Future discomfort aside, though, Queen’s Park did this in relatively intelligent fashion. Rather than insist on some bespoke train for Northern Ontario, it piggybacked on Via Rail’s order of new trainsets from Siemens, whose rolling stock transports many Canadians from A to B: Calgary’s and Edmonton’s LRTs, for example, and Via Rail’s new trainsets on the Windsor-to-Quebec City corridor. Via’s new European-style trainsets — with a locomotive at each end — aren’t resounding successes as of yet. Notably, they have had trouble in snow. Via is currently affixing old locomotives to the new trainsets in hopes of getting them where they’re going. The new trainsets also aren’t big enough to automatically trigger level-crossing signals to the satisfaction of CN, which owns most of the rails on which Via Rail operates — and many of rails on which the Northlander will operate. (“We are working with rail industry partners to explore solutions,” a Ministry of Transportation spokesperson said in an email.)