OTTAWA, Ontario — Fleet availability for VIA Rail Canada’s Siemens Venture trainsets has dropped below 50% this winter, leading to a series of train cancellations over seven days that began on Saturday, Feb. 7, according to the nonprofit transit advocacy group Transport Action Canada.
The organization reports that VIA has begun turning the trainsets, which are equipped for push-pull operation, to run locomotive first to reduce problems with snow entering the equipment, but this has led to terminal delays.
The group cites a report last month by Le Journal de Montreal. It quotes a spokesman for Teamsters Canada, which represents VIA engineers, as saying that snow leads to trainsets shutting down several times a month. When this happens, the heating system and USB ports for passengers shut down, while lights will continue on battery power.
“The train will start to slow down and operators [will then] be able to stop the train quietly to restart the power supply,” spokesman Christopher Monette told the newspaper. “But sometimes they are not capable of it.”
The Journal article cites the December incident in which passengers were stuck overnight while traveling from Ottawa to Toronto [see “VIA passengers stranded overnight …,” Trains.com, Dec. 11, 2025]. It quotes a VIA spokesman as saying the company and Siemens are conducting “in-depth technical investigations” into that incident and had received preliminary results, but did not provide details. A Siemens spokeswoman told the newspaper that the company’s locomotives “are designed by our engineers to operate optimally and reliably throughout the year.”
Trains has also asked VIA and Siemens if they will provide any additional information.
Because of the equipment issue, VIA canceled two trips on Saturday, Feb. 7, and is slated to cancel three today, Sunday, Feb. 8: Train No. 38 (Ottawa-Montreal), and Nos. 44 and 54 (Toronto-Ottawa).
Eight trains are slated to be canceled Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, six on Thursday, and one on Friday. The full list is available in the Transport Action Canada article linked above.
— Updated Feb. 9 at 8:20 a.m. CT to correct number of cancellations on Monday and Tuesday. To report news or errors, contact trainsnewswire@firecrown.com.
This may explain why Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Poland don’t use Siemens locomotives. Three Siemens machines were evaluated by Norway, but were returned.
Why don’t VIA and Amtrak do such basic research as this?
Has nothing to do with fuel. In my career as a locomotive engineer with both CSX and Amtrak I never had a unit shut down due to fuel gelling. Unless things have changed, a diesel prime mover does not burn all the fuel supplied to the motor. The unburned fuel is returned to the fuel tank which warms the fuel. Winter troubles for the Siemens locomotives as soon as they faced their first winter in Michigan. Notice all the Michigan trains being cancelled. I had a regular run from Toledo to Buffalo. Not once did I have a P42 give me trouble because of snow. And if you want snow Cleveland to Buffalo will deliver it.
I totally agree with you James. I worked for Amtrak in Saint Paul, MN. 17 years and in Minot, ND. for 14 months of those 17 years. When I was working there they had the F40’s and began acquiring the P42’s new. When I left in 2015 the P42’s had been around for several years. I do not remember issues with snow and cold weather like they seem to have now. We definitely know what cold weather is in both places and we also get our share of snow.
These new locomotives seem to be rolling electronic computers which do not well in severe weather conditions.
Amtrak ran into the same problem on the Empire Builder and the Borealis service. These Siemens Mobility sets are not built for extreme cold. They need to ask Brightline how they fixed this the problem. Also they are going to have to ask Amtrak also how they winterized their flight.
Not much snow in Florida 😀
I used the Internet for some research on locomotive, especially Siemens Chargers, operation in cold and snowy North America weather. First, I could not find any mention of problems with the Cummins QSK95 prime movers used in Siemens units. There are known problems of #2 diesel fuel gelling at temperatures below 10F. The solutions include mixing #2 with #1 diesel, use of anti-gel additives, and fuel heaters. Webtec (GE) and Progress (EMD) use fuel pre-heaters. It was hard to find what Siemens does. This link from an additive maker has a good discussion of the gel problem in general.
https://howesproducts.com/blog/article/at-what-temperature-does-diesel-fuel-gel-and-how-to-prevent-it
I found mention of snow ingestion problems in Siemens Charger air intakes. Fine snow inside the carbody can cause all kinds of electrical and other problems. This might explain why VIA runs their train sets locomotive forward as swirling snow is less of a problem when running locomotive forward.
Those of us in the northeast may recall the failure of many PRR GG-1 electrics in February, 1958. Extra fine snow entered the carbodies and caused many motor problems. Moving the air intakes higher was one solution.
I am sure Siemens, VIA, Amtrak and other cold/snowy operators of these locomotives will find solutions, hopefully sooner rather than later.
That is how brightline fixed the problem and give that information to Amtrak. Amtrak and brightline run their locomotives on number 12 biodiesel which is mixed with a special coolant and antifreeze to prevent the ethanol from gelling up inside of the fuel tank and inside the engine. Brightline has to deal with extreme heat, Amtrak on the Empire Builder and on the Borealis they have to deal with extreme cold unfortunately, the Canadians did not learn from the lessons of Brightline and Amtrak. That is why their engines are freezing up.
I see that so far…….nobody pointed to Gulfstream business jets and their fuel system freezing up in Canada’s winter (which led to the whole recent tariff controversy with Bombardier jets). I think this is normal, some things cannot be tested easily. Also, I suspect they do not physically test things as completely as they used to do in the past and probably they rely more on computer modeling / simulations.
With both Amtrak and VIA having these problems Siemens is really going to be left with no excuse. Am wondering if the Cummins diesel is the culprit.
There are unconfirmed reports that the QSK diesel is the only diesel that is available due to some kind of exclusive document.
Bring back the F40PH’s, never heard of these issues when VIA and Amtrak were operating them.
F40PH’s operated in same climate conditions? You sure about that because I read climate is changing in Canada and not for the better.
How’s the weather in America? Last August 10th, I woke up in Brookfield Township, Wisconsin, to the sound of unbelievable and unending rain. The next day, the news media had videos of a raging river (not standing water) a few miles from here, down the CPKC main in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. Having lived through the annual hurricanes in 1950’s Massachusetts, the 1988 drought in Michigan, and the annual hundred-year floods 1997 and 1998 in Wisconsin, this was the thousand-year flood.
USA has the world’s worst weather and Canada can’t be much different. There are pockets of predictable weather here and there in America, such as San Diego or Hawaii. Most of America, from Florida to Anchorage, the weather boomerangs from too hot to too cold, from too humid to too dry, from flood to drought, to hurricane and/or tornado to blizzard to Biblical rain, with a few days of habitable weather, hopefully, in between.
The weather in America is terrible. The d….ed trains are supposed to run in bad or changeable weather but they don’t.