Off The Rails

Roadkill The Libranos 58 Comments

A rolling metaphor: Ottawa Euro-designed LRT vehicles not built for city’s U.S. style tracks

The Alstom Citadis trains on Ottawa’s LRT were designed for European tracks where restraining rails like the ones to prevent derailments on the tight curves of the Confederation Line are not used, OC Transpo’s general manager Renée Amilcar told councillors Wednesday.

Wear and tear on the trains’ hub assemblies caused when the wheels rub against the restraining rails has been cited as one reason for two past derailments and the current four-week shutdown of the line. Work crews are currently adjusting the heavy restraining rails by millimetres to ensure there is zero contact with the train, as ordered by Canada’s Transportation Safety Board.

I was promised our Dictator would make the trains run on time.

58 Replies to “Off The Rails”

  3. Looks like a trend actually: I see more-and-more with (as per resumes anyway) technical education/creds but illiterate / no knowledge whatsoever in that field. I think Colleges/Universities nowadays are busy with all kind of woke crap but not with real stuff. And the effects are here: bad/defective software in production tanking royally, trains that derail, planes that fall out of the sky, bridges/roads collapsing etc.

    1. a good portion of the newly graduated, and/or experienced engineer/cad/designer types seem to want a nice safe office job, where they can work their hours on a computer doing designs and never go out to the field to see what’s existing, and how their design is going to work or what challenges there are.

      and Rail is relatively a small industry, that many consulting companies believe they can jump right in and it’ll work.

  4. What do you expect when you hire SNC Lavelin? I’m certain the luxury cars that embellished the deal have no trouble going around corners at speed.

  5. I call it the NO-Train.

    The cause of the problem is that the track has three or four bends that are too sharp; they can be straightened out without much effort. It is a classic cock-up though; someone should have thought of this.

    1. The bends were added by city council. The original plan, designed by Andrew Hayden, would have been a straight shot across the downtown. No bends required. Plus it would have been cheaper.

      1. “Plus it would have been cheaper.”
        Well, that’s an obvious design defect in a large publically funded construction project, so they fixed it.

    2. I don’t think they’re going to do that.

      1. Redesign hubs
      2. Move safety rail millimeters
      3. Replace new hubs every 40,000 mi. (all 20 on each car)

      They have yet to admit that they’re going to have to slow down (trolley speed) or, despite all these expensive modifications, the train will derail, again. This would be an even more embarrassing future catastrophe than having to currently admit that all the fixes are wrapped around a massive failure.

      Sing me out Judy!

      “Clang, clang, clang went the trolley,
      Ding, ding, ding went the bell,
      Zing, zing, zing went my money,
      From the moment I voted I’m in hell.”

  6. Boondoggle meets the politicians that cooked it all up.. Government doesn’t really work.. It floats on tax dollars.. Invisible failure measured by invisible debt..

    Then they get HEADY and figure they can pull off a project than can be measured.. Failure is a given and you cant even turn it over to the private sector because they are forced to work with government anyway.. Hire the experts and then handcuff them..

    Did Mussolini make the trains run on time?.. Maybe, but he sure didn’t build them..

    1. Trains running on time was Il Duce’s claim-to-fame.

      PM Sh1thead – illustrious leader of Team Barbie® – can’t even manage that.

      mhb23re

      1. Yeah, mhb, the trains ran on time. And Canadians should consider giving their politicians the same enthusiastic going away party that the Italians gave Mussolini.

        Big crowds, big celebration, and Mussolini was the center of attention all throughout; elevated to his rightful position.

  8. “Work crews are currently adjusting the heavy restraining rails by millimetres to ensure there is zero contact with the train, as ordered by Canada’s Transportation Safety Board. ”

    If the rails have zero contact, what’s the purpose of them?

    I guess this is what you get when you put your finger on the scale to get the contractor you wanted, even if their technical score didn’t meet the requirements of the contract.

  10. Our leaders don’t ride LTR so not a big deal. I’m sure they’ll do better with the electrical grid.

  11. Two words: Jim Watson – former mare of Awe-ta-wa. A liberal darling he chose not to seek re election. He knew what was coming and how he screwed it up. He also was adept at handling the trucker protest…

    1. Entirely true. The LRT fiasco is why he didn’t run again for mayor in the last election, why he fled town for a long foreign vacation. He knew that the provincial audit report was coming. But it was not just Jimbo. Half the Ottawa city council was implicated, and they too did not run again.

