CPR's Arbutus rail corridor: DeRails are designed for track grades at 2.2%. What about 9.8%?

It's all about the money.  Vancouver has offered $20 million for the Arbutus Corridor. CPR wants $100 million.

 A plan by Canadian Pacific Railway to run trains along the Arbutus Corridor means it will be riskier for children learning about plant biodiversity in a communal garden in the area, according to an organizer.  Vancouver Sun - Brian Morton, Tiffany Crawford, Jeff Lee

"Run trains" is a gross overstatement.

Oh the irony, Vancouver's Shaughnessy, created by CPR to 'house' their financial backers in the early 1900s are now being subjected to the railway ruthlessness of subjecting children, their children, to unscheduled movement of rail cars blocking the 9 major thoroughfares of Fourth, Burrard, Broadway, 12th, 16th, King Edward (25th), 33rd, 41st, 49th, and Marine Drive.  Of course there are others who will be impacted: businesses, students, employees, YVR bound visitors, Point Grey and South slope residents, and the UBC Endowment Land folks like the Mayor for Vancouver hopeful, what's his name.... Lapointedly.


First to be stopped will be the infamous red-light running Premier Christy Clark traveling from her home, in Shaughnessy to deliver her precious child Prince to St. George's school for the elite.  They'll have to get up and start an hour earlier.

If the City of Vancouver wants to send a clear message to CPR, to its citizens and visitors, then starting this Summer they could set up traffic control blockades, or post signs of hypothetical times that the corridor will be shut down for the movement of CPR rail cars on a dead end line used for storage purposes only.   Pity the poor rail customer that finds the delay in receiving his shipment from CPR is because it's sitting at Fourth and Fir.  Dead Space for a rail car to sit while it could be on its way to Brampton.  It will sit there until Vancouver negotiates, in good faith.

The Arbutus Corridor rail cars will not be going from A to B!  The rail cars are going from A and back to A!

9.8% Grade between 37th and 33rd

Between 37th and 33rd there's the 'Big Bend', a 9.8% Grade from high to low and back again.  Any curve that is introduced to a rail line creates friction between rail track and railcar wheels that SQUEALs incessantly.  In that space of four blocks there will be a lot of complaints about noise, vibration too, and children's safety.  Chain link fence, razor barb wire topped would help as a deterrent. Swing chain link gates at intersecting roadways would be of assistance, doing double duty by blocking road traffic and then blocking access to the rail corridor.

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Yoho National Park: Double Spiral Tunnels built on a slope with a steep grade of 4.5%, more than twice the maximum of 2.2% allowed, according to CPR Directives: 

Field BC  CPR Station

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News 1130 - Steepest grade in all of British Columbia

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The train engine will always be to the South, shunting monthly, however  if CPR decides to increase the capacity of rail cars within the narrow corridor to two or three or four or five tracks wide, now that would means that there will be hourly movements, hourly road closures.


But what if someone(s) wants to give CPR a public relation's nightmare?  By far, the easiest way is to install a device that CPR, and other Rail companies, employ: the derailer.   Trains stay on the track by having the wheel rims inside the rail tracks.  To stop a train, as in Lac Megantic a Derail would have sent one wheel up a small ramp and drop outside forcing, and pulling the parallel wheel with it too.


Remember Lac Megantic's bursting into flames, loss of lives all of a result of the cheap skates at  Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway telling their employees not to invoke mechanical rail locking devices.  They relied on the Engine brakes, not properly set.


DeRail devices were designed to prevent accidents like La Megantic's from happening.

EB Hayes hinged Derailer - BBC Post

ALDON

Aldon Portable Derailers