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ViaFast
ViaFast (corporately styled VIAFast) was an abandoned passenger rail plan that would have cut Via Rail's trip times throughout the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor. ViaFast did not propose true high-speed service throughout the service area, but a series of smaller upgrades to avoid known bottlenecks and provide improved performance at a fraction of the price of entirely new lines. It aimed to reduce the Toronto–Montreal time by about one hour, to 3.5 hours; halving the Montreal–Quebec City time to 2 hours; and reducing Toronto–Windsor time by an hour, to 3.5 hours. Initially studied in 2002, the plan was announced in the last days of the Jean Chrétien government. During the transition to Paul Martin's leadership, members of both the sitting Liberals and their opposition in the Canadian Alliance expressed concerns about the plan and it was quietly abandoned. Details of the ViaFast plan became known to the public in 2009 when it was leaked to Canwest news services. The Cor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Via Rail
Via Rail Canada Inc. (), operating as Via Rail or Via, is a Canadian Crown corporation that is mandated to operate intercity passenger rail service in Canada. It receives an annual subsidy from Transport Canada to offset the cost of operating services connecting remote communities. Via Rail operates over 500 trains per week across eight Canadian provinces and of track, 97 per cent of which is owned and maintained by other railway companies, mostly by Canadian National Railway (CN). Via Rail carried approximately 4.39 million passengers in 2017, the majority along the ''Corridor'' routes connecting the major cities of the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor, and had an on-time performance of 73 per cent. History Background Yearly passenger levels on Canada's passenger trains peaked at 60 million during World War II. Following the war the growth of air travel and the personal automobile caused significant loss of mode share for Canada's passenger train operators. By the 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
JetTrain
The JetTrain was an experimental high-speed passenger train concept created by Bombardier Transportation in an attempt to make European-style high-speed service more financially appealing to passenger railways throughout North America. It was designed to use the same LRC-derived tilting carriages as the Acela Express trains that Bombardier built for Amtrak in the 1990s, which used all-electric locomotives. Unlike the Acela, powered electrically by overhead lines, the JetTrain would have used a combination of a gas-turbine engine, a low-power diesel engine, a reduction gearbox, and two alternators to power electric traction motors. This would have allowed it to run at high speeds on non-electrified lines. Description Gas turbine engines Turbine engines use as much as 65% of their overall generated power to run the compressor at the front of the engine. This means that when the engine is set to idle, with no net energy output, the engine is still burning 65% of the fue ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anchor of the Golden Horseshoe, an urban agglomeration of 9,765,188 people (as of 2021) surrounding the western end of Lake Ontario, while the Greater Toronto Area proper had a 2021 population of 6,712,341. Toronto is an international centre of business, finance, arts, sports and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world. Indigenous peoples have travelled through and inhabited the Toronto area, located on a broad sloping plateau interspersed with rivers, deep ravines, and urban forest, for more than 10,000 years. After the broadly disputed Toronto Purchase, when the Mississauga surrendered the area to the British Crown, the British established the town of York in 1793 and later d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
UAC TurboTrain
The UAC TurboTrain was an early high-speed rail, high-speed, gas turbine train manufactured by United Aircraft that operated in Canada between 1968 and 1982 and in the United States between 1968 and 1976. Amtrak disposed of the trains in 1980. It was one of the first gas turbine powered trains to enter service for passenger traffic, and was also one of the first tilting trains to enter service in North America. Description Chesapeake & Ohio design study A series of design studies carried out by Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in the 1950s used the Talgo, second-generation Talgo design for their car suspensions. The suspension arms for each neighboring pair of cars were attached to a common bogie ("truck") between them, as opposed to having a pair of separate bogies for each car. The bogies rode the common curve between the two cars, centered by traction springs that centered the axle between adjoining car bodies. TurboTrain cars are lower than conventional cars, to lower the ce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kingston, Ontario
Kingston is a city in Ontario, Canada. It is located on the north-eastern end of Lake Ontario, at the beginning of the St. Lawrence River and at the mouth of the Cataraqui River (south end of the Rideau Canal). The city is midway between Toronto, Ontario and Montreal, Quebec. Kingston is also located nearby the Thousand Islands, a tourist region to the east, and the Prince Edward County tourist region to the west. Kingston is nicknamed the "Limestone City" because of the many heritage buildings constructed using local limestone. Growing European exploration in the 17th century, and the desire for the Europeans to establish a presence close to local Native occupants to control trade, led to the founding of a French trading post and military fort at a site known as "Cataraqui" (generally pronounced /kætə'ɹɑkweɪ/, "kah-tah-ROCK-way") in 1673. This outpost, called Fort Cataraqui, and later Fort Frontenac, became a focus for settlement. Since 1760, the site of Kingston, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Collenette
