City to unload 3 trains

Bombardier workhorses were Trillium Line originals

Three Bombardier trains, the original workhorses of the Trillium Line, are on the auction block.

The City of Ottawa put the Bombardier Talent trains on the market just before Christmas, now that OC Transpo is comfortably operating six new Alstom Coradia Lint trains on the Trillium Line.

The Bombardier trains, whose parts were manufactured in Germany, were the first vehicles on the Trillium Line when the eight-kilometre municipal rail service opened in October 2001 as a pilot project. The fare for a trip was $2.25 when revenue service started in January 2002.

(The Trillium Line was known as the O-Train until the city changed the branding in preparation for the Confederation Line LRT, which, with the Trillium Line, will form the O-Train network starting in 2018).

The three Bombardier trains originally cost $17 million, but the city leased them for $5 million through the pilot period until it decided to stick with operating the Trillium Line.

Two of the trains ran on the line and a third was used as backup. In 2011, the city wanted to buy an additional used Bombardier Talent train to beef up service reliability, but there was no used Talent available to purchase.

Transpo bought the six Alstom trains as part of the Trillium Line expansion in March 2015. The Bombardier trains have received “standstill maintenance” from the manufacturer since being retired from service.

The city mulled over the idea of keeping the Bombardier trains when councillors in 2012 were looking for a way to quickly extend the Trillium Line to Riverside South.

In 2014, the city announced its $3-billion second stage of rail expansion, which includes the southern Trillium Line extension.

The blueprint sealed the fate of the old Bombardier trains. The Stage 2 extension of the Trillium Line is scheduled to be done by 2023 and would include new trains.

Transpo has determined the Bombardier and Alstom trains can’t run together on the Trillium Line.

The department could use the money from the Bombardier train sales to fund new projects on its transit system.

Transpo won’t know how much money it can get for the trains until the offers roll in.

“Any revenue resulting from the sale of the (Bombardier) Talent trains would be returned to the capital reserve,” according to Troy Charter, Transpo’s director of transit operations.