      The violations of proper procedure in implementing the project were enormous. A goof of a nephew with no qualifications whatsoever was making siting decisions. That promptly fell apart when the main intersection in downtown Ottawa collapsed in a huge sinkhole in 2016.

    3. People who call him a mare because of the LRT don’t know what they are talking about, Jimbo’s a gelding. 😉

  12. I love it when politicians and bureaucrats think they are engineers. Any bets on the following?

    1. the trains were purchased at low-bid (how’s that working out?)
    2. the trains were purchased because they were more efficient or promised some unreasonable service level (ditto?)
    3. the politician/bureaucrat in question saw the trains on vacation and wanted those exact trains

    1. This was my first thought: either the city engineers are retarded or the politicians are making engineering decisions without consulting their engineers, or both.

      1. From what I have heard, in my small circle of Ottawa friends … it’s a typical “big project” run by government. That is:
        – the engineers knew years ago what the problems would be
        – the engineers told the low level managers
        – low level managers spoke to mid level managers
        – and were completely ignored.

        1. Eagle has most of it. There were a host of problems.
          1. The City deliberately accepted a bid from one company which failed to meet the technical specifications of the bid.
          2. The Mayor’s nephew (in charge of communications) was making siting decisions. The result was not finding a Rideau Street sinkhole.
          3. The City Manager resigned and fled the city two days before the provincial government audit report was released.
          4. Half the members of city council were involved and did not run for reelection in the last Ontario municipal elections.

          1. deliberately chose the only bid that failed to meet the technical specifications

            – the obvious question is why, and what benefits did they receive to accept that bid

          3. JD, fc, of course you are both right. Of course there was money under the table. Jimbo (or Himbo if you prefer) deliberately kept it all hidden except for his cronies on council, and the City Manager, who were in on the game. These are exactly the same ones who did not run in Ontario’s municipal elections in October 2022. They knew what was coming and that the provincial auditor would ream them and the City Manager for it.

            The current mayor is a very good fellow, Mark Sutcliffe. But he’s been saddled with having to fix this monstrosity. And Ottawa’s annual budget is covered in red ink anyway, so he has little fiscal room in which to do it.

    2. They were not designed for Ottawa climate. The overhead lines and pantographs freeze up in freezing rain.

  13. These people couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel.

    Loading gauge is a thing, dontcha know. Oh, I guess you don’t.

    1. Wrong. They knew exactly what they were doing. The whole thing was a personal enrichment project for the former Mayor and his cronies. You are giving them far too much credit for having good intentions. I used to live in Ottawa for two decades. They were evil, greedy scumbags.

  14. This sounds like yet another case of people with irrelevant credentials making decisions in purchasing big-ticket stuff. The board that made this choice obviously did not have any greasy-hands people on it: you know, the track maintenance supervisors with 40 years of experience, the mechanical engineers within our rail companies, and so on. They’d have taken one look under those LRT cars and said “won’t work.”

    We see the same thing right here at home, with electrical utility boards buying expensive wind turbines that fail to produce at the most critical times because they don’t have any power-generation engineers or meteorologists on the board. Just teachers and lawyers and interior decorators or whatever, people that think the wind always blows or something, and always at the best wind speed. Even the general public thinks they’re working ok when they see them turning in a light breeze. They don’t understand that a light wind produces very little rotor torque, so the generator cannot be loaded up. It produces very little power in such conditions. And there are times when that turbine is CONSUMING power, to keep it warm so the lubricants don’t freeze solid in cold weather. And the blades are heated to prevent ice formation. This website says that sometimes, when the wind is too weak, the generator is powered and becomes a motor to turn the blades to give the illusion that it’s producing power. Deceit everywhere. https://www.aweo.org/windconsumption.html

    1. They’re not in it to make things work. They’re in it for the bundles of cash that they can get from it.
      This is a dysfunctional society. Small wonder when you consider who we collectively put at the helm.

      In case you were wondering… Yes, I did infer that Canadians, specifically WOKE Canadians, are STOOO-pid!

  15. L – “Libranos going off the rails” the headline for the upcoming
    federal election in 2023-24.

  16. There is clearly only one solution for all of these big screw-ups by government. We need much bigger governments, and that is what the Dear Leader (praise his Name) has been doing ever since he became our Supreme Leader. He has expanded the federal public service by over 40% since he took office. He also has quadrupled spending on external consultants. If he simply does much more of this, He will lead us into the promised land of net-zero.

