VIA Question

[al-in-chgo]

Another post mentioned that VIA Corridor trains can run at 90 mph or faster.

Did VIA (or the preceding CN) impose a cab-signalling requirement for the trains to go faster than 79 mph, as our ICC did?

Regardless of whether or not there was a requirement, do current VIA Corridor trains use cab signalling?  And has the corridor been largely "sealed-off" to ground crossings as the NEC has been?  - al

 

[trolleyboy]

To my knowledge no on all questions. I live on the corridor and have used the trains to Toronto many a time.There is alot of grade separation, but there are still many level crossings. remembering both freight and VIA use the corridor.It's not passeneger only like the Northeast corridor on Amtrak.The only cab signalling I can remember being used up here was on the TH&B when they ran onto NYC trackage on the passeneger runs to Buffalo.

Rob

[oltmannd]

Another post mentioned that VIA Corridor trains can run at 90 mph or faster.

Did VIA (or the preceding CN) impose a cab-signalling requirement for the trains to go faster than 79 mph, as our ICC did?

Regardless of whether or not there was a requirement, do current VIA Corridor trains use cab signalling?  And has the corridor been largely "sealed-off" to ground crossings as the NEC has been?  - al

No cab signalling that I'm aware of.

[THayman]

Likewise, I know of no cab signalling system or requirements.

 I can tell you that the corridor has not been sealed off to grade crossings at all. I live along it in the Brcokville ON area, and through there major and rural grade crossings show up practically every couple of miles, often more frequently.

[al-in-chgo]

Likewise, I know of no cab signalling system or requirements.

 I can tell you that the corridor has not been sealed off to grade crossings at all. I live along it in the Brcokville ON area, and through there major and rural grade crossings show up practically every couple of miles, often more frequently.

 

It was speculated in a different thread last year that Canadians are just inherently more law-abiding than Americans; and when the crossing gates start to come down, Canadian drivers stop on the road just as they should.  I don't think all Americans by any means are reckless drivers, we do seem to have a screwball element that either doesn't look after itself or enjoys playing risky games with their cars and other people's lives.  Don't get me started. - a.s.

 

[Paul Milenkovic]

There is a certain streak of non-conformity and disdain for authority in American culture.  If people in Canada are bit different on that score, well, I had known an older generation of people from Ontario who considered themselves more British than anything else, and we in America are the people who rebelled against the British, leaving the people who were comfortable with British rule to move to Canada.

My mother was a naturalized U.S. citizen who came here from the Near East, and I had asked her if the "protest" aspect to U.S. politics was a recent happening.  Her remark was that protests and other forms of non-conformity go back a long way in American history, all the way back to the Founding in her estimation.  She also related how she and Father were stranded in French Canada owing to a car breakdown and there was not a hotel room to be had owing to a visit by the Queen of England of all people on Dominion Day, near the time of 4th of July.  A French-accented hotel clerk asked with a sneer "So, what are you Americans celebrating on the 4th of July."  Without missing a beat, my mom answered in her even thicker accent "it was when WEE threw out the EENGLISH!" with just that emphasis -- my parents were given a room.

This last week I am giving a lecture in my electronics class to about 140 Mechanical and Chemical and other non-Electrical Engineering majors -- students who are not in Electrical Engineering are required to learn some circuit theory, just as students in Electrical Engineering have to take out-of-area courses such as Thermodynamics or Mechanics.

I perform the mathematical derivation of the stopping time for the current in an electrical inductor when connected in a circuit to a resistor.  I explain that there is a close analogy between the inductance L and the mass M of a moving train, and analogy between the current i and the velocity v of the train, and between the resistor R and the braking force applied to a train.  In fact, you can derive the velocity curve for a train by direct substitution of mathematical symbols from the circuit equation into the Newton's laws equations for the train.

I demonstrate mathematically that the inductor-resistor circuit has a stopping time (we call it the time constant t_c) equal to L/R.  I suggest that the way to remember which way that ratio goes is that trains are heavy (equivalent to a large inductance L) and have weak brakes owing to steel-on-steel contact (small R), making the stopping time very large.  I go on to say that we have a train line and crossing gates (the WSOR crossing at the Randall and Johnson in Madison), and that I see large numbers of people on foot or bicycle running the active crossing gates.  People on campus don't take that train very seriously because it typically goes through at yard-limit speed, but they have an extensive network of "El" trains and Metra commuter trains in Chicago and surrounds, and people getting run over is a problem, and there is a combination of a public education campaign along with giving out expensive tickets for what I see people doing in Madison.  Then I tie it back to the day's lesson on the inductor-resistor circuit -- big L, small R, even bigger L/R, hence long stopping times, so even the slow train in town needs to be regarded with respect.

