ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Canard]

Wow, did you write to them or something?

Lots of action along the line this morning!!!

• At Grand River Hospital, a crew was using a big jackhammer mounted to a backhoe to dig up a big section of the concrete at the intersection.
  
• Same thing at Cedar, although a much, much larger section - probably about 5m square. Huge chunks of rubble everywhere!
  
• The anchor wall and station weldments just arrived at the Transit Hub stop! The trailer is parked on Victoria, in front of School of Pharmacy, and they have a big crane ready.
  
• Catenary is up all along Ottawa, and...
  
• ...all along Courtland, down to the tensioners at Shelley!
  

It's so exciting to see all these finishing touches come together.

[KevinL]

There's sidewalk dug up at King and Frederick (with crews actively installing... stuff) and they've cut into it at Duke and Frederick with apparently the same intention.

Also, the contact wire along Frederick is up and almost entirely secured.

[timc]

There was a big hole next to the UW station when I went past last night.

[tvot]

There was a big hole next to the UW station when I went past last night.

I saw some drilling into the path between the Silver Lake bridge and the flagpole on the PI side this morning around 11.

[Canard]

Gah, I wonder what they're up to?  So strange that all of a sudden in multiple locations they start digging/jackahammering a bunch of finished infra... on a Friday?  Usually when something like this happens, it starts on a Monday - probably how they have it blocked out on their Gantt Chart or whatever.   Crew X starts here for Week 105-108, etc...

So, it looks like I'm wrong on my naming convention for the modules on our LRV's. It's a fair bit different:

   

So, using this nomenclature it's either Modules A-D-C and then E-B that have yaw only, and the interface between C-E is what has pitch as well (and maybe some roll?). Or the other way around, A-D/B-E-C. I don't like that! I guess if you were going to build a 3, or a 5, or a 7 module variant, that's how you'd name it... you always have an A, a B, and a C... and then you add a D and an E if you have 5 modules, and add a further F and G if you have 7 (Edmonton's Valley Line trains will be 7).

I'm also further guessing that maybe the TTC FLEXITY Outlooks just had A-B-C-D-E from the nose to tail that I saw in the manuals since they're unidirectional and a one-off custom product for Toronto...

(Also: that is not a very pretty HMI!)

[Canard]

Shoot, I forgot to mention it in my earlier update, but will add it in here because there was a lot of talk about it many pages ago: A sidewalk is going in on the South side of Courtland - at the very least, between Shelley and Block Line.

[GtwoK]

Anchor walls are up at the transit hub stations, and the track tents are up for the southbound track all the way to Victoria. Tried to take a pic last night, but was too dark out!

[danbrotherston]

Correct me if I'm wrong but it appears that one of the gates for the pedestrian crossing on the south west corner of erb and Caroline is in the wrong place? Too far west where the crosswalk lines used to be painted.

[jwilliamson]

The tarps are off the Uptown platform. There are some large wooden boxes sitting on it, not sure what's in them.

[MacBerry]

The reliable website Transit Toronto has just posted a comprehensive article on rail transit in our Region, from the early horse-drawn days up to the planned completion of Ion. Some of our community helped out, as well.

A HISTORY OF ELECTRIC TRANSIT IN WATERLOO REGION, INCLUDING THE ION LRT

The "predictive future history" of some automobiles and our 2018 ION LRT #wrLRT  ...  car driver education was needed then and is needed now. 

"Street railway accident on King Street East, Kitchener, Ontario circa 1944
A collision between an automobile and Kitchener Public Utilities streetcar near the corner of Doehn Street and King Street East, Kitchener, Ontario"

 Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge "Tri-Cities" - Things Past & Present

[KevinL]

Happened to be at Breithaupt and Waterloo today and got a look at the lay of the land with the TPSS in place.

[embe]

Happened to be at Breithaupt and Waterloo today and got a look at the lay of the land with the TPSS in place.

Lol, almost looks like a yellow excavator but obviously scale is way off

[KevinL]

It's actually rail maintenance equipment on the mainline, yeah.

[jamincan]

I think he was referring to the soil compactor thingy in the foreground next to the TPSS, which does indeed kind of look like an excavator.

[timc]

A collision between an automobile and Kitchener Public Utilities streetcar near the corner of Doehn Street and King Street East, Kitchener, Ontario

I had to look up Doehn Street. I found out it was renamed to Dane Street in 1951. And I couldn't even remember where Dane Street was (it is between Stirling and Borden)!

By the way, this list has some really neat information. I would love to see some old maps with these streets on it. I'm particularly fascinated by Block Line Road, which was a boundary between tracts of native land, and parts of which make up the current Fairway Road, Hidden Valley Road, and Cameo Drive. If you look at a map, it's clear that there is a straight alignment of those roads, but I had no idea.