1:17 p.m. departure from Toronto;
— Saturday’s run of train No. 45 a daily 10:27 a.m. departure from Ottawa.
Transport Action Canada says the suspensions reflect “the need to retire its legacy corridor fleet, including life-expired LRC cars, and availability issues with the new Siemens Venture fleet.”
The LRC cars were built by Bombardier in 1981-84 and were among the first new equipment acquired by VIA; the company’s website says its fleet includes 26 LRC business cars and 71 economy coaches. VIA ordered 32 Venture trainsets from Siemens in 2018. The first of those trainsets entered service in November 2022, but Canadian National imposed speed restrictions on the equipment last October, citing issues with triggering grade crossing signals [see “VIA Venture slowdown …,” Trains News Wire, Oct. 17, 2024]. Those restrictions have hurt on-time performance and keep VIA from scheduling three trips a day for trainset, Transport Action Canada says.
The group also says 26 of the Venture trainsets have now been delivered, but as many as 11 of those were sidelined in January by technical issues. LRC equipment has replaced Venture sets on some Quebec-Montreal-Ottawa trains.
But Charles he is a felon, he would have been multiple felon had it not been for the Supreme Court. You wrote plenty of tripe the last four yrs remember? As for the CN issue I believe $$$ would change the axel criteria, CN has history of not being cooperative.
Reminds me of a shakedown. I bet if VIA & Amtrak came up with the right $$ amount this issue would go away. Sound like a tactic out of felonious Donald’s playbook.
Oh for the love of God, Galen! What possess you to write this tripe, Galen? The Donald has been president for twenty days. Amtrak has been falling to garbage for four years under your thing Biden.
Not as if the LRCs are new. I rode an LRC 39 years ago. If I recall it already was several years old. Am I generalizing if I suggest that lightweight cars age quicker?
Are the LRC cars failing too, or are they low hanging fruit for the advocacy group’s complaints? Are the locomotives as failure prone as their USA counterparts?
Unfortunately, yes and yes.
Several LRC cars had to be retired due to structural weaknesses and are no longer available, and the new Siemens Charger are performing quite terribly, with abysmal reliability and availability, all made worst by usual Canadian Winter weather.
Having only a single locomotive per train (and a cab car) instead of two like Brightline doesn’t help either. It’s a single point of failure.