Much of the class is paying attention to this, but scattered throughout the room I see smirks and snickers.  It is hard to know how to respond because if I respond with a scolding, this gets reflected on the student-teaching evaluations, which are the sole means of my job-performance rating for the teaching portion of what I do.

Mind you, this is not a room full of left-wing Political Science or History Majors this place is famous for.  That group might even take seriously what I say about the relationship between social issues of train safety and the utility of having public transit to the engineering questions of why trains operate the way they do.  This is a room of 140 Mechanical and Chemical engineers.  Note that I don't say engineering students, I say engineers.  Many are juniors and seniors taking this course to round out their course requirements, and by now, many are interviewing for jobs and are for all purposes indistinguishable in their training and skills from many out in the work force.

This is an auditorium lecture hall full of engineers, and a good dozen of them think that drawing a connection between the differential equation for an electric circuit and transportation safety is some kind of a joke.

In bringing up the connection between the mathematical question of how long it takes to stop a train and the social question of grade crossing safety, I explain to the class that I have two lesson objectives.  One is teach the formula t_c = L/R in everyday, meaningful terms, because electrical effects are most often invisible and it is otherwise hard to develop an intuition about them.  The second to is explain that engineers have to consider social behavior as well as physical behavior.  It may be important for people to obey the crossing signals, but people often do not do what you ask them, even if their life-safety depended on it.

Maybe the students, no, I mean Mechanical and Chemical engineers are snickering because they know a math problem is on the exam, but there will not be an exam problem on the cost of a railroad crossing jaywalking ticket in Chicago, and they believe I am wasting their time to make this part of the lecture.  Perhaps these same students routinely ignore the crossing gates and are disdainful that their classroom instructor would give them what they regard as a scolding for doing this.

But if I can't get people who have F = ma down pat to take the social component of engineering solutions seriously, what can we do about the general public?  It is also scary to think that I have a high (teaching-evaluation influenced) pass rate for this course, although with the math derivations, we are getting the cream-of-the-crop of Wisconsin high schools and they learn that part of the material to standard.  But think about this.  What do the Chemical majors do?  They will go out and work on chemical plants.  What do the Mechanical majors do?  They will be designing the crossing gates, the brakes, the engines, the vehicle suspension systems.  It is pretty scary when you think of it.

The other side of this, especially when we consider how engineering solutions serve society as a whole, is that we may have to accept the conditions in our society and the recklessness towards grade crossings as a given.  We can be angry with people that they don't obey crossing signals, but that anger is not going to change the accident rate.  Maybe high-speed trains at grade is not a workable transportation solution in this culture, and transportation planning needs to take this into account.

[al-in-chgo]

There is a certain streak of non-conformity and disdain for authority in American culture.  If people in Canada are bit different on that score, well, I had known an older generation of people from Ontario who considered themselves more British than anything else, and we in America are the people who rebelled against the British, leaving the people who were comfortable with British rule to move to Canada.

My mother was a naturalized U.S. citizen who came here from the Near East, and I had asked her if the "protest" aspect to U.S. politics was a recent happening.  Her remark was that protests and other forms of non-conformity go back a long way in American history, all the way back to the Founding in her estimation.  She also related how she and Father were stranded in French Canada owing to a car breakdown and there was not a hotel room to be had owing to a visit by the Queen of England of all people on Dominion Day, near the time of 4th of July.  A French-accented hotel clerk asked with a sneer "So, what are you Americans celebrating on the 4th of July."  Without missing a beat, my mom answered in her even thicker accent "it was when WEE threw out the EENGLISH!" with just that emphasis -- my parents were given a room.

This last week I am giving a lecture in my electronics class to about 140 Mechanical and Chemical and other non-Electrical Engineering majors -- students who are not in Electrical Engineering are required to learn some circuit theory, just as students in Electrical Engineering have to take out-of-area courses such as Thermodynamics or Mechanics.

I perform the mathematical derivation of the stopping time for the current in an electrical inductor when connected in a circuit to a resistor.  I explain that there is a close analogy between the inductance L and the mass M of a moving train, and analogy between the current i and the velocity v of the train, and between the resistor R and the braking force applied to a train.  In fact, you can derive the velocity curve for a train by direct substitution of mathematical symbols from the circuit equation into the Newton's laws equations for the train.

