InfiNorth

I've only taken it once and driven by a bus on the route about four times, every time is a Nova. You're right about the routing - I screwed up. Regarding narrow roads, the 14 goes up Highland Road every once in a while with a 40 footer, doesn't it? (that was a joke)

Thanks for the links - I didn't know about the meetings archives, knew about Transit Future. I was mostly curious how you whipped out a document specific to the 75 so quickly, since even with the link I still can't locate that document.

I'm fully aware of who Urban Sky is. It was a joke, because the Renaissance cars aren't particularly loved, and your response had a pretty blunt and almost comical tone. Sorry for the confusion. This forum doesn't seem to like humour very much.

Sorry, I need to be more specific about the Stelly's point: I'm talking about the stops on Wallace Drive that have no counterpart. Why route the bus on Wallace at all? There is literally one stop (at the school) and that's it. On the same "block" with on Stelly's X Rd you have three stops. Also, thanks for clarifying about the Northbound buses - I get what you mean now. Cheers. To the person who left the report on the 75 on here, I just checked out Hagan Rd (where it claims it's too narrow for the bus). Doesn't seem that different from Cromar where the North Saanich bus goes... which, I mean, is a whole other can of worms that I don't want to open right now. My point stands that the spaghetti of routing through Brentwood Bay is inefficient and not intuitive. I'm very thankful we live in a time when you can just put your destination into Google Maps, because trying to figure out the Brentwood routing of the various routes without an actual detailed map would be rather difficult. Where do you find such documents? I would love to read more of these things to get a sense for the reasoning behind services in Victoria (and elsewhere in the province).

This doesn't resolve why it doesn't just go in both directions through the area (particularly the dumb Stelly's loop). That's a good trick, given that there are no stops on the inner side of the loop. Verdier, for instance, has stops only on the North Side, and Marchant only on the south side. Maybe once upon a time it was different, but not now. Only Southbound buses route through the residential area past the ferry terminal.

Is this an emotional reaction, objective or both? Because I can agree with any of those perspectives.

A friend of mine is moving to Saanichton, which is great because the 72 brings him straight downtown or out to Sidney every half-hour. Then I checked in on what other buses he could catch and got looking at the buses through Brentwood Bay, which I have only ever taken once. What I'm wondering is why the routing through Brentwood Bay is so abysmally stupid. Why do both routes serving the Verdier-Brentwood-Marchant loop only serve it in one direction, when it's not a service that you can just ride around the loop on (like the 63) but instead have to spend an extra forty minutes on the bus going out and back to get back to the stop you wanted to actually go to? Why does the 75 go in a big twisted loop around Stelly's? From the ferry, it's a breeze to hop off and right onto a bus headed to Victoria, but on your return journey you'll have to walk over a kilometre to get to the ramp... I mean, the 75 is a whole other kind of special mess on its own without even considering the other buses' routing through Brentwood Bay. What is going on here? Am I nuts and missing some crucial thing that requires the buses to be virtually useless to Brentwood Bay residents? Is this just one of those "coverage" things where BC Transit wants to pad their service area stats so they send some underused routes on loop-de-loops? I took the 83 for fun back in the times of old before the plague, and while it was a packed bus all the way from Sidney to Royal Oak, not a soul got on or off in or around Brentwood Bay. Honestly, it's one of those things just makes me irrationally angry. Why did they do this?

I think we're just trying to have a constructive discussion, looking at the options ahead of us. That's the point of a forum.

It's actually a good point: Economy cars are generally supposed to be at the front of a train, as it's closer to the locomotives and thus noisier. If you pull in with a configuration of LOCO-ECON-SLEEP-PARK, without turning around you leave with a configuration of LOCO-PARK-SLEEP-ECON. In the case that they do a crazy switcheroo, that will leave them with two rather massive problems: 1. Economy Renaissance Cars are single-directional. Their seats can't be flipped liked on (non-refurbished) HEP equipment. Maybe they won't care that much, but I'm sure passengers won't be too pleased riding over a thousand kilometres backwards. 2. The Park Car certainly has couplers on both ends, but only has a bellowed door at one end. Without the ability to turn the Park Car around, they will (I assume) be forced into the situation I described above, putting it at the front of the train. You can't stick a backwards Park Car in the middle of a consist, the door at the end of the bullet lounge is exclusively a service door. If they have the ability to turn small cars around, then they might be able to retain the park car. I know they used a turntable on the short-lived Sydney railcruise train. No turntable within Halifax, though. EDIT: I see someone has already suggested a Skyline car, which would be lovely. Still looking for a solution for the directionality of the Renaissance cars.

To the person asking about Windsor Junction, the tracks there were gone (at least disconnected, no switches remain) when I was on the train last summer and in Google Maps it shows no switches either, so I suspect the ability to use that wye is long gone.

As someone who just kind of knows what train to get on to go where I want to be, I never noticed their absence... but how on earth would someone otherwise figure out where they were going if there was no route map?

Yikes. Cheers guys. I've learned lots through this, I'll have to comb through the timetables again.

Thanks for exceptional insight. I already knew about the weird loop-de-loop around Lake Simcoe, it's such a strange decision. Also, thank you for the knowledge about ON sharing responsibility with VIA - I had suspected as much but wanted to confirm before setting it in stone in my mind. Do you know how many TEE units ON had at the time? And also, do you know of any other services that VIA Rail shared (not just connected to) with other railways that I might not be aware of (from simply reading the timetables). I've read nearly every VIA timetable from front to back, and haven't found any other oddballs beyond this one.

Thanks for the heads up - looked into the TEEs and man, that is a weird history. Some good videos (including a very recent one) on the history of the Trans Europe Express out there. Crazy to think that a trainset that was built as Europe's futuristic luxury train ended up as a rural train in Northern Canada. I've found loads of pictures of F units pulling the TEE trainset (with the trailing cab car still in service) so I suspect you're right about that.

Okay history time with me again: I have a question about the Toronto-North Bay-Cochrane portion of the timetable. In the 1976 VIA Timetable when it was still VIA CN-CP, CN services in table 44 are listed between Toronto, North Bay, Cochrane, and finally Kapuskasing (I don't care about the bus service through to Hearst). In the schedule, VIA (CN) trains 673, 97, 96, and 674 serve the Toronto-North Bay portions of the line. Also listed are the numerically logical 98 and 99, which fit in right after 96 and 97. Train 99 leaves Toronto at 2025, with the name "Northland." It is not italicized, it does not have ONR above it as other connecting services have. It is listed as a VIA CN service (with Toronto and North Bay followed by "(CN)" on the timetable). However, it arrives in North Bay at 0135, departing again northward at 0150, still at train 99, but this time as an ONR service according to the timetable (instead of "(CN)," it has "(ONR)" at North Bay and Cochrane). This train arrives in Cochrane at 0830, at which point the timetable goes back to normal, non-italicized text, suggesting the train is once again a VIA service, after which it departs at 0901 towards Kaspuskasing. Train 421 leaves to Moosonee fourteen minutes later at 0915, once again, not listed as an ONR service, and the its table (45) is not under connections nor does it say anything about ONR anywhere in the vicinity. It is roughly the same in reverse, so I won't go through the details. My question has a lot of parts. First off, is this similar to the Maple Leaf these days where one train is operated by two separated companies when it enters their domain? Also, I know the rather unconventional (for Canada) DMU that ONR had was around by the mid-1970s, around the time this timetable was published. Was this the equipment used on train 99? And finally, Why are trains 421/622 (to Moosonee) listed on the VIA timetable with no evidence that they were ONR-operated?