dpogue

440 had some issues yesterday afternoon, probably pulled from service until some more testing is done.

448 is in normal revenue service. 444 is still in testing, and 452 is also in testing. I passed 452 at Production Way inbound last night.

That 6-car Mark I parked at Lafarge would be for staff training purposes. They've been running 4-car/6-car trains between VCC-Clark and New Westminster during Expo Line track maintenance, which is why you'll sometimes see longer trains on the M-Line during the evenings. This weekend (and the next two weekends) they're single-tracking through the Evergreen Tunnel and doing turnbacks at Burquitlam. They're running 4-car Mark IIs between Burquitlam and Lafarge Lake-Douglas.

I recall hearing that part of the Canada Line P3 contract also states how many trains they are allowed to run during rush hour, with monetary penalties for exceeding that number. The number of permitted trains increases at set intervals of years, so it should increase around the time that the new trains arrive (or else they're going to have to negotiate something to avoid paying penalties).

The last paragraph seems to indicate that the Broadway Extension will include a separate order of new cars: It will be interesting to see how they phase out the Mark I vehicles. Currently the original 114 cars from 1985/1986 are in refurbishment, but there are still 36 newer cars that have not been refurbished. Since we've already ordered the next batch of Mark IIIs, it seems logical to replace those unrefurbished 36 cars first, and then look at phasing out the older-but-refurbished original cars.

Adding to the confusion, I've just been told on Twitter that it's the 22nd:

I don't have full details, but it seems like some debris caught underneath a train got dragged through several stations and damaged some of the track-level equipment at Lougheed and Sapperton. They repaired everything overnight.

701 (and 791) use a few short sections of bus lanes heading westbound: From Dewdney Trunk Rd across Lougheed Hwy onto 200th Street there is a bus lane that allow buses to stay in the rightmost lane of Dewdney without being forced to turn into Lougheed. Turning from Harris Rd onto Lougheed Hwy there's a lane that permits regular traffic to go straight through but allows buses to turn. This might permit HOV users to turn as well, many of them do in any case. Along Lougheed Hwy between Harris and the Pitt River Bridge the buses use the HOV lane. Just before the intersection at Kennedy/Old Dewdney Trunk there's a short section of bus lane to queue jump the intersection there.

That picked up some construction junk that had blown into the guideway and was taken out of service because it was dragging debris and setting off the intrusion sensors at all the stations. The flashing red lights mean that the emergency brakes are down.

Was it a problem train? Twitter was saying it was due to someone walking on the tracks between the two stations EDIT: Ahh, apparently it was both.

There's a problem with one of the communication loops on the Expo Line outbound around Stadium and Main Street. These loops are how the trains communicate their positions to the central computer and receive instructions to proceed. If the loop is down, any trains entering that area will emergency stop for safety reasons. To get around this, they are having staff drive the trains in manual between Granville outbound and Nanaimo outbound.

The flying junction as originally designed would not have made any difference to train operations at Lougheed. The only difference would be not having the switches at Burquitlam.

They've been having issues getting the platform numbers right on the alerts because none of the staff ever use the platform numbers and they aren't properly labelled on any of the charts or maps. It said 2 & 3 earlier, now it says 1 & 2, when it's really 1 & 3: Platform 1 - Lougheed Outbound - Expo Line to Waterfront, Millennium Line to Lafarge Platform 2 - Lougheed Inbound - Expo Line to Production Way Platform 3 - Lougheed Side Track - Millennium Line to VCC-Clark

It sounds great, but in practice it's not good for crowding: You have the side track full of people heading towards Commercial, the inbound platform essentially empty, and huge crowds on the outbound platform trying to go to both Columbia and Lafarge.

That happens sometimes at Commercial too, if the train has been diverted to Clark inbound instead of going into the tail to turn around. I suspect it's just a quick re-verifying of the train route and destination. Probably happens at Lincoln inbound all the time, since pretty much every train crosses over from the outbound to Lafarge inbound.

I've noticed they've started doing them on the Expo Line in Surrey again. Often the span of track they drive will include some switches, which is why Renfrew<->Rupert and Production<->Lougheed are popular.

Train 424 timed out pulling in the King George inbound after turning around. They were able to drive it back into the tail track and get it picked up, but it did briefly result in shuffling some trains around between Surrey Central and King George to make room for driving it.

I think tomorrow will be the real test when SFU starts winter classes

From what I heard, he "bounced off a train" and was knocked unconscious.

SkyTrain lost switch control for one of the Burquitlam switches, they're currently single-tracking between Lougheed and Burquitlam (and I guess single-tracking through the tunnel as well...)

It was made worse by the fact that the West Coast Express was blocked by a tree across the tracks in North Burnaby, and trains 2, 3, 4, and 5 effectively dropped all their passengers at Coquitlam Central and Moody Centre stations to use SkyTrain.

Eventful day for SkyTrain, but no major delays. One of the track switches between Lougheed outbound and Braid outbound had issues this morning, resulting in single-tracking through Braid and Sapperton on the inbound Train 308 had some sort of issue with stuck brakes between Granville outbound and Stadium outbound early this afternoon. Staff were having trouble trying to drive it in manual to Stadium to off-load passengers, but the vehicle techs managed to get the brakes lifted. It was parked at Stadium side-track for most of the afternoon and brought back to the yard just after evening rush hour. Train 322 had problems near Lougheed around 5:00, and was taken out of service. Not sure if it timed out, or had some other issue.

The SkyTrain snow plan calls for attendants to stand with the control panel open at the front of every train while it's running in automatic, with their key in the panel and ready to switch to manual (which would drop the emergency brakes) if they see anything on the tracks. The yellow light on the train exterior has two purposes, it blinks if a passenger has pressed the emergency strip, but it also lights up solid if there's any sort of warning or error codes from the train equipment. In this weather, it might have been indicating a warning that the power collectors had run into an icy spot on the power rail, or that the LIM motors were working harder than usual to get the train moving on icy rails.

No, the green commemorative cards are not available for concession fares (according to the STA at Lafarge Lake-Douglas just before the station opened at noon). There are only 50 000 of them available.

412 reported a weird error code on its way across the SkyBridge this evening, so it got pulled at King George and sent back to the yard for investigation. I heard someone say it did the same thing at Edmonds yesterday afternoon. One problem they're having is that several of the Mark IIIs seem to trigger the track intrusion alarm at Lougheed inbound when the doors open. I think I've seen 404, 416, and 424 all set it off.