Off the Rails

The Turbo was capable of speeds approaching those of today’s fastest passenger trains. In December of 1967, a three-car Turbo set the world record for rail travel on a New Jersey test track, reaching 275 kilometres per hour. At that rate, the trip between downtown Toronto and downtown Montreal would have taken two hours — less than the time it takes to fly, once ground travel to and from the airports is factored in.

But CN’s Turbo never travelled at anywhere near that speed, because the company operated it over the same tracks on which it ran its other trains. Its speed was therefore limited by relatively tight turns, and, as its maiden voyage so graphically illustrated, the need to slow down at road crossings. Instead, the train topped out at around 160 kilometres per hour, and the Toronto-Montreal journey took four long hours. Given that the drive can be done in five, the TurboTrain had little chance of commercial success.

France, by comparison, was at the time following Japan’s example. Its TGV lines featured welded rails, wider curves, no road crossings, and continuous fences that prevented trespassing by animals or people, and served as noise barriers in residential areas. Since it launched, the TGV has brought French cities much closer together: the trip from Paris to Lyon — a journey just 70 kilometres shorter than the one between Toronto and Montreal — now takes less than two hours.

Canada’s political and business leaders during the ’70s responded to the unprofitability of rail travel by making matters worse. Rather than investing in separate tracks to allow for the kind of rapid rail that might have attracted new riders, CN, then a Crown corporation, sought to divest itself of all passenger operations. The decline of passenger service became an election issue in 1974, when Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals pledged to create a nationwide carrier similar to Amtrak in the US.

Soon after the Liberals returned to power, CN formed a new division with the bilingual name VIA. In 1976, the Trudeau government, which was hoping to consolidate VIA with the country’s other passenger services, promised to furnish the new carrier with a fleet of fast trains. These were of course never purchased, because it was the tracks, not the trains, that presented the real problem.

When VIA finally became a separate Crown corporation in 1978, the deal included stations, routes, and trains. Crucially, the nation’s tracks remained under CN’s control, which meant that the Turbo — and all other passenger lines — had to defer to the freight carrier’s schedule, further adding to high-speed rail’s woes. In 1982, VIA finally pulled the underused Turbo from service. Its replacement, Bombardier’s conventional, diesel-electric powered LRC (“Light, Rapid, Comfortable”), had been designed to top out at 160 kilometres per hour.

In subsequent decades, passenger rail continued to languish. Even after CN was privatized in 1995, VIA had to pay to use the company’s tracks, its trains frequently forced to yield to freight cars. As a result, no passenger train in Canada has been capable of maintaining a schedule that can compete with air or even automotive travel.

In order to fully convey the unusual nature of this made-in-Ottawa relationship, perhaps an analogy is in order: Imagine how efficient automotive travel would be if the federal government owned and operated every passenger vehicle on the Trans-Canada Highway. Then suppose the government handed the Trans-Canada itself to a multinational trucking company, which subsequently decreed that passenger vehicles would have to pull off to the shoulder whenever a truck wished to pass.

As things stand, passenger trains must often come to a standstill on a siding not far from the site of the historic Turbo crash. Riders sit and watch as freight cars laden with everything imaginable — sometimes even meat — lumber past.

Since the Turbo’s demise, a parade of proposals to restore high-speed passenger rail to Canada have come forward. The restoration of rapid rail to the corridor between Quebec City and Windsor has been studied (or had a study initiated) at least sixteen times since 1973, most recently with a $3-million review launched in February of 2009, as part of a rapprochement between Quebec premier Jean Charest and Ontario’s Dalton McGuinty.