The chart I shared clearly states that, the "% based on tonne-kilometers." Your chart clearly states that the percentage of the "Share of Canada's Gross Domestic Product, 2021." Very much apples and oranges. Can you quote your source? The chart I provided says that Inland Waterways transport...

That chart says that Goods transported by Rail represents 11.4% of Canada's GDP (not tonne-kilometers of goods), so it isn't an apples to apples comparison. It is no surprise that a higher percentage of high value low weight goods are transported by truck. You get a clue that the chart is...

Years ago Presidents Choice offered train sets which included a good quality Mehano locomotive at a reasonable price. I wonder if VIA could join forces with them to sell a Charger/Venture train set. It would probably sell well and be good marketing.

Is Europe similarly "Embarrassed" because rail represents such a small minority of their freight transport? Note Maritime is different from Inland waterway.

I'm quite bearish when it comes to using batteries as a prime mover for long haul freight unless we can see significant gains in the energy density of batteries (energy per unit volume). Even with battery swap, getting a large enough battery to haul a mile long freight train a reasonable...

It is asinine that to receive funding for electrification, they had to disable their almost 40 year old F40s. Electrification isn't practical everywhere, and putting the locomotives to use somewhere that it isn't is better than most alternatives to not using them.

Agreed. But we all know that the primary objective is to get the Chads in Toronto to the bars in Montreal as quickly as possible.

Interesting article in which they speculate that the current station in Ottawa might not be used, but that they might choose to build a new station to allow for a faster route. It would also allow for an easier connection to the airport...

Interesting thought! According to Wikipedia, a 7 car Turbo Train had a UIC classification of B′1′1′1′1′1′1′B, thus it only had 10 axles (thus a 9 car trainset would still only have had 12 axles).

Agreed!

Agreed. And to be clear, there is also a difference between infant failures and design faults. Design faults can be corrected so that future generations don't seen them, but even mature products can have infant failures. That is why in mission critical applications they will often put the...

That is probably because this is Urban Toronto, not Urban Montreal. A while back I had suggested that maybe the consortium could build a south shore bypass for CPCK from De Beaujeu to their Adirondack Sub using existing and abandoned ROWs, in exchange for the Vaudreuil Sub et.al. I suspect...

I realize that. Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I was asking how they will do this in the future, once they have retired it.

I'm curious how they will do this when VIA has retired their entire legacy fleet? I thought they can't couple F40s to Charger/Venture trainsets in revenue service, or am I misunderstanding this?

Give the average person the choice between having a doctor, a place to live and HSR, how do you think they would rank them? I’m not opposed to HxR, but I do feel we need to be careful how we spend our money, especially in a time of need. I agree we should have built it 20 years ago, but we...

I recommend watching the video and drawing your own conclusion. It didn’t seem as much an argument against HSR as an uncertainty that it is a priority to most Canadians right now in the backdrop of both a housing and doctor shortage. The video also talked about the number of flights between...

An interesting article on how the loss of shunt issue with CN has evolved south of the border. https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/seeking-answers-on-loss-of-shunt-special-report/

Such a specification of shunt compliance would likely be the electrical conductance (the reciprocal of the resistance) between rails. Does anyone else think that it’s ironic that the unit of measurement for electrical conductance is Siemens?

The other thing is the straight line from Toronto to Montreal goes under long stretches of Lake Ontario and the St. Laurent river. In reality you wouldn't do that and would instead divert further north to stay on land and get onto the Island of Montreal with a short crossing. Both of these...

It was their selection for the Trillium Line extension that was scandalous. I don't recall any scandal regarding their selection for the original Confederation Line, but their execution was certainly sub par (not sure that is much of a controversy by anyone other their avid supporters), and they...