Huron Central Railway which runs in northern Ontario from Sudbury to Sault Ste. Marie will cease all operations in December of this year. The line services many prominent industries in the area including Eacom, Domtar and Algoma Steel. The total carload shipments are 12000 carloads per year. This will result in 40,000 extra trucks travelling Ontario roads per year as these shipments shift to road transport. This line serves as an important link for the railroads to facilitate shipments to and from Sault Ste. Marie. In letting this fade, railroads are surrenduring a large industrial market to road transport. CP who owns the line and is leasing it to Huron Central has stated that they will abandon the line upon to termination of the lease.
This is just another line to close or face an uncertain future in Ontario over the last few years. Freight rail is dying in Ontario and the Huron Central Railway is sadly the next victim.
Genesee & Wyoming has been holding a figurative gun to Ontario’s head for close to a decade where Huron Central is concerned. The province injected some money a few years back to maintain rail service to the customers on the line and I imagine if they would spring for the right figure now, G&W would keep the railroad operating.
I don’t live in Ontario (or Canada, for that matter) so it’s easy for me to be cavalier with Canadian taxpayers money. Perhaps the province needs to purchase the line, assuming responsibility for maintenance costs, then contract with a railroad to perform the train operations.
The large shippers / receivers located on Huron Central would have to represent a significant tax and employment base.
Huron Central has been losing money for years, and has been kept in operation by government subsidies.
A quick Google Earth ‘flyover’ of the line reveals no obvious customers between Sault Ste. Marie and the large mill at Espanola, which is about 40 miles west of Sudbury. This means that the western 75% of the route has no online customers that are not served by another railroad, this being CN in Sault Ste. Marie.
How many of those 12,000 carloads are to/from the large industrial plants in Sault Ste. Marie? Much of that will probably shift to CN and stay on the rails.
Along with the Ottawa Valley route to the east, what is now Huron Central once formed part of a lesser known Canadian Pacific system transcontinental route, using Soo Line and Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic rails in the U.S. before rejoining CP proper in Saskatchewan. This route north of Lake Huron and south of Lake Superior was a key element of the Pacific Scandal (which brought down Canada’s first federal government), as the original owner of the Canadian Pacific charter had conspired with Jay Cooke to use the Northern Pacific as the western half of a transcontinental railroad, while only building feeder branchlines into what is now western Canada instead of the main transcontinental trunk, the idea being that traffic would flow to the U.S, which would eventually annex most of what is now Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia.
But this line has not been a through route for decades and has become dependent on local mining and forestry-related traffic, like so many backwoods branch lines.
I don’t like this either, but it’s not exactly a surprise for this particular line.
Trains 27/28 between Sudbury and the Soo provided through service connecting with The Dominion 7/8
to and from Montreal as well as 3/4 The Dominion to and from Toronto including sleeping and parlor cars.
All trains ran Daily. Also, connecting with SOO Line 7/8 to and from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
It is unlikely that much will stay on the rails at all and Huron Central anticipates this. The traffic takes Huron Central because it doesn’t make sense to take a longer routing to market by using CN. Some of the lines biggest customers are closer to Sudbury and it will not be possible to serve them with rail once the line closes. It would actually make a lot more sense for the Sault to Hearst line to be abandoned as it is has far fewer customers and is used significantly less than Huron Central, not to mention the fact that a Sault to Sudbury link is far more strategically important than sault to Hearst. The Sault to Hearst section also features many more maintenance intensive infrastructure like large trestles that make it more expensive to operate. With that said, it makes no sense to abandon either. Any abandonment will severely hurt the rail industry in the region as well as the economy as a whole with some industries likely to close or reduce operations as a result. This will be particularly harmful to Algoma Steel which is currently trying to build itself back up and expand. Domtar may be forced to cease operations at the plant served by this line as a result of the closure. Though it makes sense that something like this would happen. It seems that in Canada, the only lines that are abandoned are the useful or strategically important ones.
Other parties like Diesel Electric Services in Sudbury have expressed interest in the line this year. Some have suggested Ontario Northland could take it over. It would probably be best if G&W wasn’t operating the line anymore. Fingers crossed I guess, but we’ll see. The line is marginally profitable with good prospects for growth, but the reason it is in the mess that it is is due to the expense of upgrading level crossings and other safety
News of the Huron Central closure seems to come around every year at this time… maybe this year its really going to happen. Not enough online business to make this line viable…
The rule of thumb is 100 cars per year per mile of track operated. Looking at the Wickipedia entry for the railroad, it looks like they started of with enough traffic to meet the rule, but it’s been declining.
“The Domtar pulp and specialty paper mill in Espanola relies on rail service for inbound manufacturing chemicals and outbound finished product destined for customers. We are hopeful that the investment proposals put forward to the provincial and federal governments by the Huron Central Railway will be carefully considered and supported,” said Bonny Skene, regional public affairs manager for the Espanola mill.
Domtar, which employs more than 500 people in Espanola, can’t operate without the line because it doesn’t have the ability to operate by truck, spelling disaster for the company and The Town of Espanola and Nairn Centre.
Sheehan said he would like to see a national strategy developed that examines both the provincial and federal issues, and would ensure long-term sustainability for the all short haul rail services, many whom face difficulties, across Canada.
“The conversation has not ended,” Romano said. “We are very hopeful that we can address this. There is a plan in place and we’ve been working very closely on it and we hope we will have more information for you in the weeks to come.”
Both governments have implemented millions of dollars into the steel and forestry industry and both Sheehan and Romano said they understands the importance of the regional economy, but that needs to be examined in tandem with opportunities for the sustainability of the rail line.
One wonders immediately what the number of cars to Domtar per train, and per year, are.
One also wonders how many other facilities in Canada would be effectively stranded if their rail service was discontinued, or might be placed in a comparable situation if new legislation on truck damage to roads made it difficult for trucks to provide cost-effective access to them.
Probably too crappy for truckers to navigate regularly. Load volume might chew up both the trucks and the roads in fairly short order. Those having to fix either one might say quite a bit concerning finances…
Has there been any talk of operating only from Sudbury to Espanola (about 40 miles of main track) to keep serving those mills?
I believe CN is currently attempting to sell the former ACR line, it lost its major traffic source when the iron mines around Michipicoten closed in the 1990s, and the remaining traffic (mostly forest products) has been in decline as well.
