All Things Cascades incl Vancouver

AgentSkelly wrote: I'm in favor of moving the northern station to New Westminster as it cuts 30 min off.

I've never heard of any scheme to terminate in New Westminster. I've only heard of various ideas to terminate in that junkyard in Surrey by Scott Road Station.

I'd much rather see the line into Pacific Central improved than to have another city have it's intercity service cut back to a suburban parking lot.

New Westminster I think was never proposed on paper, but was suggested by BNSF as an alternative. They suggested a station I think near the New Westminster Yard as they had some real estate available and would have more slots to cross the Fraiser as I understand.

Scott Road, I agree would just awful; I'm not sure how that came up as a suggestion.

Though, I'm curious if moving Cascades to Waterfront Station would be any easier; my understanding is that there is some upgrades in progress for the Burrard Inlet Line that would make things easlier and there is already CBSA and US CBP nearby at Canada Place.

If you were going to go through the trouble of crossing the bridge, going towards the BNSF yard would sorta put people, I'd think, unnecessarily further from downtown Vancouver in a spot that, while less sparse than Scott Road, is still fairly amenity poor. Under such a scenario, has anyone ever suggested going left at the bridge and terminating in Downtown New Westminster, over by the old CP & BCER depots? There's a yard there with some unoccupied land in the middle of it where trains could lay over, New Westminster Skytrain Station, a mall, hotels, pubs, & restaurants, as well as generally being attractive

I've always thought that was a good point about Waterfront though - it's a superior location to Pacific Central in nearly every way except not being the intercity bus terminal. I'd like to see that some day, provided improvements to the BI Line

bdawe wrote:I'd much rather see the line into Pacific Central improved than to have another city have it's intercity service cut back to a suburban parking lot.

Agreed. I will suggest that most people taking Amtrak to Vancouver are ultimately bound for, of all places, Vancouver, and not its suburbs.

Here's an interesting comparison:

1965: GN ran 2x/day Seattle-Vancouver. The carded time for both trains (nb and sb) for the Bellingham-Vancouver portion was 1:30. One train made intermediate stops at Blaine (by my reading of the TT, it was both a customs stop and a regular passenger stop), White Rock and New Westminster. The other train--carded for the same 1:30--made the same positive stops, but also had flag stops at Ferndale, WA and Crescent Beach, BC.

1970: BN still ran 1x/day Seattle-Vancouver. Although there were still positive stops at Blaine, White Rock and New Westminster (the flag stops were gone), the Bellingham-Vancouver running time had been reduced to 1:25 in both directions.

1980: Amtrak ran 1x/day (Pacific International) Seattle-Vancouver. White Rock had been dropped, but there were still stops at Blaine (still both a customs and regular stop) and New Westminster. With one fewer stop, the nb Bellingham-Vancouver time was now 1:59, and the sb time was 1:45.

2016: Amtrak runs 2x/day (Cascades) Seattle-Vancouver. There are no intermediate passenger stops between Bellingham and Vancouver, just the customs stop at Blaine. Nonetheless, the carded time for all trains in both directions is 2:02.

A couple of notes: the GN Station in Vancouver was demolished in early 1965, and I assume GN had moved out some time in advance of that. Thus, for all of these dates, the Vancouver terminal was/is Pacific Central (exCN) Station. The Bellingham station, however, has changed. The current Amtrak station is a few miles south of the old GN/BN station (which was still used by Amtrak in 1980/81). The GN, BN and 1980 Amtrak TT's list the Bellingham-Vancouver distance as 58 miles. The current Amtrak TT says 62.

Maybe with the additional four miles, the epochal 1:25 of 1970 is no longer possible, but can't we shoot for something closer to 1:30 than 2:02? Returning to the times of 1965 (when there were up to five intermediate stops, would shave 30 minutes, while still getting people to downtown Vancouver.

I forgot to mention, I have no problem with keeping Pacific Central Station as the end, but if there is a better alternative, I would be for it too. Scott Road in Surrey would be awful, but I would have no problem with New Westminster, BC's oldest city..

