MCI102A3

https://barrie.ctvnews.ca/making-voting-more-convenient-in-simcoe-county-1.4118545 Nova 1712 is gonna be a mobile polling station for the City elections.

Over the last month I've been riding LINX with friends. A driver told us a week ago that the buses for Collingwood and Orillia have already been ordered and the routes are planned to go online next year. LINX is also listed as a partner along with Barrie for the 9M bus category on the Metrolinx website, so chances are we may be getting Enviro 200s as well.

Can-Ar runs two cross-country routes out of there, IIRC one heads north to Lindsay and Haliburton County and the other heads northwest towards Kincardine.

I had a meeting with the County about this back in July, and from what they told me they do plan to eventually have a central hub in Barrie and will move Route 1 there when that happens, probably when Routes 2 and 3 come online.

Here's my video of the first day. Myself and another member rode the entire route, then bus-hopped between Midland and Wyebridge thanks to convenient timing where the southbound stops in Wyebridge 5 minutes before the northbound. More videos are in the pipeline.

Hopefully it's not too off-topic, but has anybody seen that Arboc for sale at Loan Arranger on Innisfil Street? I wonder where it originally came from and who operated it previously?

Barrie Transit 66804, 2004 New Flyer D40LF. Rebuilt Summer 2017.

1709's back on the road. Saw it tonight doing the 4 at Barrie South. No pics yet, but I intend to get some soon.

https://www.kijiji.ca/v-heavy-trucks/owen-sound/transit-bus/1332920513?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true Looks like Bruce Peninusula's selling some buses. There's an MCI G-coach listed on there out of Owen Sound as well that I think I recognise.

http://www.clearview.ca/transit Looks like their G5 has arrived and is in service, a monster on a Ford chassis, most likely powered by that monstrum V10. Also, while we're at it, here's my picture of Clearview's bus on Weir Street in Stayner back in August, 2017 when I made a road trip around the county with a fellow member and another friend. I believe this is probably the only pic from the fan community of the Clearview bus actually within her home municipality instead of Wasaga Beach.

Saw an old Eldorado from Midland Transit travelling eastbound on Big Bay Point near Welham garage and SN Diesel this afternoon headed towards Yonge Street, but unfortunately I couldn't get a number or a photo as I was in a car at the time.

Well, the people I'm working for are part of one of the parties that promised to bring back the train as far back as 2013. I got involved with them about a month or two after the shutdown, and got involved with them because I met two MPPs on the train and started chatting with them about what needs to be done. I have a knack for taking an issue related to transport, whether it's this or issues with Barrie Transit where I live, and going deep into research and writing 500-page long papers full of solutions, knowledge and technical data that I've researched myself either through the internet, through personal knowledge, or through conversations with friends and professionals who know what they're doing. North of Pefferlaw the Northlander would travel at the maximum speed of the GP38-2s pulling her, which was around 65 mi/h. North of Washago speeds would drop somewhat, between 40 to 50 mi/h all the way to Cochrane, with brief slow sections through North Bay when we transit through the yards plus any slow orders that happen to be in effect during the trip.

I think it's not the APU specifically that's the issue, but more along the lines of using freight power on passenger trains. If we had a passenger-spec unit that didn't have HEP I don't think it'd be an issue to hook the APU to it. Or even running an FP7A or other passenger-capable carbodied unit like we used to in the 90s, or the CATs like when I went on my first trip to Toronto in 1998. CN would make us get special permission to use anything six-axled on the Northlander when it was needed, like SD40-2s or the SD75I, and I think they required either different logistics or bureaucratic paperwork to turn them around in Toronto because the clearances on the wye in Mimico were supposedly too tight for them. That Innu-owned railway in Labrador first started out using GP38-2s with HEP cars on their passenger service but last I saw they were using ex-Amtrak F40s, so they probably got caught up in the same issue.

I'm working with some people up North on the Northlander project myself. Any members of the board who know me personally or through social media would know that I'm immersed in it and have been since I met some politicians on the last run in 2012. I'll declare my choices for the new Northlander fleet, keeping in mind my information's limited. For locomotives, I'm leaning towards rebuilding some GP40-2 passenger variants from the northeast US, particularly NJT hood units and some of the GP40FH-2 units as well. The NJT units (GP40PH-2 IIRC) would be versatile for the ONTC, because their design allows them to be used on both passenger and freight, due to the visibility and access between units that this unit offers, as well as for the most part having parts commonality with the 1730 series SD40-2s and the three GP40-2s. Even the Amtrak GP38H-3s would be a good unit for us, considering they have just enough power to pull the Northlander and also has the relevant passenger mods done to it. For coaches, I'm leaning towards rebuilt single-deck coaches, either Budd products like if there's any Amtrak "heritage fleet" cars still in storage in Beech Grove, ex-AMT/nee-GO RTC-85s if some are still available, or even ex-NJT coaches, or even Can-Car products if they can be found. I've thought about the Ringling cars a while back, but that auction's over and I would imagine the whole fleet's already been spoken for. The reason I have a preference for HEP-equipped, high-speed, passenger-spec Geeps for the revived services, is not only for the versatility of them, which a skeleton fleet like ONR really needs right now, but also, I'm aware through friends who are around the ONR who told me that the GP38-2 + APU setup that we used before Black Friday 2012 is not allowed by CN anymore unless they do half the speed limit, and that TC regulations are the reason the class ones adopted it. So if we want to do 75 to 90 mi/h on the Bala sub like we used to (the GP38-2 fleet as you know topped out at 65, probably the fastest any GP38-2's ever gone in this country), we'd need to have a locomotive that's designed for passenger work. However, more freight locomotives are needed from what I was hearing, particularly four-axle roadswitchers, so the locomotives I've researched would be perfect for that role, or any other role we can throw at it.

Haha, I agree with you on losing so many good buses. However, when we had all those classics up here a couple of years ago it was a blast. Honestly they should've just bought them all on top of the idea of rebuilding the 04 and 06 buses, then we wouldn't have to worry about a bus shortage at all. I really wouldn't mind one though, if one came up here while 1709's replacement was being built, I'd probably get as much mileage outta her as I can lol.