As per CN’s three year plan, all of its operations in Ottawa will be discontinued. This means that Ottawa will be added to the ever-growing list of cities with absolutely no freight rail service. Costumers left behind from the closure include Rideau Bulk, SynAgri, Kott Lumber, Nylene Canada and Ivaco Rolling Mills.
Good news if you are a trucker, but otherwise, it is quite unfortunate.
Further reading:
Regrettable. The undoing and unraveling.
" So long and thanks for all the fish "
Really? A metro area of a million+ doesn’t ship or receive enough traffic to support a rail line?
I’m going to wait and see what some of the rest of the Canadians have to say about this.
All I see is mention of a spur that has made far below break-even for years, that no private operating company wants to take over, and that (if I understand the present situation correctly) the affected provincial authorities want no part of either.
The thing that came to mind was the West Side freight line in Manhattan, certainly one of the last providers of ‘carload’ freight as far down as St. John’s Park on the High Line. Plenty of ‘traffic’ on that line in my childhood; now its ‘first best use’ is as an Amtrak connection out of Penn Station, but with little if any service south of there.
What is the current situation for intermodal merchandise freight service to the Ottawa metro area?
Some things to keep in mind.
Modern Ottawa is a government town. Not much heavy industry. Historically it was the centre of the Ottawa valley’s massive lumber, pulp and paper industry, but that has been decimated in recent years.
The city is no longer on a main rail line, CN and CP both have abandoned their direct routes between Montreal and Sudbury. This track was already a shortline for some time before CN bought it back.
Ottawa is about 125 miles from Montreal, and the consumer goods market there will be served by both railways from their Montreal-area intermodal terminals.
And finally, placing a rail line on the “intent to discontinue” list is a first step in a three year long regulatory process. Once put on the list CN has to wait a year before doing anything, then they have to offer it for sale for a year, and finally it must be offered at the scrap value price to local governments.
I’m not happy about this either, but none of this has happened overnight, or in a vacuum.
If I understand the information he linked, which contains a number of dates and bylines, correctly, most of the three-year process was started before 2018, and I think what prompted him to actually post here is a decision by the provincial authorities that they’re unwilling to contribute the ‘fair market value’ of scrapping the line and then assuming responsibility to keep it in operation.
It was difficult for me to understand how a private entity would succeed drumming up enough business to keep it open, or to operate it as anything much more than a shoestring deferred-maintenance sort of thing…
Is Ottawa still the Capital of Canada? Does VIA serve Ottawa?
Since the only industry in Washington DC is government, I guess CSX should close up shop since it is the only carrier serving the District!
Not having the capital of a country not served by rail is a rather drastic statement.
VIA has a busy service in and out of Ottawa. In fact, they own the track, having bought it when CN and CP tried to abandon it some years ago.
The line in question here does not host VIA service.
The map in the Capital Current link also shows the lines VIA uses and owns (Smith’s Falls and Alexandria Subs).
Just want to give CN and CP congratulations for adding an additional 150+ miles to their transcontinental journies by forcing everything through Toronto. A real good way to cut down on transit times and make your service truck competitive.
But seriously, the lack of a bypass for Toronto in the event of an emergency is a huge weakness in Canada’s rail network, but one that was entirely self inflicted.
There are two segments here. One is the 25 mile long branch from Glen Robertson (on VIA’s Alexandria Sub), well to the east of Ottawa, that goes to Hawkesbury and then L’Orignal. A number of years back there was a small industrial area in Hawkesbury, with a handful of rail served operations. The end of the line was at a mini-mill steel operation. It had been spun off to the Ottawa Central quite a few years back, and then CN reacquired it as a possibly unwelcome part of a larger package. I have no idea what traffic is like now.
The second segment is in Ottawa itself, and includes Walkley Yard. It presumably connects to the Renfrew Spur, which last I heard was limping along with minimal traffic. As others mentioned, Ottawa itself no longer provides much in the way of rail freight, at least of the type today’s railways want to handle.
John
You’re right. And I thought the same things as those lines were spun off and abandoned.
I wonder if CN and CP ever considered saving one of the lines for joint operation. Did the government worry about the loss of this important line?
