Train of the Week

Click on the hyperlink to see the post about the LRC (Light, Rapid, Comfortable) on Train of the Week. The following is used under permission by the Toronto Railway Historical Association . Please click on the screenshot to access the full webpage.

The name Maple Leaf was first used as the service name of the Grand Trunk Western Railroad (now Canadian National) passenger train between Dearborn Station in Chicago, Illinois and Union Station in Toronto, Ontario. It used the GTW trackage through Sarnia, ON, Battle Creek, MI, and South Bend, IN. This route between Chicago, IL (Union Station) and Port Huron, MI (across the border from Sarnia, ON) is still serviced by the Amtrak Blue Water service today. Maple Leaf was later applied to a joint overnight Toronto, ON to New York City, NY service by Lehigh Valley Railroad (defunct since 1976, mostly absorbed by Conrail , which later was split by CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern) and Canadian National until 4 February 1961 when the train last ran. GTW Maple Leaf at Dearborn Station Today’s Maple Leaf was reintroduced on 26 April 1981, 20 years after the train had previously operated. It operates daily and is one of the three international intercity services offered by Amtra

GO Trains are commuter trains run by GO Transit , now a division of Metrolinx of Ontario, a government-owned regional transit authority (formerly GTTA , the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority, not to be confused with the former legal name of GO Transit, Greater Toronto Transit Authority) serving more than 7 million Canadian residing in the Golden Horseshoe . GO Train in its early days GO Train and downtown Toronto in 1980 GO Transit or Government of Ontario Transit was created as a three-year experiment on 23 May 1967 running DMUs along the rail line in the Greater Toronto Area along the shoreline of Lake Ontario. GO Trains carried 2.5 million riders in its first year and was considered a success. The GO Bus as extensions of the train services started in 1974. Today the GO system carries more than 50 million riders annually and the vast majority of them are carried by GO Trains. On 11 October 2006, GO announced that it had achieved its one billionth passenger mark. GO'

The Class 180 is a high-speed diesel-hydraulic multiple unit from the Coradia 1000 family designed by Alstom (France) for First Great Western (First Great Western did not actually own the trains but leased them through Angel Trains ). 14 sets of these 5-car DMUs were built between 2000 and 2001 in Birmingham, England. The Class 180 were initially deployed to the Great Western mainline to supplement the HST in working the then new half-hourly timetable between London Paddington and South Wales. They began service in December 2008 and First Great Western nicknamed these trains Adelante. Unlike the Bombardier Voyager mentioned in a previous post, the Class 180 used a hydraulic transmission instead of electric motors to turn the wheels. Hydrodynamic braking system is equipped and one bogie per coach is powered with both axles driven. All coaches are equipped with a 560 kW (750 hp) diesel engine identical to the one used by the Voyager. First Great Western Class 180 Adelante Fi