OTTAWA, Ontario — VIA Rail Canada has trimmed trains from its Ottawa-Toronto schedule until at least March because of equipment availability issues, the transportation advocacy group Transport Action Canada reports.
In a post on its website, the group lists these trains as currently suspended:
— Daily trains No. 42 (a 12:17 p.m. departure from Toronto) and No. 55 (a 3:33 p.m. departure from Ottawa);
— The Monday operation of No. 645, a daily 2:32 p.m. departure from Ottawa;
— Friday and Sunday operation of train No. 644, an otherwise daily 1:17 p.m. departure from Toronto;
— Saturday’s run of train No. 45 a daily 10:27 a.m. departure from Ottawa.
Transport Action Canada says the suspensions reflect “the need to retire its legacy corridor fleet, including life-expired LRC cars, and availability issues with the new Siemens Venture fleet.”
The LRC cars were built by Bombardier in 1981-84 and were among the first new equipment acquired by VIA; the company’s website says its fleet includes 26 LRC business cars and 71 economy coaches. VIA ordered 32 Venture trainsets from Siemens in 2018. The first of those trainsets entered service in November 2022, but Canadian National imposed speed restrictions on the equipment last October, citing issues with triggering grade crossing signals [see “VIA Venture slowdown …,” Trains News Wire, Oct. 17, 2024]. Those restrictions have hurt on-time performance and keep VIA from scheduling three trips a day for trainset, Transport Action Canada says.
The group also says 26 of the Venture trainsets have now been delivered, but as many as 11 of those were sidelined in January by technical issues. LRC equipment has replaced Venture sets on some Quebec-Montreal-Ottawa trains.
