Welcome to this walkthrough of the Montreal
Maintenance Centre of Via Rail. I'm Shane Seguin and I will be providing the
English translation for this visit. We are here in the Montreal maintenance center
of Via Rail. The maintenance center here in Montreal plays an important role for all of the
VIA Rail activities across Canada. For context, there are also maintenance centers in Vancouver,
Winnipeg and Toronto. Montreal plays an important role. The train cars and locomotives you see
here, are cars that run from Halifax to Vancouver. What you will see is that in the transportation
ecosystem, there is often a lot of discussion on public transportation, but there is also
all that is intercity transportation. The most heavily used Intercity transport is what
runs between Quebec City and Windsor, which is called the Corridor. The Corridor has received
a lot of attention recently due to the proposals for HFR and HSR. It is also in the process
of receiving new locomotives and rail cars, so its continued service is guaranteed
and actively being renewed at this time. Today, we want to draw your attention to two other
services at VIA Rail that are very important, that is, long distance routes, and routes
to remote communities. An example of a long distance route is the route between
Toronto and Vancouver, or between Montréal and Halifax. There are also routes for
remote areas, such as Winnipeg, Churchill. For all of these long distance and remote
routes, we make repairs to these cars and locomotives here in Montréal. These are very
old cars and locomotives, which brings us to the purpose of today’s visit. They were
inherited when Via Rail was created, from the separation of passenger rail from CN and CP.
These are cars that are over 60-70 years old. To give you an idea, when we talk about
cars that have traveled long distances, each of the cars you see today have done the
equivalent of 195 trips around the world. This is enormous. They have gotten to a point where
they are close, very close to their retirement. Therefore, this year, 2024, is a very important
year for Via Rail. It is a very critical year because our analysis shows that we need to launch
NOW the replacement procurement process to replace this fleet. Why? Despite all the miracles that
we are continuously doing to keep these trains operational, which Andre will shortly explain in
more detail, there is a limit to these efforts, and at a certain point, they just need to be
replaced. A replacement of this sort does not happen in a couple years. We calculate that
it would take 10 years to do. Why? This is the other element that we will show you today during
the visit. It’s not just train cars with seats, there are also restaurant cars, panoramic
dome cars, kitchens on board, sleeper cars. To give you an idea, the Toronto Vancouver
route is a route that takes about four days, four nights. Across the world, there are many
long distance routes, some quite mythical like the Orient Express. Here in Canada, we also have this
kind of service and the maintenance happens here, in Montreal. Today we will introduce you to
some of the particularities of these cars. Currently the impacts are small, however over
the next few years, if we can’t replace them, there will be impacts. What could happen?
Routes, departures may be cut or affected, trains would be shorter due to lack of cars,
capacity would be reduced and so forth. So, if it is status quo and there is no replacement by
2035, the long distance routes will be affected. The Corridor (Quebec City to Windsor) is about
1500km long, while the overall VIA Service is about 10 thousand kilometers long. Therefore, it
is important for us to start this process this year, so that we can replace old cars that need
to be retired with new ones, to limit the impact. In our workshops, we do different types of
work. In the other workshops that you don't see and that we won't visit, there are regular
inspections, regulatory inspections, but here, we are in our maintenance workshop, that's
where we're going to do some replacements, some minor projects, some regular maintenance,
every year, when the cars will be brought here every year, sometimes at different
frequencies, but usually on average every year. We also do major projects, which you can see
as an example behind me. Here we are replacing water tanks, for the drinking water service on
board the trains, so the cars are lifted. We also have a structural inspection program to ensure
the safety of passengers, and ensures that the trains and cars continue to follow and meet the
regulations and requirements of Transport Canada. The cars are also inspected annually and
repaired to ensure the best customer experience, reliability and safety. What you will see inside
the other cars are more major repairs and interior refurbishments, to make sure everything is up to
date. This is all to maintain the usable life of these vehicles for the next 10 years or more.
On the TransCanada route, the Canadian, for example, Toronto to Vancouver, there
are usually 2 locomotives, and about 20 cars of different types. We have 11 different
types of cars, such as coaches with seats, dining rooms, luggage cars, sleepers, and so on.
Do we already see the impacts on the service? We often hear about late trains, which is in part due
to the traffic on the rail lines from the freight trains. What has decreased for us is the number of
cars in the fleet. In 2019, we had a little more than 200, but now the fleet is reduced to about
175. This is because of some cars that needed a more exhaustive inspection and they were found to
be no longer serviceable. This has forced us to cut some services in the West, certain frequencies
and capacity, precisely due to the reduction of the number of cars. What we anticipate for the
next 10 years as we continue our inspections and repairs, is we will surely find more end of
life cars that will also need to be removed from service and retired. That means shorter trains,
and less capacity to carry passengers. There are already lines now being served by shorter trains.
A Canadian train is 20 cars. But at some point as we continue to reduce, the train gets shorter
and smaller. And there are also regional lines which can also be affected like Quebec Centre or
Churchill. These are all lines that over the next decade, could see a decrease in the service
,to ultimately at the end, become a service that is no longer viable and be discontinued.
Here we are in a diner car, which is a dining room with adjacent kitchen. As you can see, this
is a major project. We have removed a large part of the interior. We do some refurbishments, we
do some renovations for the customer experience, and we make sure to restore and upgrade
reliability to different systems. We're talking about electrical systems, air conditioning
systems, the whole kitchen, for the ergonomic aspect, the health and safety aspect, for
the chefs who work on board the trains. We make sure that the main goal of each of
the cars that go through the refurbishment program is always safety. Safety for our
employees, safety for the passengers. In the next car after this one, you will see
the a dining car that was renewed by our teams here at the maintenance centre. It is the final
product with everything refreshed and redone, from the interior systems to structural, truly
a major project. Again, on the Canadian which is typically a train of 20 cars, there would
be 3 dining cars like this on that train. We do regular inspections on the locomotives
during the night. But at least once a year, they come here in the workshops for a more exhaustive
inspection and repairs. And we also do the normal annual inspection, including all the repairs.
We also have a locomotive that is in for a complete overhaul as you can see behind me. In
fact, we are in the process of doing a prototype to define what we are going to do as far as work
for the rest of the fleet. Because we have about forty locomotives in the next five years that
will have to be reconditioned in major ways, as we wait to have replacements. Reliability
declines year after year so the repair workload continues to increase as time goes on.
In comparison to the cars, the locomotives are more recent, between 30 and 40 years. But they
are really due for major overalls, mid-life or end of life this case. At the same time with all
this work, we are faced with other challenges, such as acquiring replacement parts and pieces.
Some of these manufacturers have not produced these pieces in 40-50 years and some may not
even be in business anymore. So we need to retro-engineer ourselves the parts, or turn
to second hand markets to get what we need, which causes additional delays
in getting the repairs completed. Finally, lets take a look at the
Skyline Dome cars, that typically run on the Canadian, through the Rockies.
As you can see, this is a car that has not been reconditioned. It still has its
vintage look from back in the day. The inspection makes sure that it stays safe, that
our critical systems, our main systems are fully functional. Then eventually, well, they will go
through a program of partial refurbishment to be able to have quality cars until their end of life.
On this car, there is a dinning room, a kitchen, a lounge and then the observatory dome on the top
level to give passengers great views all around, which is really appreciated and
loved by our passengers and clients. Thank you for watching our walkthrough of
VIA Rail's Montreal Maintenance Centre. Be sure to subscribe to Rail Fans Canada
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