Putting on the new VIA Rail TurboTrain livery - HSRC Collection On July 10th, 2024, VIA Rail released a publicity campaign for their Windsor to Quebec City corridor new train sets. The Siemens Venture trains, powered by Siemens Charger locomotives, will be fully in service across the entire corridor by the fall of this year. High Speed Rail Canada salutes VIA Rail’s acknowledgement of its past train, the TurboTrain in their new livery of the Lumi. According to the VIA Rail press release, Introducing Lumi, the unique train of its new Corridor fleet, which bears VIA Rail’s classic monochrome yellow all while keeping the signature linear lines of the new trains. Lumi will be the only new train (Simple and efficient, the monochrome yellow, our brand’s signature colour) with this unique exterior design and acts as a reminder of the beginning of a new era for passenger rail. As others have done when introducing a new fleet, VIA Rail wanted to make a strong gesture by differentiating one of ...

It is hard to imagine but we did use to manufacture high speed trains in Canada. You have to go back to the mid 1960s when Canadian National built the TurboTrain. The TurboTrains  were built by Montreal Locomotive Works, with their ST6 engines supplied by UAC's Canadian division (now Pratt & Whitney Canada) in Longueuil, Quebec Times are definitely different now. In 2012, Caterpillar Inc closed its Electro-Motive locomotive plant in London, Ontario. In July 2019, Bombardier announced it will cut up to half its work force at Thunder Bay rail-car plant. This was after Bombardier had severely mismanaged orders for the Toronto Transit Commission. We can build modern high speed trains in Canada if the corporate, public and political will was there to  support it. Here is a link to a larger photo of the Turbo trains being built.

New evidence suggest Canada's first and only high speed train went even faster than previous known in test runs. Amazing TurboTrain photo by John Stewart  What a shock to us at High Speed Rail Canada. We thought we knew everything about the CN Turbo Trains that used to run in Canada from 1968-1982. It is a well known fact that the TurboTrain reached a well documented record speed of 226 km/h in 1976 speed runs. This record will stand even after VIA Rail spends $1 billion on new trains from Siemens. Please see previous blog POST for photo of certificate given to those on the historic run. Recently we were reviewing our TurboTrain Footage on our Youtube page and found this amazing fact. On Part 1 of the three part documentary 1970 film on the Turbotrain by CN, it states at 6:08 into the video that, "These features helped Turbo to achieve speeds of up to 170 mph on test runs" . (273 km/h) The key words in the statement above regarding the speed is " of u...

Lorne Perry Collection - Turbo Train You have waited long enough! Visit our Turbo Train page and click on the Lorne Perry Collection to see these rare professionally shot photos. While you are on the page check out the world's largest collection of video and audio of the Turbo Train. For people wanting to bring back the Turbo Train, no problem, the original Equipment Diagrams are included on the Turbo Page also. http://www.highspeedrailcanada.com/p/uac-cn-turbo-train-archives.html

http://www.wireservice.ca/index.php?module=News&func=display&sid=11234 High Speed Rail Canada is releasing to the public for free the Canadian National Railways 1966 press releases and background material relating to the introduction of the Canadian National/United Aircraft high speed Turbotrain. Media Release - November 19th, 2013 - High Speed Rail Canada is a national non profit organization dedicated to educating Canadians on the benefits of modern passenger rail in Canada. They do it through their blog, youtube video channel, Facebook site and public symposiums. High Speed Rail Canada has the largest audio and video collection of the United Aircraft and Canadian National Turbotrain. This train ran from 1968 through to 1982. It was Canada's high speed train with speeds over 200km/h. These 1966 CN and UAC Press Releases and background material, including diagrams and models of the Turbotrain, are being made available for the first time in over four decades. Paul La...