Québec City-Windsor Corridor

By -
The Québec City-Windsor Corridor originally refers to the densely populated and heavily industrialised region spanning across 710 miles (1,150 km) in Southern Ontario and Southern Québec between Windsor and Québec City.  It is the home of nearly 60% of the Canadian Population.  Via Rail Canada uses the name to refer to the train routes it operates in the region and simply calls it the Corridor.  The majority of the Corridor is owned by the Canadian National Railway.  It is the busiest and fastest mix-running rail corridor in Canada.  Various passenger and commuter rail agencies operate trains in the Corridor including Via Rail Canada, Amtrak, Metrolinx (GO Transit, where GO stands for Government of Ontario), and AMT (Agence métropolitaine de transport).

New York bound Amtrak Maple Leaf service passing by Oakville Yard

The fastest stretch of railway in the Corridor is the 330 mile (530 km) long CN Kingston Subdivision from Montréal to the east end of the Union Station Rail Corridor in Toronto, where passenger trains today (they used to be faster with the TurboTrain in the late 1960s to early 1980s) regularly hit a top speed of 100 mph (161 km/h).  The fastest train service today in the Corridor runs between downtown Toronto and downtown Montréal (distance of 335 miles or 539 km) in 4 hours and 32 minutes.

Via Rail Ottawa / Montréal bound Budd / LRC J-train at Kingston Station

Via Rail Ottawa / Montréal bound LRC / Renaissance J-train in Port Hope

(The J-trains refer to joint eastbound trains from Toronto to Ottawa and Montréal that split up in Brockville, Ontario.  The Montréal bound train continues on the Kingston Subdivision while the Ottawa bound train turns north onto the Canadian Pacific tracks to Smith Falls.)

Oshawa bound GO Train in Rouge Hill on the Kingston Subdivision

The Kingston Subdivision is currently being upgraded by Via Rail with federal stimulus fund to add segments of 3rd and 4th mainline tracks and yard tracks to accommodate additional passenger services planned.  Via Rail Station improvements at Brockville, Belleville, Cobourg, and Oshawa are also currently underway.  As part of the MoveOntario 2020 transit plan, Metrolinx has proposed the electrification of the Lakeshore line (running on the Kingston Subdivision west of Pickering) between Oshawa and Aldershot.

GO / Via Rail Aldershot Station in Burlington

Add-on platforms (Tracks 26, 27) and evening GO rush at Union Station
(How many GO Trains are there in this picture?)

We will take another short break from passenger rail next week and take a look another freight application.

Comments

James McAllister said…
Amtrak doesn't operate the Maple Leaf in Canada. A VIA crew runs it from Toronto to the border. VIA station announcers call it a VIA train, (how insecure are we?) but it has an Amtrak train number.
Oct 15, 2010, 5:10:00 AM
Umar Nadeem said…
super work man i like your blog it has nice contents

showbiz news
Apr 1, 2011, 8:51:00 PM
OSOS KAHLA said…
super work man i like your blog and this article is awesome .appreciate on you...thanks for giving detail..

Urdu Poetry
Sep 26, 2011, 4:49:00 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Briefly on the AAR Coupler Part 2

By -
Image
Last week, we've identified the Janney coupler and briefly looked at its elegant design. This week, let's, again, very briefly, look at the different types of Janney coupler that are widely used today. I will only talk about the head of the coupler, and ignore anything that the general public may need to trespass onto railroad property and get in a unsafe situation in order to have a good look at. As far as coupler heads are concerned, there are 3 types in used today. Type E, F, and H. Types E and F are used on freight, and H used on passenger equipment. Since the withdrawal of passenger service in North America by private railroads, the Type H standard is no longer maintained by the Association of American Railroads, a trade group formed of major freight railroads, but is under the control of the APTA, the American Public Transportation Association. Now let me introduce another term, slack. Slack is an allowed gap between two coupled up couplers. In other words, when most ...
Read more

Amtrak NPCU

By -
Image
The NPCU or Non-powered Control Units are control cars used by Amtrak that are modified from surplus EMD F40PH locomotives. A control car is a generic term for a non-powered railroad vehicle that can control operation of a train from the end opposite to the position of the locomotive. They can be used with diesel or electric motive power, allowing push-pull operation without the use of an additional locomotive. Control cars first appeared in the USA and France in 1960s. Trains operating with a locomotive at one end and a control car at the other do not require the locomotive to run around to the opposite end of the train when reversing direction. In the United States, most control cars are modified from retired locomotives by removing tractive equipment and adding side baggage doors and have been used on several passenger railroads. The control cars are connected through the consist of the train by standard AAR 27-wire multiple unit jumper cables. The NPCUs at Amtrak are a...
Read more

SD70ACu

By Yi -
Image
After the post on the shiny rebuilt GE road power, it's only fair to have a look into what Progress Rail has to offer on their side of the table. I'm using the company's recently-changed, formal name of course. For those who are not up-to-date on the current state of North American railroading affairs, Progress Rail is the company (owned by Caterpillar) that purchased EMD a few years ago. The SD90MAC was arguably the biggest gong show in EMD's recent memory. It happened at a time when they were comfortably resting on their laurels, unaware the fateful changes that were about to occur in the locomotive market in the not-so-distant future (they got beaten badly by GE). What was supposed to be one of the most remarkable locomotives whose presence is to grace the mainlines in modern history, turned out to be an utter disaster (I'll redirect further readings to Wikipedia). As a result, today, the number of SD90s still in operation on a Class 1 Railroad is, if not id...
Read more