    1. We are already there, in part: there is net-zero competence in the federal liberal government.

      mhb23re

  18. For those of you who have never been on the Ottawa LRT when it has a stoppage, you cant imagine the clusterf**k.
    [sound system announces a stoppage… first in french, then english]
    They ask you to disembark.
    A few safety vest people trying to direct people to where some buses are waiting. Maybe waiting.
    1000 people going up an escalator designed for 100.
    Long lineups to get on a bus. Usually you can find the right one which will get you to Blair station.
    And let me tell you, that bus is elbow to elbow. Claustrophobic.

    All those public servants, who keep voting liberal…

    1. Great…you just gave me a rather severe flashback. Gawd how I hated that city and never so glad to get out of there.
      From the link. “In a briefing to city council Wednesday afternoon, Amilcar said restraining rails aren’t used in Europe as commonly as they are in North America.
      “This is an important point,” Amilcar said, speaking in French. “

      That was one of my pet peeves right there.

    2. “All those public servants, who keep voting liberal…”
      Nailed it, Eagle
      The stupid bastards are getting what they deserve.

  19. Anyone here from Ottawa recall the big sewer project some years ago in the east end? The “experts” couldn’t figure out why things weren’t draining as they should. Who knew *hit didn’t flow uphill?

  20. As “sortawitte” wrote on a post yesterday:
    “So let it be written, so let it be done.”
    This is the problem with most politicians. They see themselves as seers able to see and speak the future, physics and natural laws be darned, even with zero education about the systems in question. This is why they view net zero, renewable energy, battery vehicles, fertilizer reduction, etc., as they do.

  21. I don’t which song to sing:
    “I’m going off the rails on a crazy train!”
    Or
    “I hear those things are awfully loud
    It glides as softly as a cloud
    Is there a chance the track could bend?
    Not on your life, my Hindu friend
    What about us brain-dead slobs?
    You’ll be given cushy jobs
    Were you sent here by the Devil?
    No, good sir, I’m on the level!
    Monorail!”

  22. What I can’t figure out is how they plan to move a rail a fraction of an inch without replacing all the ties. All the nail holes are in the wrong spot, unless offset nail plates are available. I should clarify there are a lot of things that make no sense about this, but that one stood out to me.

    1. If they are still driving solid spikes into timber sleepers (ties), there is a MUCH bigger problem.

      It is clear that NOBODY of any “consequence” in this fiasco has ANY idea how railway equipment works, especially the relationships involving flanged wheels, correctly-profiled rail and “adjustments” for bank angle, curve radius and maximum planned speed.. All of the aforementioned were “railroading 101”, a century and a half ago.

      The fad for “light rail” (nee TRAMS) is almost amusing, given how many cities around the world went “modern” in the 1960s and demolished their tram systems in favour of diesel-powered buses. Then in the usual “cycle of politics and bureaucracy, after several decades,they started laying NEW tracks, where there old had been and reinstalling overhead wires and calling it LIGHT RAIL, hoping that nobody would point out the sad reality.

      As for cold weather and overhead electric systems; the Scandinavians and the Russians and Swiss seem to have worked it out.

      This rock-shoe appears, like so many others, to be “management by crisis” with a HUGE serving of “spillage” to the usual suspects; all, ultimately out of the pockets of the “peasants”.

  23. Jimmy Waaaatson’s legacy. Looks good on the city that couldn’t get enough of him.

  24. Jim Backdoor Watson also made sure there are almost no toilets at the stations.
    The Rideau Transit Group that runs the Line are happy because they don’t have them to maintain.
    I’ve had to take a leak in the street working the night shift at Rideau Station – ironically the work was for trying to keep the freaking roof from leaking.
    Of course it wasn’t a big deal to piss in the street – its the Market area and so its a pretty f’n common site.

  25. Gubmint can’t put down two tracks on the ground properly but they’ll manage the climate of the planet for eternity just fine.

  26. Apparently, during WW2 there was such a shortage of coal and timber in Italy that Mussolini ordered other fuels be used in their steam locomotives. This is how he got the trains to run on Thyme………..

  27. “The fix will finally address the root cause of the LRT’s wheel issues and not just the symptoms, Amilcar said.”

    Words that will haunt you, Reneé.

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