Category: Rail

Blueprint unveiled for passenger rail in Canada

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Cover page of the VIA 1-4-10 plan, prepared by Greg Gormick for Transport Action Canada, showing a VIA Rail train waiting at a set of signal lights in the dark.

The government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been urged to undertake a sweeping review of passenger rail from coast to coast, and to initiate action to bring this country in step with the other nations in the G7 community.  The challenge was unveiled two days after the new Liberal administration took office, at an event commemorating National Railway Day.  It coincides with the 130th anniversary of the last spike ceremony that marked completion of a continuous rail link from across the country on November 7, 1885.

Transport Action Canada and its regional affiliates have just completed a comprehensive document entitled The VIA 1-4-10 Plan.  Prepared by eminent transportation consultant and writer Greg Gormick, it explores the past, present and future of passenger rail, tracing its decline since the flawed creation of VIA Rail Canada by order-in-council in 1978, and offering practical and achievable suggestions for its reconstruction.  A copy of the report has been delivered to Transport Minister Marc Garneau, with public release taking place during a Railway Day event at the VIA station in St. Mary’s, Ontario.

“The timing is doubly appropriate,” says Transport Action Atlantic president Ted Bartlett, “because a government that has embraced ‘real change’ is taking office so close to the anniversary of an event so significant to Canada’s very existence.  We’re asking Minister Garneau to include this issue among his priorities.”

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Will the Orangedale whistle blow again?

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By Ted Bartlett

Overgrown by weeds, railway tracks pass the old fashioned red train station at Orangedale Nova Scotia
Weeds cover the rails at Orangedale station on August 28, 2015

“The stationmaster is long since gone,” lamented the Rankin Family.  Sadly, the last revenue train crawled past the legendary station at Orangedale some ten months ago.  And if the American owners of the Cape Breton and Central Nova Scotia Railway have their way, the next activity at Orangedale – and indeed along the entire 98 miles of track between St. Peter’s Junction and Sydney – would be the scrappers removing the rails.  But that must not be allowed to happen.

The original construction of this rail line was a public undertaking, and it operated for many years as part of the Intercolonial Railway, subsequently absorbed by the Crown corporation Canadian National.  CN sold the entire route from Truro to Sydney to a shortline operator in 1993, and there have been several changes of ownership since – during which time there has been considerable physical deterioration of the property as traffic volumes continued to fall for a variety of reasons.  In 2014 the current owner, Genesee and Wyoming, announced its intent to abandon the Sydney Subdivision, declaring the operation uneconomic.  The company declined to accept renewal of a subsidy offered by the Nova Scotia government.

Last month the Province’s transportation department released a summary of three studies commissioned to investigate various aspects of the issue for the Minister’s Rail Advisory Committee.  These included an engineering assessment of the condition of the line and what investment might be required to return it to an acceptable standard; an examination of economic opportunities in Cape Breton, and how they relate to continued availability of rail service; and an analysis of commodities that had until recently been moving by rail and the implications of requiring them to move to highway transport.

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Extra Trains for the Holidays

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A young girl looking out the window of a train, passing by a coastal scene with snow in the air. Text reads The Ocean.
A Christmas present from VIA! Extra trains will once again run between Halifax and Montreal for the holiday season.

Good news for holiday travellers in Atlantic Canada: VIA Rail has announced that they will once again be running extra departures of The Ocean over the upcoming holiday season. Although a trial-run last year did not bring in as many passengers as VIA had hoped, the railway continues to believe that there is potential for extra ridership over the busy weeks around Christmas, as many people travel to spend time with their families.

As they did last year, VIA has added three extra round-trips into the schedule over a roughly two-week period, meaning there will be a total of 24 departures (12 in each direction) from Dec. 16th and Jan. 3rd, an increase of 6 total departures. It seems VIA is working to learn from the mistakes they made last year. This year’s trains have been added to the schedule earlier, and there is already promotion of the extra trains on the VIA website. How extensively they will advertise these trains remains to be seen. One thing is for sure: if we want to encourage VIA to continue running extra trains during the holidays and consider adding additional frequencies at other times of the year, these trains will need to be well used!

The Ocean normally runs between Halifax and Montreal on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday in each direction. Because Christmas Day falls on a Friday, there will be no train that day in either direction. Instead, that trip will be rescheduled to a non-normal day of the week, meaning there will effectively be 4 unusual departures in each direction, even though only 3 of those are truly “extra” trains.

Here is the schedule of additional departures:

VIA 14 (Montreal-Halifax)

Monday Dec. 21
Tuesday Dec. 22
Monday Dec. 28**
Tuesday Dec. 29

VIA 15 (Halifax-Montreal)

Tuesday Dec. 22
Monday Dec. 28**
Tuesday Dec. 29
Saturday Jan. 2

**The starred trains are re-scheduled trains from Christmas Day.

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