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You emailed them? That's a good idea! I'm out here in Montreal, so I haven't been in touch with my friends who might be a little more in the know.

The Uxbridge extension is interesting. It makes sense since GO already owns the track, and it will allow them to eliminate that bus shuttle service. I'm sure it won't be terribly busy, but the marginal cost is so low that you can't really lose. Bowmanville is likely a similar circumstance. While it won't be packed, it will save the need for a whole fleet of shuttle buses out there, and it will bypass some heavy traffic that already starts east of Oshawa in the mornings.

Richmond Hill line will also be extended to the north. I'm not sure how busy it will be up towards Aurora since the Newmarket line is faster, but I guess it's useful to take some of the load off the latter since it's now going to be extended to Barrie.
 
The new yard at York-Durham line is almost half-way to Uxbridge from Stouffville.

GO owns the track because CN wanted to abandon the entire line from Lindsay to Stouffville in 1990. Uxbridge seemed to be a logical terminal for a future GO extension, so it was kept and handed to GO. I believe this and the Pickering-Whitby track were the first lines owned by GO.
 
^^Normally I probably wouldn't be bothered because trying to get information from government agencies or departments is such a boring and time consuming exercise. But all these announcements just happen to coincide with research I am doing right now so I have just added it to my list.

The Uxbridge extension is pretty sensible. Same with the extension too Bowmanville. As I mentioned in the reply to Mike the Lakeshore upgrades could be a real boost to VIA if they were too tag along on the project. It will be interesting, once more details are announced, if VIA takes that opportunity and becomes a stakeholder in the project.

Sean (or Unimaginative): What is the shape of the tracks on the Stoufeville line? I seem to recall that the Uxbirdge section would probably need some serious work, though I am uncertain about the section that is currently in use.
 
I remember asking about this a while ago, but is there an authoritative list of which lines GO actually owns? I've heard many different stories, but they seem to all be contradictory. I've been told that GO owns the Newmarket sub, but I've also read somewhere that it's still CN. Does GO actually own the Galt sub south of the Junction?

Has the heritage railway kept the Uxbridge track in decent shape?
 
Unimaginative: I think the only authoritative source is going to be going to a land registry office or city planning department and trying to find out that way. At least on the internet I have yet to see any source that seems to be totally reliable.

Unimaginative: I remember seeing a picture of the Uxbridge portion from a few years ago and it looked to be in useable condition for a slow moving heritage train but not for proper commuter service. I think the rails on that portion were still bolted as opposed to welded as well.
 
^I imagine over the next few years they will go out of date for the GTA fairly quickly.

Below is the only picture I have been able to come up with showing the Uxbridge line, this portion at the station at the end of the line I assume. The shape of the tracks seems to be much the same, perhaps a little better than the photo I saw before. It would possibly be usable right away if GO wanted to but if they are undertaking proper modernization of many of the rail lines then it would not be that much more to rebuild the track anyways (and makes more sense to do it before the line opens than a few years later when there is traffic on it).

1310.jpg
 
I looked at the CN Three year plan, hoping it had some answers. It calls for retention of Mile 40.30 to 61.00 of the Uxbridge sub. Mile 0 was Lindsay, Mile 40.30 is Stouffville, 61.00 is Scarborough Jct. I really did think GO owns that track. Maybe they do, but CN still operates it?

CN is to also retain Miles 2.50 (Mile 0 is Toronto Union) to 12.90 (Snyder Jct) and 12.90 to 42.50 (just past Bradford Station) of the Newmarket Sub. I also thought GO owned north of Snyder, but I saw CN labels on the signal boxes last week when I took a train to Newmarket.

Weird. I wonder if the same questions apply.
 
I can't even imagine how long the trip from Uxbridge will take - trains currently take an hour to get from Stouffville from Union and Uxbridge is almost 20km further away along tracks that may not be the best shape (and even if they are, there's no stretches of straight track the entire way - which slows service even more, right?). Add getting from your home to Uxbridge station and getting from Union to your job and the commute could be exhaustingly long...people will still do it, though.
 
