Canadian Railroads > New VIA Canadian Schedule

Did VIA fully explain the reason for going to a 4 night schedule? The explanation on their website that they did it for the scenery sounds fishy.

Long before this was publicly announced, some VIA managers in Winnipeg (where most of the day to day management of the Canadian is actually based) told me that CN has insisted on this change back to a four-night run. The current schedule is simply too fast for CN to handle in recent years. This will be the third time that the VIA-operated Canadian has been put on a four-night run, so this is nothing new. Contrary to what many people think, CN doesn't always delay the Canadian for freight. Many times on the Canadian I have seen us overtake freight trains. It's not at all unusual to see freights waiting for the Canadian at a meet. But there's no doubt that on many other occasions the Canadian is delayed by freight. With the new scehdule, these manoeuvres may not be as frequent and this will please CN.

Although the scheduled arrival time in Toronto is 8:00 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the Canadian frequently arrives in the middle of the night or even early the next morning. On several occasions it didn't arrive at all and passengers were treated to a bus ride from Capreol. This past Friday the Canadian was posted with an ETA of only one hour late. As I boarded a GO train, I saw the Canadian arrive a mere 40 minutes late which is as close to on time that I have seen it in a year. Admittedly I do not see every arrival at Toronto so it is possible #2 has been on time occasionally.

On my Canadian trip last week we took the siding as much as freight did. Meets with the Canadian were done for whatever was most convenient for the railroad. It wasn't based on giving priority to the Canadian. The meets were rarely very long in terms of time. Maybe a few minutes of delay or we would run around through the siding.

Todd Clark
Canyon Country, CA
Trainorders.com

webmaster Wrote:
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> On my Canadian trip last week we took the siding
> as much as freight did. Meets with the Canadian
> were done for whatever was most convenient for the
> railroad. It wasn't based on giving priority to
> the Canadian. The meets were rarely very long in
> terms of time. Maybe a few minutes of delay or we
> would run around through the siding.

Keep in mind that CN runs many trains over siding length, and the least overall delay would be incurred by putting the passenger train in the siding when meeting these types of trains.

david Wrote:
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> This past Friday the Canadian was posted with an ETA of
> only one hour late. As I boarded a GO train, I
> saw the Canadian arrive a mere 40 minutes late
> which is as close to on time that I have seen it
> in a year. Admittedly I do not see every arrival
> at Toronto so it is possible #2 has been on time
> occasionally.

As my apartment overlooks the Bala sub I'm fortunate to have the pleasure of seeing her arrive three times a week. Most nights she's late (the latest this summer was 8:00 a.m. the next morning) but on a handful of occasions #2 was right on the money.

James

Not that most people would want to, but you do have a three night rail option between Toronto and Vancouver that from purely a run time standpoint is not all that different from the current "Canadian" schedule. Leave Toronto at 8:30 am on Amtrak's Maple Leaf, get off in Buffalo at 1:25 pm, spend the afternoon touring Niagra Falls, board the "Lake Shore" at 11:59 pm, arrive Chicago at 9:45 am the next morning, depart on the Empire Builder at 2:15 pm, arrive Seattle after two nights at 10:20 am, then take a Thruway Bus to Vancouver where you would arrive at 2:25 pm. OK, you do have the short bus ride at the end (the morning Seattle-Vancouver Talgo is too early to connect with the Builder at Seattle or Everett, unfortunately), but when they start running the second daily Talgo, you could catch it if you really wanted to do rail all the way.

With the new four night VIA schedule that will take effect December 1, total run time will be 80 hours 42 minutes, for an average speed of 34.38 mph over 2775 miles.

With the above Amtrak schedule, total time is 74'45" (including all layovers) for an overall average speed of 40.01 mph over 2991 miles.

Of course from a service and scenic standpoint, I would take the Canadian any day.

VIA spun this into some good PR to hide the truth - this change is completely driven by CN. They've wanted this change for quite a while. And VIA has been taking a lot of heat from travel agencies on late "eastbound" arrivals into Toronto.

True, you'll see more of the Canadian Rockies (depending on how you look at it), but the trade off is that you'll also see more of the prairies and have a longer layover at Winnipeg if the train is on time or early (as it often is into Winnipeg).

I'll miss seeing the scenery from Sioux Lookout to Winnipeg during the daytime. But there's other parts of the Canadian Shield that passengers will be exposed to during daylight hours. I am not really a fan of the new schedule, due to the fact passengers will be seeing more of the prairies!

The other positive marketing point for VIA is that they can now say you can travel by train to/from Halifax and Vancouver by train without a hotel layover, as is now required. It wasn't however, when the overnight Enterprise train between Montreal and Toronto was still in operation (now discontinued) - and I sort of liked to travel along the corridor at night while sleeping!

I personally would have liked to seen the eastbound Canadian schedule changed and the westbound Canadian schedule left alone. The westbound Canadian was often later than usual this past summer as well due to late starts at Toronto (cascading from a late arriving eastbound Canadian and turning of the consist etc.).

It's funny that all my westbound trips have been up to 1.5 hours early into Vancouver, or on time. But eastbound, I've always been late - but only by an hour or two - which is not all that bad. There are some horror stories out there - in terms of busing eastbound and arriving extremely late etc. There's no "extra" train set that VIA has in Toronto to ensure an on-time departure if the Canadian is extremely late, like there is in Vancouver.

