Wednesday, October 03, 2012

News On IRSI

VIA 3368 in Windsor, Ontario
The CBC is reporting that a deal has been struck to get some VIA railcars finished at the former IRSI facility in Moncton, New Brunswick.

14 railcars will be refurbished over the next 19 months. These 14 include 4 RDCs and 10 LRC cars. The work will be overseen by CAD Railway Industries, who certainly have the expertise required, given that they have been refurbishing VIA's locomotives.

IRSI will remain in receivership and the province will not recover its $20.5 million investment in the company and the VIA Rail project since it began in May 2009.

Wendell Lemon noted that there are 12 LRC cars (3303, 3310, 3320, 3321, 3326, 3327, 3330, 3332, 3345, 3362, 3452 and 3461) and 6 RDCs (6105, 6208, 6217, 6219, 6250 and 6251) in the shop at the moment. Presumably two of the LRC cars and two of the RDCs can be moved to another facility (CAD's?) to be completed. Thanks toWendell for this detailed information.

The whole thing is a darn shame for IRSI, for VIA Rail, for the province and especially for the workers. Hopefully some of them can get some work for the next year and a half.

2 comments:

Degas Dog said...

My condolences to IRSI, They are good people that did their best. Caution to repair facilities dealing with Via. Via has a difficulty in making decisions that add costs and time delays to the project's advancement.

This is the 2nd company that has gone bankrupt over a Via contract. The first was Septa Rail in Coteau du Lac

Degas Dog said...

My condolences to IRSI. They are great people that tried hard on this contract.

Caution to all others, except Bombardier, who land contracts from Via on a cost + basis at taxpayers expense.

IRSI is the second company that has had to go bankruct over a Via contract. The first was Septa Rail in Coteau du Lac.

Via just cannot make decisions that result in project delays, or unforeseen changes that increase costs.

Beware of any contract based on Revision 0 drawings.