ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[ijmorlan]

First train over the new Laurel Creek bridge went through about 30 minutes ago.

For train spotters: Did you get the train number, exact time and other info?

JK > just kidding 

I actually got a video, and the road number of the first locomotive and last car are quite clear. Unfortunately, the train was silhouetted by the construction lights, so I’m not sure if any of the other numbers can be read. The time was around 23:50 Saturday.

You may ask how long I was hanging out in the park to take such a video. The answer is, not at all. I bicycled over when I heard the train from my house. Fortunately, it has to stop at Regina, King, and Erb/Caroline, and also goes rather slowly through the mall parking lot, so I had plenty of time to get to the bridge.

[timio]

I do have to say they worked rather quickly on getting the tracks on once the culvert was in place.  On Friday morning there were still gaping holes on either side of the culvert and it seems about 40 hours later, the trains were running.

There's a decent picture of the mostly finished product over at UrbanToronto along with a few other shots along the route.

[Square]

Urban Toronto : Page not found

[tomh009]

Works for me. Nice pictures. But I'm not going to start reading yet another forum ...

[Canard]

I stopped posting to Urban Toronto a month or so ago. I enjoyed giving them updates on our little project over here, but left when they decided to gang up on me when I started posting to their (self-started) Monorail proposal thread. Bunch of hotheads over there on that one. Glad we have a nice little friendly community over here - much like the city itself.

Looking forward to seeing the progress at Waterloo Park - I've been out of town for several days, so I missed seeing the final product come together! I assume the old, temporary track is still being re-used and no CWR has gone down?

[Waterlooer]

Here's some photos I took yesterday afternoon.

[Canard]

Thanks for sharing! Seeing the old track (wooden ties and short sections joined with fish plates) confirms my theory that they will do the whole run of Continuously Welded Rail in one long shot. So once they start, they will just do the whole thing all at once in one long process. Makes sense, really - bring in your experts on that just once for one period of time and get it all done. So all the prep work of the ballast and underground upgrades is just to prep the upper layers.

[Square]

Works for me. Nice pictures.  But I'm not going to start reading yet another forum ...

Works for me too, but not page 35.  Strange page 34 and 36 works, but page 35 not found.

[KevinL]

Any guesses on the purpose of the smaller, round culverts to the sides of the main passages?

[tomh009]

Any guesses on the purpose of the smaller, round culverts to the sides of the main passages?

Those are for the kayak paths.

[timio]

Any guesses on the purpose of the smaller, round culverts to the sides of the main passages?

Likely overflow for the extreme rainfall that comes every now and again. Or for the ducks.

[BuildingScout]

My guess is for wildlife, but it is just that: a wild guess.

[Canard]

I vote ducks. This was my thought too.

[Canard]

It could actually be drainage holes from the ballast for the tracks above. There will be a poured concrete edge to hold the ballast in place, so the water that seeps through when it rains has to go somewhere.

[KevinL]

The Charles/Ontario intersection looks to have all its underground work done, I won't be surprised if it reopens early next week.

Looks like I have to eat my words; there's a new large hole taking up the south half of the intersection now.