The Stouffville line north of Stouffville will need work, but isn't in terrible shape, as the York-Durham heritage railway operates on this section of track. It's not that straight (it winds through the Oak Ridges Moraine). At abandonment, the whole line to Lindsay was in reasonable shape, abandonment took place with the departure of several industries in that city around the same time in 1990, eliminating the need for rail there.
 
There seem to be a lot of variations of relationships between CN and other passenger rail agencies. AMT used CN crews for a while when it was first building its commuter rail service so essentially everything CN owned and operated but with AMT stickers on the trains.

Does GO have its own infrastructure maintanence crew? Or does it simply contract ot those services to CN? If they are just contracting out the services then it isnt much of a surprise that CN would still have its name in a lot of places.

The ownership situation in the GTA is rather messy right now. Getting straight answers is not easy. Hopefully that will by and large be solved if GO gets to go on shopping spree and buy up a lot of the lines or at least build their own in most of the right of ways.
 
I can't even imagine how long the trip from Uxbridge will take - trains currently take an hour to get from Stouffville from Union and Uxbridge is almost 20km further away along tracks that may not be the best shape (and even if they are, there's no stretches of straight track the entire way - which slows service even more, right?).
Click to expand...

The curves would not be a big deal if the tracks where in good shape (in some cases rebuilding curves with better banking geometry would enable trains to operate at a reasonable speed) and if they used smaller, more nimble vehicles. A big, oversized bilevel would make for a really long trip. But a single level regional or commuter class would work quite nice on rebuilt tracks. And it doesn't seem like there would be places for stops in between Stoufeville and Uxbridge which would also allow for that stretch to be covered in a reasonable time.

Edit: Actually the whole length of the line including from Stouffeville to Scarborough (and then onto Union) is a near perfect place to operate regional rail service with solid frequencies and comuter or regional class vehicles, especially with all the TTC subway, RT, and future LRT lines it does or will intersect with.
 
SeanTrans said:
The new yard at York-Durham line is almost half-way to Uxbridge from Stouffville.
Click to expand...

Not really. The new yard is 2.5km north of Stoufville, while Stouffville-Uxbridge is around 19km.

Although it seems like a "logical" extension counting that the track is already there and owned, I still think it's too early for this extension. It's a good distance to Uxbridge from Stouffville, equivalent to Union-Guildwood or Union-Woodbine Racetrack for what will basically be one new station (though they're talking about a Souffville North station at the new yard site). The entire township of Uxbridge is 19,000, so we're likely talking about a town of 15,000 or less. And unlike Bowmanville, Milton, Georgetown, or even Barrie, there is virtually no population beyond Uxbridge from which to draw commuters from (possible exception of Port Perry).

Okay, sure if you want to toss a few bucks towards extending maybe one round-trip a day it might be okay. But otherwise this really seems like a waste of money and will do nothing but encourage sprawl on the Moraine.
 
Okay, sure if you want to toss a few bucks towards extending maybe one round-trip a day it might be okay. But otherwise this really seems like a waste of money and will do nothing but encourage sprawl on the Moraine.
Click to expand...

I agree that it is not a very high priority compared to other projects. And before service is extended to Uxbridge the section from Stouffeville to Scarborough should be modernized.

But depending on how much it cost to bring the tracks up to a level to provide reasonable service it is not a bad project either. People will live in suburbia or the surrounding country if there are trains or not. The only difference is this way you can at least reduce the number of commuters in cars. All day service would make no sense but a few trains in the morning and night seems like a fairly reasonable idea.

On another note, but still on the topic of GO, I found it interesting that service to Peterborough was not mentioned at all in this announcement. That is one service I have always thought would make a lot of sense and it would be interesting to find out why they have opted not to consider it at the moment.

Edit: There is also no mention of service Guelph or Kitchener-Waterloo which has been an idea discussed a bit lately. It is not totally surprising since both those places are far enough from Toronto that they may not be priorities within GO's mandate. Perhaps VIA will be given the task of providing commuter services to these cities, in which case, we could see more projects yet in a few short years.
 
Uxbridge won't even have 25,000 people by 2031, so the GO train won't be used much for a while. I can't imagine there's more than 500 people in Uxbridge that work downtown, anyway.
 
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