I demonstrate mathematically that the inductor-resistor circuit has a stopping time (we call it the time constant t_c) equal to L/R.  I suggest that the way to remember which way that ratio goes is that trains are heavy (equivalent to a large inductance L) and have weak brakes owing to steel-on-steel contact (small R), making the stopping time very large.  I go on to say that we have a train line and crossing gates (the WSOR crossing at the Randall and Johnson in Madison), and that I see large numbers of people on foot or bicycle running the active crossing gates.  People on campus don't take that train very seriously because it typically goes through at yard-limit speed, but they have an extensive network of "El" trains and Metra commuter trains in Chicago and surrounds, and people getting run over is a problem, and there is a combination of a public education campaign along with giving out expensive tickets for what I see people doing in Madison.  Then I tie it back to the day's lesson on the inductor-resistor circuit -- big L, small R, even bigger L/R, hence long stopping times, so even the slow train in town needs to be regarded with respect.

Much of the class is paying attention to this, but scattered throughout the room I see smirks and snickers.  It is hard to know how to respond because if I respond with a scolding, this gets reflected on the student-teaching evaluations, which are the sole means of my job-performance rating for the teaching portion of what I do.

Mind you, this is not a room full of left-wing Political Science or History Majors this place is famous for.  That group might even take seriously what I say about the relationship between social issues of train safety and the utility of having public transit to the engineering questions of why trains operate the way they do.  This is a room of 140 Mechanical and Chemical engineers.  Note that I don't say engineering students, I say engineers.  Many are juniors and seniors taking this course to round out their course requirements, and by now, many are interviewing for jobs and are for all purposes indistinguishable in their training and skills from many out in the work force.

This is an auditorium lecture hall full of engineers, and a good dozen of them think that drawing a connection between the differential equation for an electric circuit and transportation safety is some kind of a joke.

In bringing up the connection between the mathematical question of how long it takes to stop a train and the social question of grade crossing safety, I explain to the class that I have two lesson objectives.  One is teach the formula t_c = L/R in everyday, meaningful terms, because electrical effects are most often invisible and it is otherwise hard to develop an intuition about them.  The second to is explain that engineers have to consider social behavior as well as physical behavior.  It may be important for people to obey the crossing signals, but people often do not do what you ask them, even if their life-safety depended on it.

Maybe the students, no, I mean Mechanical and Chemical engineers are snickering because they know a math problem is on the exam, but there will not be an exam problem on the cost of a railroad crossing jaywalking ticket in Chicago, and they believe I am wasting their time to make this part of the lecture.  Perhaps these same students routinely ignore the crossing gates and are disdainful that their classroom instructor would give them what they regard as a scolding for doing this.

But if I can't get people who have F = ma down pat to take the social component of engineering solutions seriously, what can we do about the general public?  It is also scary to think that I have a high (teaching-evaluation influenced) pass rate for this course, although with the math derivations, we are getting the cream-of-the-crop of Wisconsin high schools and they learn that part of the material to standard.  But think about this.  What do the Chemical majors do?  They will go out and work on chemical plants.  What do the Mechanical majors do?  They will be designing the crossing gates, the brakes, the engines, the vehicle suspension systems.  It is pretty scary when you think of it.

The other side of this, especially when we consider how engineering solutions serve society as a whole, is that we may have to accept the conditions in our society and the recklessness towards grade crossings as a given.  We can be angry with people that they don't obey crossing signals, but that anger is not going to change the accident rate.  Maybe high-speed trains at grade is not a workable transportation solution in this culture, and transportation planning needs to take this into account.

Well, it shouldn't be too hard to pull up a short video of someone (or ones--car, pedestrian, bicycle) flagrantly going thru a closed crossing and getting creamed for it.  Try to get the timing and focal length as reasonable as possible.  There should be tons of that stuff on You Tube or mentioned in prior posts about RR safety right here. 

Young people often feel invulnerable, and scientists are often not without their own form of arrogance.  I myself knew personally half a dozen people who with their cars have been smased to dust by not heeding a signalized train crossing.  Not an idiot among them.

Couldn't you put a train emergency stopping-time question in your exam?  Make it "extra credit" if it is too totally removed from your other exam questions.  After all,  if you know the traveling speed of the loco and the inertia (derived from weight via speed in a way I suspect you know intimately, even if I don't), it should't be hard to prove such a point.  Then you'll have done all you decently can do to protect high IQ's against their own folly.  -  a.s.

 

[Mario_v]

Hello all ;

Judging by VIA's timetables, maximum operational speeds must be something between 90 and 100 mph in the corridor.

There is also another doubt I have. Some time ago I saw a picture of a canadian freight car, in wich all the indications were written in both the imperial and metric system, wich leads me to another doubt ; wich system is used in canada, the first or the second ? In case it's the second, trains will be operating at maximum speeds of 145 to 160 kmhr.

