ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Bob_McBob]

Let's be realistic, most of you guys would take a day off work to ride the train for testing 

[trainspotter139]

Sandbag testing is apparently going to be happening pretty soon. They put out a contract 12 days or so ago to a temp agency for general labourers to move 20kg sandbags on and off the LRVs to simulate a full passenger load. The listing has the following days on it: April 4th, April 11th, April 16th, April 27th, May 2nd, and May 7th. https://ca.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk=a944e...j&dupclk=0

Why keep moving the sandbags on and off? Why wouldn’t they just load them up and leave them there? Or is it that they want to test at various loading levels?

Funny thing is, they could probably get sandbags to pay to be there, and take themselves on and off without assistance. Well, not sandbags: actually ugly bags of mostly water.

The vibe I got from the job posting is that they would be doing the testing on different LRVs each time. It would also make sense that they would want to test at various load levels as well.

[jeffster]

Let's be realistic, most of you guys would take a day off work to ride the train for testing 

I would...I was looking at the dates because I have all the PPE, only day I have off is the 27th, but I have other plans that day, so it's not really a day off now....would have been a cool story to tell the kids.."I helped with the ION"...even if was just sandbagging"

[Pheidippides]

Well if that is one date per vehicle that is promising that we will have 6 by May 7th.

$23/hr and be up close to the Ion seems like a pretty good deal to me.

[Canard]

Someone should totally post that job listing to the facebook group.

I think it would be absolutely hilarious if they got 2000 ion fan applicants that day and it just turned out to be one giant party.

They could have just put out a call for help on the group, gave us hot dogs and saved themselves some bucks!

Regarding the offloading today:  Just confirming publicly it's 507*.

   

* - they can call it whatever they want, I suppose, but based on past experience, the LRV numbering here has been sequential and matching the build order from Bombardier.

[ijmorlan]

Why keep moving the sandbags on and off? Why wouldn’t they just load them up and leave them there? Or is it that they want to test at various loading levels?

Funny thing is, they could probably get sandbags to pay to be there, and take themselves on and off without assistance. Well, not sandbags: actually ugly bags of mostly water.

The vibe I got from the job posting is that they would be doing the testing on different LRVs each time. It would also make sense that they would want to test at various load levels as well.

OK, thanks, that makes sense. I thought somebody said that we were getting about 3 deliveries around now (first one of this batch dropped off last week) so combined with the 3 already on property that gets us to 6 which matches the number of dates. I can see sandbag testing as being something they might want to do with each vehicle.

[KevinT]

Let's be realistic, most of you guys would take a day off work to ride the train for testing 

Oh, more than just one...

[Pheidippides]

I guess there is an outside shot that the flat bed could be back in Kingston and loaded up by Friday the 6th, so we could get another one offloaded by the 16th, and another offloaded by the 30th and thereby meeting the stated goal of 3 delivered in April?

[trainspotter139]

Scheidt & Bachmann, et al. are installing ticket vending machines on the station platforms. I saw a crew at Fairway Station on my way home today.

[Canard]

On the radio they’re doing a bunch of TPSS testing at Conestoga. Volts!

Scheidt & Bachmann appears to be German; excellent.

[KevinT]

Scheidt & Bachmann appears to be German; excellent.

Hmm, they're also the ones behind the oft-failing Presto machines and the lagging Presto gates at the TTC subway stations.  The latest Presto machines have a better reputation than the early ones however, and we don't have gates, so hopefully ours will just work.

[ijmorlan]

I guess there is an outside shot that the flat bed could be back in Kingston and loaded up by Friday the 6th, so we could get another one offloaded by the 16th, and another offloaded by the 30th and thereby meeting the stated goal of 3 delivered in April?

That would be an easy schedule. I think a one-week turnaround is not outside of the bounds of possibility.

[Canard]

I think you mean two week turnaround (ie, delivery to delivery).

[ijmorlan]

I think you mean two week turnaround (ie, delivery to delivery).

No, I mean one week, although it’s pushing the limits of what might be possible. Pickup from Kingston Sunday, drop off in Waterloo Wednesday night, pick up empty flat cars Thursday night, back to Kingston Sunday morning.

We’ve had times from “It’s been loaded in Kingston” to delivery here in just a few days.

Based on the travel times we’ve seen, two week turnaround is easy; if it takes that long it’s because that’s how they’re scheduling it, not because it can’t be done faster.

[trainspotter139]

I think you mean two week turnaround (ie, delivery to delivery).

No, I mean one week, although it’s pushing the limits of what might be possible. Pickup from Kingston Sunday, drop off in Waterloo Wednesday night, pick up empty flat cars Thursday night, back to Kingston Sunday morning.

We’ve had times from “It’s been loaded in Kingston” to delivery here in just a few days.

Based on the travel times we’ve seen, two week turnaround is easy; if it takes that long it’s because that’s how they’re scheduling it, not because it can’t be done faster.

This. From what I have heard the local CN switcher only goes to Millhaven 3 days a week. If you miss one you're waiting a few days for the next one. The only solutions to this is either for Bombardier to beg for more switching service (which they are probably going to need anyways) or to time the loading of the LRVs to better align with the limited  switching service.