Service meltdown on VIA train 622; passengers stranded

[Rasputin]

Link to an article about this incident:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/via-rain-passengers-stuck-1.7311176

 

[MARC Rider]

Link to an article about this incident:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/via-rain-passengers-stuck-1.7311176

Looks like Amtrak's not the only one with problems.

 

[Rasputin]

This was a train with the new Siemans Venture cars and a Siemans Charger locomotive.

Link to another video about this event:
https://montreal.citynews.ca/2024/09/01/delay-via-rail-train-quebec-city/

 

[fdaley]

I can't figure why it would have taken 10 hours to get another train to come to the rescue. There should have been another Quebec-bound train going by at most four hours later. Of course, even that would have been a very long delay for a trip that normally takes less than four hours from end to end.

 

[crescent-zephyr]

This is pretty disturbing... I used to work for a tourist railroad and operations managers had a phone number to call to get a bus to a train. I remember it happening twice on trains I was working on, it probably happened other times as well.

 

[Steve4031]

The availability of busses might have been an issue. If the train cotnot move it would be difficult to impossible to transfer passengers to a bus.

 

[jis]

In the quest for super efficiency in equipment a crew usage there is no standby anything left. So as long as things work according to plans all is good. As soon as there is a breakdown there is no contingency plan for recovery. It is just play by the seat of your pants. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that service in general is so infrequent that there is very little to fall back on for rescue should the buses not come through. That is how sad the state of passenger service is in North America.

 

[Tracy_D]

Sounds like trains AND passengers need to be prepared for the possibility of a mess like this. Really there is no excuse for the company not to have systems in place. But as a rail passenger - what should I bring with me as my own “emergency preparedness”?

 

[Steve4031]

Prepare like you are traveling in a third-world country. The United States has been heading in this direction for the past 20 years. Apparently, Canada is following us.

 

[jis]

Prepare like you are traveling in a third-world country. The United States has been heading in this direction for the past 20 years. Apparently, Canada is following us.

I know of a few third world countries that do much better than this in recovering from failures of equipment. Typically they can always find a spare locomotive to rescue a train within an hour or two, the time it takes to send it from the closest trip shed. The network is dense enough that there is one such within an hour or two, and there are always spares sitting around.

 

[Steve4031]

I remember a trip to Italy with my
father in the early 2000s. We were trying to travel from Florence to Venice during Christmas break. Before leaving the USA, I could not get a reservation for the two of us for this segment from Rail Europe. At each city on our trip through Italy, I would head down to the station and try to make a reservation, to no avail. Then, suddenly, I was able to make a reservation. I gratefully paid for the seat reservations and headed back to the hotel. I crossreferenced the reservation with my copy of the Thomas Cook timetable. There was no train in the time table matching my reservation. The Italian rail system determined the need for more space and added at least one train to the route for our day of travel. It was packed, but we had seats and made it to Venice.

 

[fdaley]

I've been on the Canadian when it was stuck for hours somewhere in the prairies or northern Ontario in the dead of winter, but when you're on a train that's stocked for a four-day ride through remote areas with a diner and a couple of lounge cars, the crew is prepared to deal with that kind of delay and nobody seems to mind.

This was different, though -- a lot more riders packed into coaches with nowhere to go and limited supplies on what was supposed to be a short-haul run. And it happened on what's supposedly a frequent-service corridor and not that far from a major population center. It seems like a major managerial failure, with the front-line employees left to figure it out and not succeeding. There should have been a red light flashing somewhere after an hour at most.

 

[railiner]

This was different, though -- a lot more riders packed into coaches with nowhere to go and limited supplies on what was supposed to be a short-haul run. And it happened on what's supposedly a frequent-service corridor and not that far from a major population center. It seems like a major managerial failure, with the front-line employees left to figure it out and not succeeding. There should have been a red light flashing somewhere after an hour at most.

Shameful handling of the situation. After hours of being cooped up in those cars with no air circulation, working toilets, no water, and no relief in sight...I'm surprised the passenger's didn't just demand to be let out, and if crew didn't comply, maybe call 911. I'm pretty sure the area fire departments would have figured out a way to rescue them, and been able to secure even some school buses to evacuate them to a shelter, as is occasionally done when there's a train wreck, or blizzard shutdown...

 

[MARC Rider]

and been able to secure even some school buses to evacuate them to a shelter,

It was a Saturday, surely they could have found school buses and just taken everybody to their final destinations, although I guess finding drivers might have been a problem. It wasn't like the train was stuck in some remote part of the North Woods, it was in the heavily populated area between Montreal and Quebec City. A lot of it is rural, but there are a lot of towns with schools and presumably school buses.

 

[fdaley]

It does sound from the CBC report as though the new equipment's safety features are a bit too fail-safe and caused the train to just come to a halt, leaving the crew unable to get it moving again.

The report also says the train was in single-track territory, apparently blocking the main track, which VIA says made a rescue difficult. If nothing else, though, I would think it would have become a priority for CN to get that line cleared so its freight trains could get through.

It's hard to tell how accessible the train was. Certainly it was near populated areas, but it could have been up an embankment or in some other location where it would have been difficult to evacuate the passengers. But it still shouldn't have taken 10 hours to figure something out.

I am really surprised to see this from VIA, whose personnel in my experience have often shown themselves to be quite resourceful and customer-focused.