No, not at all. Canada’s rail network is in horrible shape, and the government isn’t concerned about it at all. The fact that they would allow mainlines like those through the Ottawa Valley be abandoned without consideration of the consequences is indicative of how little the Canadian government cares about critical infrastructure. It is the reason why we are currently in the situation we are with lines like the Cayuga subdivision, BC Rail, CN in Ottawa, and Huron Central.
It is hard to have any positive outlook for the Canadian rail industry when repeatedly and deliberately, the Canadian government and class 1 rail companies have taken steps to severely undermine it’s competitiveness.
It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say that the rail in Canada has no future.
The Central left, too.
https://churcher.crcml.org/Articles/art2003_09.jpg
https://churcher.crcml.org/circle/Wreck%20Details/1927Embrun.html
https://churcher.crcml.org/Articles/art2003_08.jpg
Back in the Fifties we used to drive then Highway No 2 to Kingston, a slow trip on a no shoulder road passing a multitude of towns.
Thru Cornwall paralled the canal, The Cornwall Street Railway ( Which had Trolley Buses ) and beneath the Central Bridge at the upstream end of town hard by the large electrically-switched Courtaulds Cellulose Mill.
https://ingeniumcanada.org/archives/details/MAT-05384
https://stlawrencepiks.com/seawayhistory/beforeseaway/cornwall/cornwall%20canal%20116a.jpg
https://cornwallcommunitymuseum.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/p87-101-116_trolley-waits-at-pm_wm.jpg
Courtaulds No 7. 1900.
They tried that back in the 1990s, before the remaining lines were sold to shortlines.
I believe most of the CN lines between Pembroke and Capreol were abandoned, with remaining through traffic diverted onto the CP line, which was subsequently sold to Railink, becoming the Ottawa Valley Railway. CN and CP retained trackage rights for through trains.
This survived as a through route until about 2009, when CP decided to reroute its few remaining through trains to go via Toronto. CN had done the same some years earlier.
With almost zero local traffic left between Mattawa and Smiths Falls, the rails were removed along this stretch in 2011-2012.
Like I said before, I don’t like any of this. In fact, I agree with the OP that this was a great strategic mistake on the part of both CN and CP. But I recognize the economic forces that led to the decisions.
It is also worth noting that both railways ceased viewing the Ottawa Valley route as important years before Hunter Harrison took control of them.
The Ontario government should have bought the Beachburg Sub when it was put up for abandonment in the late 2000s, and made it part of Ontario Northland.
What is the status of the QGRY line to Gatineau? Opportunity there to assume some operations from across the river?
Possibly, but CP is looking to (re)acquiring the QGRY to get back to Quebec City. It would be funny if the GGRY took control of the line only for it to be sold to CP.
On a family vacation in 1959, starting from Garrett, IN we drove up across the Mackinac Bridge onto the Soo. Next day was to be from the Soo to Ottawa (my dad mis read the map and thought it was closer than it really was. Recall we stopped at some small town ‘diner’ for lunch. Dad ordered a BLT - the lettuce and tomato were as expected, the bacon was raw strips (is that a Canadian thing?). We also drove through Sudbury - from the appearance, I thought we had landed on the Moon - the desolation of vegitation being done in by the gases being released into the atmosphere from the smelters in the area. Wherever the wind blew, things were killed.
Below picture is of me in front of the House of Parliament in Ottawa.
I seem to recall there was quite a bit of rail traffic that was moving in the valley behind Parliament - I could be mistaken as that was 61 years ago.
When my grandfather was still active, we’d go fishing every year on the Cabonga Reservoir, when there were still 35" or bigger pike to be had, before it was opened up as the Parc de la Verendrye and I was told the locals effectively fished it out. We got there by way of Maniwaki, and before that crossing the river at Hull, which I remember as being alive with trains in the mid-'60s.
I don’t remember actually seeing anything on rails as we got north into the Gatineau (I think it’s the Val D’Or region) so even then traffic might have been low.
I guess I was lucky that in the late 80s I rode the Montreal section of the Canadian while it was still on the CP route, thru the Ottawa Valley.
