Montreal-Ottawa/Toronto vs. Adirondack - winter reliability

[canadian_walker]

How is winter reliability (track maintenance, snow storms, big delays/cancellations) on (VIA Rail) Montreal-Ottawa or Montreal-Toronto vs. Amtrak Adirondack (NYC->Montreal) in January, please?

If there is a cancellation, which one works harder (like adding extra carriages to the later trains - never heard of on Amtrak Cascades).

And (ignoring the border crossing), is any of the two a much better/worse travel experience? Do economy seats on any of them have power sockets? Do the cars/seats on various Montreal-Ottawa or Montreal-Toronto trains differ much?

 

[jis]

Just from the fact that the Montreal/Ottawa/Toronto/Quebec City is VIA's premier corridor with many trains each day, while Adirondack is a side show of a side show for Amtrak Empire Service on a very sparsely used route, it would imply that the VIA service would be more reliable than Adirondack in the face of any disruption.

 

[Trogdor]

How is winter reliability (track maintenance, snow storms, big delays/cancellations) on (VIA Rail) Montreal-Ottawa or Montreal-Toronto vs. Amtrak Adirondack (NYC->Montreal) in January, please?

If there is a cancellation, which one works harder (like adding extra carriages to the later trains - never heard of on Amtrak Cascades).

And (ignoring the border crossing), is any of the two a much better/worse travel experience? Do economy seats on any of them have power sockets? Do the cars/seats on various Montreal-Ottawa or Montreal-Toronto trains differ much?

As jis noted, VIA runs more frequently, and there’s less likelihood of them just pulling the plug and cancelling for random reasons. I don’t think either is likely to add cars to another train in the event of a cancellation (though, I suppose, it depends on the reason for the cancellation).

VIA also has something like three or four different equipment types that run on their corridor, and they each have different seating arrangements. Somewhere there’s a list floating around of what the equipment rotation is scheduled to be, but that doesn’t mean they can’t swap it around if needed.

In theory, VIA *can* offer a better experience than Amtrak (particularly in VIA 1 vs. Amtrak business class, which isn’t offered on the Adirondack anyway), but in my experience it can have its own hit-or-miss qualities to it.

 

[lordsigma]

The Windsor - Quebec City corridor is, essentially, VIA’s equivalent of the Northeast Corridor while the Adirondack is probably the most at risk train in the Amtrak National Network with a host (CN) that would love to see it go and a state (New York) seemingly not really making it a priority. So the answer should be obvious.

 

[jis]

The Windsor - Quebec City corridor is, essentially, VIA’s equivalent of the Northeast Corridor while the Adirondack is probably the most at risk train in the Amtrak National Network. So the answer should be obvious.

Strictly speaking the Adirondack is not a National Network train. It is an Empire Service train funded by New York State. Actually its state funded status dates back to the 403b days.

 

[lordsigma]

Strictly speaking the Adirondack is not a National Network train. It is an Empire Service train funded by New York State. Actually its state funded status dates back to the 403b days.

I always thought Amtrak considered both the long distance network and state supported trains to together comprise the national network (as the federal operating subsidy for the state supported business line after accounting for state subsidies/payments comes from the NN account.)

 

[jis]

I always thought Amtrak considered both the long distance network and state supported trains to together comprise the national network (as the federal operating subsidy for the state supported business line after accounting for state subsidies/payments comes from the NN account.)

Yes, they have done that even though the legislation governing them says otherwise. That has always been a problem with Amtrak. They try to do random things that they are not supposed to do Whatever helps to obfuscate to hide the real state of affairs.