 

[JamesWhitcombRiley]

From the article, the power outage was 90 minutes. Water ran out near the end. I don't need to recap the whole article, but the train was close enough to a road to get pizza and an ambulance. When they transferred passengers to a new train, they called the pompiers - firefighters. Seems everybody else was off for the weekend? And when the cat's away, the mice did not play, since it's a trap if you break too many rules. That's my guess, regarding the workers. Up until a guy in an orange vest tried to clear the aisles, physically, and took away a Texan's cell phone for filming. That will be a point for the political investigation. I suppose others were in contact with Siemens depending on whatever service contract VIA has on the equipment.

The Texan "is also questioning the decision by staff members to apparently hand out alcohol to passengers during the lengthy delay." Also, a novel definition of a "Bronx cheer" in this article:

https://montreal.citynews.ca/2024/09/01/delay-via-rail-train-quebec-city/

It would have been tempting to step off, if traveling alone or with others who could brave the wilds of "45 minutes from Quebec City."

 

[railiner]

It's hard to tell how accessible the train was. Certainly it was near populated areas, but it could have been up an embankment or in some other location where it would have been difficult to evacuate the passengers. But it still shouldn't have taken 10 hours to figure something out.

Even in that situation, fire and rescue squads have been trained in methods to safely evacuate passengers, using ladders, or other apparatus as necessary...

 

[MARC Rider]

Even in that situation, fire and rescue squads have been trained in methods to safely evacuate passengers, using ladders, or other apparatus as necessary...

I've been evacuated from trains a few times, and nobody's never needed specially trained fire and recuse squads to do the job -- the conductors were enough to help people down from the bottom step to the ballast and over to the rescue train. They even took care of people in wheelchairs.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

Even in that situation, fire and rescue squads have been trained in methods to safely evacuate passengers, using ladders, or other apparatus as necessary...

Or they are able to improvise a solution, while work as a coordinated team to overcome the exact training shortcomings of there department.

 

[Amtrak25]

For my annual trip to QC next year, I have to seriously consider abandoning VIA Rail once and for all and head for Orleans Express.

It is self-evident that they cannot:

1) Manage disabled equipment,
2) Feed or rescue passengers in a timely manner,
3) Manage their employees, one of whom should be charged with disorderly conduct, assault, and robbery with both Quebec City PDX and the RCMP,
4) Manage their vendor, Siemens, who products are obviously junk, and deliveries should be halted (Amtrak has nothing to look forward to with Airos). This break down was not a one-off and occur every couple of days. The remaining REN set has earned several retirement gold watches since May, repeatedly pulled into service to fill in, as has Budd/LRC.

 

[fdaley]

From the article, the power outage was 90 minutes. Water ran out near the end. I don't need to recap the whole article, but the train was close enough to a road to get pizza and an ambulance. When they transferred passengers to a new train, they called the pompiers - firefighters. Seems everybody else was off for the weekend? And when the cat's away, the mice did not play, since it's a trap if you break too many rules. That's my guess, regarding the workers. Up until a guy in an orange vest tried to clear the aisles, physically, and took away a Texan's cell phone for filming. That will be a point for the political investigation. I suppose others were in contact with Siemens depending on whatever service contract VIA has on the equipment.

The Texan "is also questioning the decision by staff members to apparently hand out alcohol to passengers during the lengthy delay." Also, a novel definition of a "Bronx cheer" in this article:

https://montreal.citynews.ca/2024/09/01/delay-via-rail-train-quebec-city/

It would have been tempting to step off, if traveling alone or with others who could brave the wilds of "45 minutes from Quebec City."

So the train that rescued them was the next Quebec-bound train, due there about 4 p.m., meaning it endured a 6-hour delay as well.

 

[Eternityroad]

"even five hours into the delay, passengers still had to pay for snacks. (CBC)"

Totally unacceptable!

 

[Urban Sky]

Some context has been shared elsewhere:

The dead Siemens TS10, originally broke down at Fortier due to air line issues, was temporarily fixed by CN yardmaster from Joffre and released to continue with 15 mph restriction, then it broke down again at Laurier-Station, engine couldn’t be started with air line issues and blocking mainline at Laurier-Station. VIA 24 was expected to push dead 622 to Quebec City but that didn’t work out at all.

VIA sent out rescue crew on 308 at 12 am in the morning, made to Laurier-Station, coupled on to the dead set and headed west towards MMC, stranded at Saint-Eugène as CN closed tracks due to earthquake, that crew ran out of hours, another crew was called to take over and finally get back on move at 13:35.

If we take the above at face value, the train seems to have subsequently encountered three separate mechanical issues, followed by an earthquake which triggered a line closure. Talk about bad luck…

"even five hours into the delay, passengers still had to pay for snacks. (CBC)"

Totally unacceptable!

I’m painfully aware that this is probably an unpopular opinion, but if you ask anyone familiar with situations where people find themselves forced together for extended periods and with insuffucient supplies, disuading the consumption of said scarce supplies becomes imperative to delay the point at which you run out of them (thus minimizing or - in the best case avoiding - the period where you find yourself without any supplies).

Removing the only real disincentive against consumption (charging a nominal price) or even handing the remaining supplies out to whoever reaches a hand out to grab them, is the fastest way to reach that highly undesirable situation…

 

[thully]

Does VIA have an equivalent to the infamous AmStew?

 

[Amtrak25]

Emergency snacks, but Amstew is only a diner car thing.