ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[taylortbb]

URL for the Facebook group is https://www.facebook.com/groups/81680629050/

[GtwoK]

Mount Hope / King closing on Thursday for 2 days, maintained by flaggers. What's going on here? Will we finally get the first section of road to have both Northbound and Southbound completed? Or more underground work?

[GtwoK]

Some photos from tonight!

Benton is completely paved North (East?) of the tracks, and in between them. The first layer of asphalt is about 80% done South / West of the SB track.







There are curbs for both NB and SB on Charles between Stirling / Borden now. Well, missing one side of the SB curbs, which are marked out to do tomorrow. Still a giant pit at Borden though. It's crazy seeing the size of the train ROW compared to the road.







One thing I don't understand: the inner curbs become depressed / end in front of Mr Transmission / KW Counselling, but not straight across from each other — on an angle. I'm standing in the area in the 2nd photo. What would this be for? There wouldn't be a u-turn point here, the turn would be much too tight for cars to make onto the opposing directional road (believe me, I tried). The depression is also way too wide for just pedestrians.

[Canard]

Is that where the platform is?

[Viewfromthe42]

The right-of-way is so wide here because this is where the Borden stop will be, necessitating a double-sided station surrounded by rails. Depressions are likely related to getting people off of the platform. The platform is raised relative to the roadway/sidewalks so as to allow for flush boarding and to keep cars off of the tracks. But the depression might well be part of how people get back onto sidewalks at the north and south ends of the platform (assuming it's not just pedestrian accessible from one end).

On the other hand, maybe this is a vehicle traffic crossover point that we're not aware of.

[Canard]

No, if that's where the platform ends are then it's definitely the depression for sidewalk/pedestrian access.

[Square]

Doesn't the platform start at Borden? That's a long platform if it goes all the way to Mister Transmission!

[Markster]

It's about 140m from Mr. Transmission to Borden. The platform is entirely north (er, west) of Borden. The platforms I believe are about 90m long, or at least will be when they're ready for double-length trains. The rails need to diverge for a run approaching the station as well.
I would hope that there's pedestrian access to the platform from both ends.

[Square]

Thank you for the reply Markster. I guess we really haven't seen any NB and SB platforms poured yet, so maybe they will be that long. Now that I think about it all the platforms that have been poured are single track, lol

[GtwoK]

Benton was complete today! All that's left to do is reactivate the traffic lights and move the barriers. Looks phenomenal. The first big intersection down!





Looking down Charles. You can see they're prepping the NB curbs down to Eby.Didn't actually go to Eby, so I'm not sure if they go farther, but I doubt it; Cedar is still torn up. The Cedar station has started to become framed though!



Pandora / Charles is torn up as well. I think they're adjusting the slope here, now that the retaining wall is done.

All curbs are officially in on Charles between Stirling / Borden. The first directionally-divided road to have all it's curbs finished.

On King: large metal hydro poles (like the ones they replaced with in front of GRH) are lying down from Wellington onwards. I guess they'll be doing those too?

The front entrance to KCI has been completely graded down now. They'll start the stairs soon, I assume.

They've started boring holes for cat poles in front of GRH.

I forgot to pay attention: when turning right from Union E onto King S, is there still that separate turning segment? Or is that gone, and it's a standard 4 way intersection now? I'd like to update Google Maps to reflect.

[Canard]

How did they end up temporarily terminating the track on the curve where it meets Frederick (in front of the Glokenspeil)? I kept really wondering how they'd do this, since they're not working on Frederick right now.

[GtwoK]

They just filled in the space around the tracks and in between the pavement with dirt, to bring it up to grade.

[KevinL]

The actual track ends will probably be topped with a temporary barrier of some kind over the winter to keep traffic off them.

[Canard]

Yeah, that's what I was wondering. Thanks!

[ookpik]

Caisse to buy stake in Bombardier rail business for $1.5-billion 

Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec is acquiring a 30-per-cent stake in Bombardier Inc.’s rail business for $1.5-billion (U.S.) in a move aimed at bolstering the manufacturer’s financial stability... The new company, with its own board headed by Bombardier chief Alain Bellemare, will hold all of the assets of Berlin-based Bombardier Transportation, the company’s rail division.