littlewill1166
Active Member
Doesn't it warn/track the train crews when they're overspeeding or something, or is it just a GPS tracker?
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- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
smallspy
Senior Member
The speedometers in the cab are there for that, and they're far more accurate than any GPS feed.
In fact, the crews don't even see the outputs from the GPS system at all.
Dan
littlewill1166
Active Member
Uhhh, that doesn't sound very safe. At least VIA has at least two engineers in the cab instead of one like on Amtrak for their corridor routes.
YCMYHM
New Member
Why would the crew need to see a GPS feed? They all know the track they run on.
littlewill1166
Active Member
No, I thought VIA had a GPS based system indicating the maximum track speed to the crew and that also warns them when they exceed it.
dowlingm
Senior Member
Amtrak 501 had two in the cab. VIA 92 had three. Numbers do not safety guarantee
dowlingm
Senior Member
The West would do no such thing. Ottawa bought them a pipeline and the Libs were swept in AB. I remember a Conservative MP in BC deriding the Canadian a few years ago *when his riding was being served by it*
littlewill1166
Active Member
On VIA 92 there was a new engineer in training. On Amtrak 501, the crew were unfamiliar with the route.
robmausser
Senior Member
In fact, I believe a contributing factor to the accident was that the engineers were distracted by the 3rd person in the cab, which was a trainee.
kEiThZ
Superstar
I sincerely wish that VIA launches a study on HFR for Edmonton-Calgary-Lethbridge. I may not agree with most of the complaints of Albertans. But I sympathize with the view that they feel a bit hard done by with having to contribute so much to the federation and get a lot less in return federally. Toronto and the GTA have a similar imbalance with Ontario and Canada. A massive VIA project that connects their province better would vastly improve the image of the federal government there. It's supportable on political grounds alone. Probably supportable on fiscal grounds too. Worth doing a similar in-depth study as what is being done for Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec.
robmausser
Senior Member
Plus on 501, PTC that was supposed to be installed was delayed.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Given the absence of in-cab voice recordings available for the Burlington derailment, this is mere speculation:
Railway Investigation Report R12T0038 - Transportation Safety Board of Canada
Main-track derailment of Via Rail Canada Inc. passenger train no. 92 at mile 33.23, Canadian National, Oakville Subdivision, Aldershot, Ontario on 26 February 2012
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crs1026
Superstar
This is speculation. There are other equally plausible theories about why none of the three people in the cab recognized the diverging signal indication in time. I won't voice them, because we will never know.
The point is, as a result of a number of incidents involving freight and passenger trains, Congress mandated broad adoption of PTC across the US. As with most things in North American railroading, the technology is a "vanilla" product that has to be implemented consistently across the continent, because so much of our railroad traffic is potentially crossing whatever regional lines one might dream up. That is likely true for VIA in the end also, since even HFR assumes some minimal interface with existing freight lines in some locations..
PTC is not ATO (as one might experience it on an urban subway) but it's a step towards that. And it unquestionably adds a level of safety over human only operations.
The problem is, so far it doesn't work reliably enough.
Some form of PTC/ATO will eventually come to Canada, but at this point we are still in the hands of our trained crews and their overall safety system. HFR would be a high priority when the product is ready. However I don't see that as a reason to delay or criticise the HFR plan, especially when the speeds proposed are in the same range as we run today on mixed freight.
- Paul
micheal_can
Senior Member
It is interesting how things like this could actually quell the western alienation that is going on. Pipelines would work, but rail has a lower carbon footprint to it.
ssiguy2
Senior Member
Ministers always have huge influence on political decisions regardless of their portfolio so the 600,000 of Halton will do very well and the 1.5 million people of SWO not so much. London in particular has always been a bastion of Liberal support both federally and provincially and yet are ignored when the chips are down. This will now be made even more extreme now as Ford's government got into power thanks to the GTA as neither London nor Windsor gave him any seats but rather went NDP and Liberal as normal.
Any expansion of VIA service is 100% a political decision and without any cabinet posts, their voices will not be heard. Trudeau's {and hence VIA's} decision making will be completely dominated by Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa to the detriment of everywhere else.