Structural concerns lead to buffer cars for VIA Rail Canada heritage trainsets
Government order requires extensive tests, but cars are called safe for normal use
CITING CONCERNS RAISED by an independent consultant, VIA Rail Canada began operating trains with unoccupied buffer cars at the ends of consists with stainless steel, head-end-power-equipped heritage rolling stock in mid-October.
VIA’s move was followed by a safety order from Transport Canada, which formalized the buffer-car requirement and will likely require it through 2023. That order also set out an extensive program of inspection and testing to cover the HEP-1 cars, manufactured for Canadian Pacific in 1955, and the HEP-2 equipment, mostly built by the Budd Co. in the 1950s, acquired from Amtrak, and modernized by VIA in the 1990s.
The order indicates the existence of widespread concerns regarding the integrity of the cars, but does not reveal the nature of the defects.
VIA said in a statement — and the safety order emphasized — that the cars “are safe to run under normal operating conditions” but that buffer cars have been added “to reduce the consequences in the unlikely event of a train-to-train collision.”
Among the measures the order requires are a simulation of car performance in a collision, which was due at the end of October; a tear-down inspection of four cars with structural defects, and a compression test of two unrepaired cars, with reports on findings due Jan. 31, 2023. After that, VIA must perform a compression test of a fully repaired car “to validate the repair methodology and provide ... an assessment of how test outcomes will inform future repairs and mitigating measures” by Dec. 31, 2023.
VIA said it had set up a joint technical task force to analyze the results of inspections by engineering firm Hatch and develop a repair program. That task force includes current and former VIA employees and Hatch representatives.
To comply with the order, VIA’s flagship Canadian began operating with empty cars behind its Park-class dome-lounge-observation, which is part of its premium-priced Prestige class service. Other trains, such as the train to Churchill, Manitoba, which operates with a Park car during fall polar-bear watching season, ran with that car closed to passengers.
Along with those trains, the order affects remote-service trains in Quebec; six consists operating in the Quebec-Windsor corridor that use heritage trainsets; and the Montreal-Halifax, Nova Scotia, Ocean, which operates with a mix of HEP and European-built Renaissance equipment. Those trains already carried buffers between the Renaissance and heritage cars because of the differences between the two types of equipment.
Because the order requires buffer cars at both ends of the consist, VIA also halted carriage of pets in its baggage cars and closed those cars to passengers. The company had previously allowed passengers to enter the cars to tend to their pets. This represented a significant inconvenience for passengers on the remote-service routes using the heritage equipment; pet transport on those routes is widespread. — Bob Johnston