Also in terms of behaviou, I know canadians are a little different, and the fact of some of them consideriring themselves is closely related with the fact of Canada being a Commonwealth member, wich also lleads to another situation, wich is the fact that the Queen (of England), being seen as the chief of state, hence the situation related with the Queen's visit stated some posts back.

But also another question emerges in my mind. If Canadians are so close to europeans in terms of behaviour, especilly brith, how aren't they applying a bunch of restrictive limits everytime a train faces a grade, or a bunch of grade crossings ? I mean, we, europeans are pretty 'horrified' with crossings, and tend to apply limits in lines where they abound. For istance, there's a UIC rule stating that lines with lots of crossings must have a maximum allowable limit of 140 kmhr (I guess not all countries apply it). And if you want high speed, absolutely no crossings

[passengerfan]

When the Turbo train was getting ready to enter service between Toronto and Montreal in the 1970's on the Press Run from Montreal the train struck a meat truck at a crossing and other than damaging the clamshell doors the train was unscathed, not so the meat truck. The clamshell doors were designed to absorb impacts and did exactly as they were supposed to do. You can probably find photos and the movie clip on the internet somewhere.

Al - in - Stockton

[THayman]

Mario_v

Hello all ;

Judging by VIA's timetables, maximum operational speeds must be something between 90 and 100 mph in the corridor.

There is also another doubt I have. Some time ago I saw a picture of a canadian freight car, in wich all the indications were written in both the imperial and metric system, wich leads me to another doubt ; wich system is used in canada, the first or the second ? In case it's the second, trains will be operating at maximum speeds of 145 to 160 kmhr.">">

Also in terms of behaviou, I know canadians are a little different, and the fact of some of them consideriring themselves is closely related with the fact of Canada being a Commonwealth member, wich also lleads to another situation, wich is the fact that the Queen (of England), being seen as the chief of state, hence the situation related with the Queen's visit stated some posts back.

But also another question emerges in my mind. If Canadians are so close to europeans in terms of behaviour, especilly brith, how aren't they applying a bunch of restrictive limits everytime a train faces a grade, or a bunch of grade crossings ? I mean, we, europeans are pretty 'horrified' with crossings, and tend to apply limits in lines where they abound. For istance, there's a UIC rule stating that lines with lots of crossings must have a maximum allowable limit of 140 kmhr (I guess not all countries apply it). And if you want high speed, absolutely no crossings

 

In terms of measurement systems, all Canadian trains operate in MPH, not kilometres per hour.

 Now, in terms of freight cars, both systems are there mainly because all of the RR's themselves still operate on the imperial system, but some of the industries they serve/government regulations/maintenance, etc, work in metric, so both need to be there, to avoid confusion.

And yes, Corridor speeds usually run from 80 to 100 MPH. Any trains running with LRC coaches usually recieve higher speed clearance (a lot of times you'll see speed limit signs that have the word "LRC" printed above the posted sign, indicating that only LRC trainsets may operate at said speed).

The highest speed sections of the corridor reach 110 MPH, for LRC coach consists only.

[THayman]

 I should just make one correction to my last comment...

 The "LRC" posting on speed limit signs indicates the allowable speed for LRC consists ONLY WHEN the TILTING mechanisms on the LRC coaches are activated. 

[Anonymous]

Around 1996 I used some frequent flyer miles to fly to Winnipeg (in January, mind you) and from there I drove to Portage La Prairie to photograph action on the CN & CP through town, and VIA Rail (that used the CN main), and to drink the hotel bar out of Moosehead beer (all of which I accomplished splendidly).

While driving out to P-L-P, I chased and caught a westbound freight, even though it was twilight by then and too dark for pictures.  I was very surprised that there were no whistles at the rural crossings (I think it was CP that I chased, but can't recall for certain).  Even there in P-L-P, there were no train whistles except for VIA just to signal the train's departure.

BTW - that beautiful, frigid Canadian air was a tonic to me (I'm a northern Midwesterner and I like the cold temperatures).  It actually cured my hangover while I was running through knee-high snow between the CN & CP depots to snap pictures!  But with the sun setting at about 2:30 in the afternoon, it didn't offer a lot of picture time.

[natelord]

In the U.S.A. the FRA regulations requiring Automatic Train Stop,  Cab Signals, &c have nothing to do with grade crossings.  Those requirements exist to keep trains from ignoring signals and then crashing into other trains.

     The way to deal with grade crossings is to STOP people who are hit on railroad tracks from suing the railroad.  If the Feds., a state, or a locality want to insure such people against injury or death,  let them do so.  Just let the railroad continue in commerce notwithstanding local impediments--e.g., trespassers,  drivers in a hurry, &c.