(Mr. Finish Line from UT) How come you're not on that train :P . I was actually just in Quebec City and we flew from Toronto. My wife wishes Via had sleeper trains so we could travel there overnight. I thought the QC-MTL route had a lot of slow sections. Didn't realize they were able to go approx full speed.
We were driving from Fredericton NB to Toronto with three people and a carload of stuff. I did check the bus/train option but it was completely impractical and unaffordable. From Fredericton you'd take the Maritime Bus to Rivière du Loup, then the VIA Ocean to Montréal and another VIA to Toronto. Problem being that the Ocean passes through RDL at 3 in the morning... It would also be possible to take Orléans Express from RDL to Montréal but then there's an extra transfer and it's even slower. Québec to Toronto is the perfect distance/time for an overnight train, but the problem is that there isn't enough travel demand to support it. There is however plenty of demand for Toronto-Chicago, the problem is that the border crossing is halfway and would thus end up in the middle of the night unless we build a pre-clearance facility in Toronto.
The QC-MTL line has a few slowdowns such as in central Montréal and in Drummondville but in general it's good for 95 mph. Along this particular stretch trains need to slow to 75 mph (120 km/h) for several curves but those are pretty far apart.
That's a long trip by car or by train! Yeah I wouldn't expect too many people to do that by rail. I would definitely take an overnight Toronto-Chicago or Toronto-NYC sleeper train, but absolutely would need to have customs at Union and again we might fall into a demand issue to set something like that up.
@@simoneh4732 Yeah I think the first "proof of concept" would be Montreal - New York since they're building a customs facility in Montreal anyway. I figure it would make most sense for the Montreal-Vermont-NewYork service to run overnight, though Vermont wouldn't be happy about that and they're the ones who actually pay for that train...
@@simoneh4732 back before the dinosaurs one could go from Fredericton directly through Maine to Montréal overnight on CP rail. Someone will contradict me, but i expect 40 years of ownership flips and neglect have reduced that line to 30 to 50 kph.
