my job took me to a town in north eastern Ontario. Along the way I noticed where the right of way has been removed and in another area where they are in the process of removing tracks. A quick google search showed that Canadian Pacific Railway is in the process of removing a section of branch line from Smith Falls Ontario going west which is about 480 km long. Canadian Pacific prefers to route all the trains south from Smith Falls to Toronto and then north to Sudbury and beyond. This track being removed is a shorter northern route which is more direct which is from Smith Falls going west to Sudbury.
My question is would it not make sense to keep this route operational in case of a major mishap on the current main line? Also with the current situation of higher fuel prices one would think that a direct route would be more favourable. What are your opinions?
Railroads want the lines they operate to generate revenue.
How much on line industry was there on the line being removed? My guess is very little if any, and I suspect the line being retained has a higher level of on line traffic.
What is the grade on the line being removed? My guess is that while the line being removed is shorter, it has more severe grades and therefore costs more for the carrier to operate.
How many millions of $$$$$$ are you willing to spend yearly, to maintain a line that does not generate any traffic, just so you can have a emergency line, in case the primary line becomes blocked?
I can rest assured the owner of the line has evaluated it from all the aspects of revenue generation, maintenance investment and operational utility before they made the decision to abandon it.
CN did the very same with the elimination of their Beechburg Sub in the 90s… Routing east/west traffic through Toronto adds more miles to trips for freight originating or terminating east of Ontario, the net result is lower overall cost as both roads eliminate the need to maintain hundreds of miles of track through the wilderness. Moreover, neither CP’s or CN’s lines had much online traffic to speak of…
Would it make sense to have a backup furnace, air conditioner,car, etc.? You don’t because of the cost. How much do you think that redundancy cost CP? What reasons other than mileage influenced their decision?
And barring some major chemical emergency (Paulsboro wreck), even the nastiest, most piled-up, scrap-metal making wrecks can be tossed aside enough to open up a main line track pretty quick.
Sometimes concentrating the traffic from 2 (or more) routes onto only 1 results in “economies of scale” efficiencies and actual reductions in the unit costs per carload for the through traffic to/ from/ on each of the routes, as opposed to duplicative and diluted facilties, staff, operations, etc.
Even if the wreck is a major one, does the other line have enough sidings and signals to handle the detoured mainline train volume ? Plus (as BaltACD has pointed out before): Are there enough crews qualified and rested - in the right place and for the right direction - to handle that volume of trains on the other line ? Unfortunately, usually not . . .
CN and CP have been known to help each other out…in the event of a serious wreck on either line, traffic could and probably would be diverted to the other.
I agree with the comments from everyone. It is frustrating none the less to see another line being ripped up. Still I think that maybe not currently but in the future a line such as this might come in useful as the traffic levels increase. This way even the base infrastructure has been ripped up making it even more difficult to possibly re use this route.
This seems to be a common lament in the railfan community when business starts picking up years after a line was taken up. Management would need an incredibly accurate crystal ball to foresee future needs and traffic patterns that far into the future when abandonments are being considered.
The CP line has been closed as a through route for a number of years. Before closure it was used by the pair of Montreal Intermodal trains and the occasional Winter grain trains going to the Port of Quebec City during the closure of the St. Lawrence Seaway. There was an attempt by CP and CN to put together a single route through the area by combining the best portions of each others lines. What prevented this from happening was a portion of the combined route that was CN’s line passed through Algonquin National Park, and vocal NIMBYs protested against the restoration of, and increased amount of rail traffic through the Park. CN’s trackage had been closed for less than a year at that point and there had been no removal of the track or bridges.