You assumed wrong. As pointed out by Reaperexpress and Bordercollie, the axle count is still less than 32 with the addition of the F40. The first set that they've been using for testing to dial this whole process in was led by the F40 westbound, so it was definitely providing motive power for...

Considering the performance of the trainsets prior to their neutering by CN, there will be no difference in performance with the addition of an F40. To the contrary, they will find it harder to maintain the schedules when the F40s are providing the motive power to the trainsets as compared to a...

What do you think the Charger is? Dan

My understanding is that Bombardier's tender was for DEMUs, being based on models that they've built elsewhere in the world. And where does the whole thing about lowering VIA's costs and becoming "self sustaining" come in? Running two locos when one will suffice seems like the height of waste. Dan

It was yesterday, although it wasn't a derailment. A train got stuck on an insulator. And when the trailing train tried to push it off, it ran into an issue with the switches not being able to be set properly. They eventually got things sorted out, although it took a couple of hours. Dan

It shares tracks with other "mainline rail" trains, so yes, it comes under the same regulatory regime. Dan

I don't think that there are any "reliability woes" beyond the normal teething issues that occur with any new fleet - in fact, it could be argued that they have had fewer teething issues than most of the previous passenger fleets that have entered service in the past 50 years. At least, up to...

If you're talking about the 4 units they sold off in 1996, that's because they were the 4 newest units and would fetch the highest price on the market. Dan

Blended braking can be controlled by the 27-pin MU. But as the leading F40 is not able to communicate via the MU and COMM circuits to the rest of the train, then no, it will not activate the blended braking on the training Charger. Blended braking is activated on the leading loco in this case...

The same as if a regular passenger car was being towed by a Siemens set. Which has happened, as we all know. Just set the brake valve to trail, and connect up the main and res lines to the rest of the train. This is incorrect, and one of the main reasons why the trains were built with Cat5 for...

It doesn't. But it seems as if the buttons haven't been programmed in a way to differentiate between a press happening from inside the car versus one from outside the car. They have the two modes that operate identically on the inside and outside of the cars. This aligns with what I...

With the legacy fleet cars, the doors will only open if the outer circle of the buttons are lit up and a button gets pressed. Otherwise, the buttons will operate as stop request buttons, either inside or out. It's been a while, but I believe that the Flexities in Kitchener operate in the same...

I was at those presentations. I've talked to TTC's planners. This is not true at all. The number of people taking the SRT north in every single potential potential system permutation was so much higher than the numbers taking Eglinton from the west that it never, ever made sense to connect the...

There are a lot of moving parts which explain this. Part of it is the subways are specifically designed for a purpose or set of purposes (constant use and ease of maintenance) that are harder to meet with other vehicles due to other constraints inherent with their design. Part of it is that...

GO uses a different HEP standard than VIA. They are not compatible with each other. Depends on how bad it is. If it needs to be replaced immediately, they may hold the train out-of-service until they could once again access the TMC. Or if time was of the essence, they could operate an...

GO (and VIA, EXO and WCE) have been lobbying to the Federal Government and Transport Canada for many years for changes to many rules and regulations that they feel are really only applicable to the freight railways and so hinder their operations - the only thing that I can think about that...

Because one (or both) of the drivers are running late and thus out of position in terms of where they are supposed to be during their shift. This is done to get them back close to on-time, and to allow them to take their breaks or end their shifts at the right time - and to prevent the need for...

Precisely. It's not something that you want to do on a normal basis, and even less so on a system where there are no more wayside devices protecting the preceding and following trains. The good thing is that the signal system does seem to have a fair amount of flexibility built in to it, and...

It doesn't matter who is driving the train if the signal system loses track of where the train is. Dan

As I understand it, the TTC is still working with Alstom. This is hardly a closed file. But to claim that there was "no due dilligence" isn't correct, either. This was done as a stop-gap to prevent a bad issue from getting worse and causing more delays. The other option was to leave things as...