Interestingly, here is what WSDOT listed what would improve the British Columbia portion of the system from 2006:

• Vancouver Terminal Control System - Installation of new traffic control system/$6.9 million
  Still Creek to CN Junction - New siding/$12.9 million
  Sperling-Willingdon Junction Siding - New siding/$11.4 million
  Willingdon Junction - Grade separation/$16 million
  Brunette-Piper Siding -New siding/$28.6 million
  Fraser River Bridge - Replace or improve existing bridge/$575 million
  Colebrook to Brownsville High-Speed Tracks (north of White Rock) High speed track, continuation of White Rock bypass/$91.8 million
  Colebrook Siding New siding/$11.4 million
  White Rock Bypass - High speed rail bypass/$312.7 million

It would be interesting to compare an ETT from 1965 to one from today to see where things have slowed down, and then compare that with the list provided by AgentSkelly. It appears much of the slowdown has been in BC. Wonder if their government would fund any improvements?

bdawe wrote:

With a little bit of time on my hands, I started digging around for employee timetables, and was able to add (somewhat dated) speed limits for Vancouver-Seattle (vancouver is on the left, seattle on the right), along with the speed limits for streamlined trains (ie the GN Internationals) from 1951 for comparison.

I also mapped out the route
http://i.imgur.com/3xihTcR.png

Will 1951 do?

I would note that there were two significant traffic sources intersecting the line that weren't there in 1965 - the Thornton Tunnel, linking the North Vancouver port facilities at Willingdon Junction (opened 1969) and Roberts Bank Port, served by the BC Rail (still!) Port Subdivision, which intersects with the line at Colebrook and opened in 1970.

The New Westminster Sub is not as fast as it was,starting at the border,passenger speeds were 50 mph,at Drawbridge 69,15 mph,
thru Colebrook(BCR Jct)45 mph,at a detector at mp 134.8 is 40 mph,at Townsend(CTC),50 mph,Tilbury Line Jct,45 mph
at Frazier River Jct,15 mph,clear of the Frazier River Bridge,30 mph,at North Road,45 mph,at Piper,50 mph,Still Creek ,25 mph,
at CN Jct,40 mph,from there 10 mph thru yard limits to the VIA station.

From the Altamont Press Northwest Region TT dated 08/2003

I just notice the price tag WSDOT listed for the White Rock bypass is 300+ million...

That is very interesting because I've been keeping up with the BNSF/City of White Rock discussions about moving the ROW from the shore to either the original 1891 routing which follows BC Highway 15 from the border OR build a tunnel under the city of White Rock.

I'd just like to see the Canadian federal or BC provincial government do something - anything - with regard to an infrastructure upgrade north of the border. With 14 of the 16 weekly departures out of Pacific Central station being financed by Americans, you would think that at least out of pride they would want to do their part. So far: Nothing. It would be nice on the Adirondack route and soon-to-be Vermonter routes in Quebec, too. In all cases, the slowest parts of each route are in Canada (the Adirondack route is especially circuitous and slow).

The Province of BC still has the right to reintroduce service on the ex-BCRail lines that were leased to CN along with the Southern Railway of BC (SRY). The SRY could be real easily upgraded to support higher speeds and would provide half of a more direct route to the Fraiser River Bridge; you would need to build that White Rock Bypass still and could be built with provincial funds under BC Rail to support both passenger services and for better freight access to the Roberts Bank Superport. If you can get the top speed up to even 79 MPH from the US-Canada Border to the Fraser River Bridge, you could cut that 2 hrs from Bellingham to Pacific Central to barely an hour by my guess.

Interesting, so that would look something like this?



That would seem to have some advantages - limited freight traffic, some long stretches of straight track, lower mileage, lack of class one freight needs, and the possibility of bundling improvements with local passenger service on the SRY line. The disadvantages that come to mind are that it's an old interurban with many, many grade crossings (while the BNSF Line has few), and tighter curves and steeper grades going down the hill from Surrey to the bridge in New Westminster, and inability to serve White Rock.

It's an interesting idea though, and I hadn't thought of how a White Rock bypass could feed passenger trains on the SRY

Yup! Thats the idea....the grades could be eliminated; I know City of Surrey at one point was interested such an idea. The curves and the steeper grades would be fine for the Talgo sets; they are built for them.

Now if you want an interesting idea...imagine instead running on the BNSF Sumas Sub, cross over to CPR at the border, cross the Fraiser at Mission and take CPR all the way into Waterfront Station, where like I said, there is already CBSA and US CBP Pre-clearence at Canada Place for cruise ships.

Hmm. That only adds 12 miles from the branch at Burlington.

NP ran service into Vancouver by that route before the GN Line was built, and then they ran into the old GN Depot by way of Mission for a few years until they pulled out of the Vancouver passenger market in 1926 or so.

I think what might cut that 12 miles down to maybe 4 off the top my head would be if you could rebuild the ex-MILW track from Bellingham that goes into the Sumas sub by the border...