David Michael Collenette, PC (born June 24, 1946) is a former Canadian politician. From 1974, until his retirement from politics in 2004, he was a member of the Liberal Party of Canada. A graduate from York University's Glendon College Glendon College is a public liberal arts college in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Formally the federated bilingual campus of York University, it is one of the school's nine colleges and 11 faculties with 100 full-time faculty members and a student po ... in 1969, he subsequently received his Master of Arts, MA, in 2004 and LL.D for education in 2015 from the same university. He was first elected in the York East riding of Toronto to the House of Commons of Canada, House of Commons on July 8, 1974, in the Pierre Trudeau government and returned to Parliament in 1993 representing Don Valley East. Collenette served as a Member of the Canadian House of Commons for more than 20 years. He was elected five times and defeated twice. He served in the Cabine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
P42DC
General Electric Genesis (officially trademarked GENESIS) is a series of passenger diesel locomotives produced by GE Transportation, then a subsidiary of General Electric. Between 1992 and 2001, a total of 321 units were built for Amtrak, Metro-North, and Via Rail. The Genesis series of locomotives was designed by General Electric in response to a specification published by Amtrak and ultimately selected over a competing design presented by Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD). Until the introduction of the Siemens Charger, the Genesis series had the lowest height of any North American diesel-electric locomotives, being lower than the previous-generation F40PH. This low height allows the locomotive to travel easily through low-profile tunnels in the Northeast Corridor. Technical design The GE Genesis series is unique among recently manufactured North American passenger locomotives in that it uses a single, monocoque carbody design styled by industrial designer Cesar Vergara, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nightstar (train)
The Nightstar was a proposed overnight sleeper train service from various parts of the United Kingdom to destinations in mainland Europe, via the Channel Tunnel. To run alongside the Eurostar, and north of London day-time Regional Eurostar services which were never operational, the Nightstar was the last part in a proposed round-the-clock passenger train utilisation of the Channel Tunnel. The Nightstar service was to have been operated by European Night Services, a company mostly owned by European Passenger Services (the then-named operator of the Eurostar service). After rejection of various British ideas for the service that was to become the British Rail Class 373 Eurostar train—which eventually was created from the existing French TGV scaled for a British loading gauge—the Nightstar concept emerged as an individual locomotive-hauled passenger train. While some carriages were built, the project was cancelled in July 1997 for lack of commercial viability. All of the stock ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maglev (transport)
Maglev (derived from ''magnetic levitation''), is a system of train transportation that uses two sets of electromagnets: one set to repel and push the train up off the track, and another set to move the elevated train ahead, taking advantage of the lack of friction. Such trains rise approximately off the track. There are both high speed, intercity maglev systems (over ), and low speed, urban maglev systems ( to ) being built and under construction and development. With maglev technology, the train travels along a guideway of electromagnets which control the train's stability and speed. While the propulsion and levitation require no moving parts, the bogies can move in relation to the main body of the vehicle and some technologies require support by retractable wheels at low speeds under . This compares with electric multiple units that may have several dozen parts per bogie. Maglev trains can therefore in some cases be quieter and smoother than conventional trains and have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Bourassa
Robert Bourassa (; July 14, 1933 – October 2, 1996) was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd premier of Quebec from 1970 to 1976 and from 1985 to 1994. A member of the Liberal Party of Quebec, he served a total of just under 15 years as premier. Bourassa's tenure was marked by major events affecting Quebec, including the October Crisis and the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords. Early years and education Bourassa was born to a working class family in Montreal, the son of Adrienne (née Courville) (1897–1982) and Aubert Bourassa, a port authority worker. Robert Bourassa graduated from the Université de Montréal law school in 1956 and was admitted to the Barreau du Québec the following year. On August 23, 1958, he married Andrée Simard, an heiress of the powerful shipbuilding Simard family of Sorel, Quebec. Later, he studied at Keble College, University of Oxford and also obtained a degree in political economy at Harvard University in 1960. On his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Premier Of Quebec
The premier of Quebec ( French: ''premier ministre du Québec'' (masculine) or ''première ministre du Québec'' (feminine)) is the head of government of the Canadian province of Quebec. The current premier of Quebec is François Legault of the Coalition Avenir Québec, sworn in on October 18, 2018, following that year's election. Selection and qualifications The premier of Quebec is appointed as president of the Executive Council by the Lieutenant Governor of Quebec, the viceregal representative of the Queen in Right of Quebec. The premier is most usually the head of the party winning the most seats in the National Assembly of Quebec and is normally a sitting member of the National Assembly. An exception to this rule occurs when the winning party's leader fails to win a riding. In that case, the premier would have to attain a seat by winning a by-election. This has happened, for example, to Robert Bourassa in 1985. The role of the premier of Quebec is to set the legisla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
