Comment 113532

By mdrejhon (registered) - website | Posted August 19, 2015 at 15:11:29 in reply to Comment 113527

On a helpful note, a recent non-stop PanAm West Harbour express made it between Union GO and West Harbour in a mere 47 minutes. It was a very late departing train, departing Union almost 30 minutes late, but made it nearly on time! A GO train driver (vegata_skyline on UrbanToronto) agreed it was a record for a 12-car bilevel diesel GO train Union-Hamilton.

The amazing story of this rocket-powered July 2015 GO train is explained in UrbanToronto post1, post2, part3. This spetacularly fast GO train portends the potential of fast service (without needing to increase railroad speed limits) if we had electrification someday.

This GO train roared past Burlington in only 30 minutes after Union. That's faster than the normal timetable for arriving at Oakville! In some sections, the train ran at near 90mph (143kph) through multiple consecutive stations, the maximum allowable speed for a green bi-level GO train.

Ironically, it's not an all-time record, just only for the bilevels. A rail veteran tells me this is similar to the regularly scheduled timetable of a 1940s Toronto express train, which was under an hour or so in the olden days. Doubtful we will see nonstop express trains anytime again in the near future, but it shows it can be achieved without increases in rail speed limits (albiet a busy corridor makes this very hard).

That said, it is worth noting that the Niagara summer seasonal passes West Harbour about 55 minutes after it departs Union, thanks to its more-express-than-weekday-peak-Oakville-expresses nature. This is competitive to the Hamilton 16 express on an average-traffic day.

Comment edited by mdrejhon on 2015-08-19 15:20:00

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