I shouldn't say "extra train set" as in Vancouver it's not really an extra train set, as it is cycled through with the rest of the train sets, but if the westbound Canadian is extremely late, there's a train set already serviced and on-hand that can depart on-time. The westbound train set doesn't do a same day turn at Vancouver like at Toronto. This sort of came about thanks to the Ocean becoming a Renaissance train set (the ex-CP Budd cars were freed up to be put on the Canadian and also the Hudson Bay Route).

Speaking of the Hudson Bay train, I believe the new schedule doesn't provide a same-day connection with the Hudson Bay train any more. The Skeena and Canadian's same day connection was broken a while back, so I don't think there's any improvement there either. Course it would be nice if the Skeena could "piggy-back" on the Canadian between Jasper and Edmonton like it used to. Or at least get the Skeena extended back to Edmonton!

On my westbound Canadian trip, we had a suicide in the first 100 miles from Toronto; then extreme freight congestion because of the suicide and detouring CN trains (they had their own derailment).

So we were eight hours late to the first stop! But then we made up six hours by Jasper. SO, the schedule is really pathetically slow, even before adding in all this new time.

On one of my winter westbound trips aboard the Canadian - a winter trip I used to take regularly - we arrived into Sioux Lookout on time and departed on time. Then 20 miles outside of Sioux Lookout, we came to a halt.

It was discovered that one of the F40 diesels were considered inoperable. Eventually after sitting for about 3 hours while the onboard service manager was on the radio to the Toronto maintenance facility, engineer, and CN, it was deemed the unit could still "operate" but had to be "set out." Slowly we pulled westward doing no more than 30 mph of what should have been 65 mph running, and then finally set the unit out (delaying us another hour, let alone the slow running). Now we were travelling with only one F40 diesel unit. Although the onboard service manager warned we were going to lose more time due to the fact we were operating with just one unit, we lost only about a half hour, but we had lost about 1.5 hours due to the 30 mph running and arrived into Winnipeg just under 6 hours late. Our train was quickly serviced at Winnipeg. The onboard service manager gave a list of things to be fixed to the head maintenance manager at Winnipeg - a broken water pipe in the diner (which had caused a flood, although we never knew it as meals were still served normally), frozen pipes that had made the bathrooms and other items requiring water in the Park Car inoperable (they thawed them out somehow etc.), and a new engine put on the front. We were quickly off and away and had immediately gained back an hour. We continued to make up time - through the night across the prairies and via shortened service stops (i.e. Edmonton). We arrived into Jasper about an hour and a half down and had about a 45 minute layover (about normal). Here we had to add three additional sleepers to the consist (that had been dropped off by eastbound #1 earlier). We departed Jasper almost 2 hours late, but by the next morning we pulled into Vancouver right on time!

So like a previous post enroute we had made up 6 hours of time due to the padding in the schedule. I guess we were somewhat lucky that it happened towards the beginning of our trip so we could have time to make up time.

Am I reading this correctly in that they've added almost 10 hours of scheduled running time, at least westbound?

In December 2006 I was taking the Canadian from Toronto to Edmonton. VIA had been experiencing delays with the eastbound train and it did not arrive into Toronto until early on a Saturday morning when it should have been in the previous evening. It still required a complete servicing at the TMC.

When I called VIA on Friday evening I was told the Canadian would be in the station the next morning ready for boarding at 11:20am, then depart at noon, 3 hours late. VIA had contacted most passengers but those who showed up early were offered a complementary breakfast.

We departed at noon just as VIA had predicted but lost more time backing all the way to Doncaster due to construction on the usual route via the Newmarket Sub. And then we started to make up time partly due to the recently started directional running on the CPR from Parry Sound to near Sudbury. By Winnipeg the next day, we had made up most of the time and arrived before our scheduled departure time. But with the train servicing required it put us about 25 minutes down when we finally left.

The next morning we were right on time at Edmonton and would have actually been a few minutes early if they didn’t have to stop a couple of times backing-in to clear snow from switch points.

Yes, the new schedule is really adding to the padding! A few stations get the same or slightly longer dwell times (I was hoping for more dwell time at Jasper, but not so), but for the most part, Winnipeg will now be the longest stop - like a 4 hour stop or so. Should be interesting!

Road from Vancouver to Toronto last week and arrived Toronto on the money (11/13). In fact I think we were a few minutes early. But this was with an off peak train of maybe twelve cars as opposed to the monster trains run in the summer. As a railfan and tourist, the longer schedule is no problem for me, perhaps actually an advantage (lower cost per minute of onboard time, an extra "free" meal, yada yada). The basic thing for me is that VIA delivers a quality product. VIA and Amtrak are an interesting cultural comparison of Canada versus the U.S.

JBWX

Waybiller Wrote:
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> Am I reading this correctly in that they've added
> almost 10 hours of scheduled running time, at
> least westbound?

The current timetable shows the w/b Canadian taking almost 74 hours (73' 50"). Starting December 2nd, it will take nearly 87 hours (86' 42"). About 13 hours in added time.