I was wondering how this rail line was doing. Is there just grain trains & VIA go up here or is there a fair amount of general frieght that is taken up here. Inquiring minds want to know.
I looked at http://maps.google.com/ and followed the line from Churchill, MB to a junction in the middle of nowhere in SK. I noticed that the line goes through hundreds of miles of inhospitable, and surreal, looking terrain. I saw a fuel terminal at Churchill, a LPG terminal just south of there, a couple of substations with a spur going into them, and a place where it looks like they load logs unto car, all north of the The Pas, MB. The log place may have been south of The Pas. The resolution from The Pas to the junction was very poor for most of the distance.
There was also an abandoned line, or spur, with an abandoned yard in the middle of nowhere. The ROW has been obliterated south of the yard and there is no sign of anything anywhere near there. I wonder what the yard and spur were for. Does anyone know?
Here is the junction.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=58.158105,-94.14&spn=0.00643,0.023518&t=h&z=16&om=1
Here is the yard.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=58.16158,-93.969197&spn=0.012859,0.047035&t=h&z=15&om=1
Here is a zoomed out view showing there the yard is located (center of the screen).
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&om=1&ll=58.16158,-93.969197&spn=1.646012,6.020508&z=8
as I write, this line is embargoed – maintenance problems out in the middle of East Nowhere. Via was flying people out of Churchill. They’ll be back up and running in a few weeks. It’s the only way to get into that territory other than by air.
eric
What I believe you are seeing is a pit or other site for fill and other construction material for the deepsea port of Churchill aboput 60 miles distant. There were no construction materials readily available elsewhere in the quantities they needed at the time. If you look at the yard on the map it is to the west and south of a rather larger cleared area that appears inconsistent with the surrounding terrain. I’ll have to do some more research but I do remember some archival work I did about 12 years ago that rings a bell.
jchnhtfd
That section of line from Gillam north in the HBR funs through some pretty significant muskeg (of the sub-arctic variety) especially the last 80 miles into Churchill. It was permanently slow ordered and often closed IIRC because of extremely soft track and other ROW issues. This embargo fits with the breakup period when the ROW would be even softer than usual. It must be a roadmaster’s nightmare.
Anyway, I’m going to do some more looking online and see what I can find based on what I remember.
Charlie
Chilliwack BC
Thanks.
As for traffic, I missed the branches to Kelsey and Thompson due to poor resolution. I found that Inco CVRD has nickel production at Thompson. I do not know what is at Kelsey. See http://www.omnitrax.com/hbry.shtml for more information.
Eric
Kelsey is the first of the run-of-the river Hydro Generating Stations constructed by Manitoba Hydro (about 1960) on the Nelson River in Northeastern Manitoba. West on the Nelson from Kelsey is Kettle GS, near Gillam, east of Kelsey are Limestone GS and Long Spruce GS in I beleve that order. They are major power plants which have been constructed in the last 15 to 40 years to harness the Nelson River for the Manitoba power grid. They are large plants producing in total about 3600MW. Kelsey would be the supply point for heavy equipment such as headgates, alternators, turbines, transformers and other heavy matrial and equipment required for the O&M of these stations. BTW Much of the original fabrication of this equipment was done at Winnipeg and Montreal and shipped by rail to Kelsey. Same goes for parts of the transmission lines and the converter stations. (Since the transmission distances are so great, Manitoba Hydro generates AC on site, converts to DC locally, which allows them to transmit at 900kv for 700+km, and then reconvert to AC just outside Winnipeg, for distribution to the grid.) I believe two of the convertor stations are in the Kelsey/Gillam area which would also account for the spur.
The country, although it appears alien, is actually historically quite significant having been occupied by the Cree First Nations (IIRC) from time immemorial. It was also the original fur trading area of the Hudson’s Bay Company from 1672 on. This too is a significant part of our Canadian history. At the mouth of the Nelson is the site of York Factory, the original headquarters of the Northern Department of the fur trade of the HBC. I had a cousin who worked on the archeological sites along the Nelson preceding the time of Kettle GS construction, about 1970. I got to hear a lot about all of this from him and of the changes it brought to the area.
Hope this helps
Charlie
Chilliwack BC<
Eric
I checked online and forgot the gravel pits at approx mp60 south of Churchill were also used to ballast the track in summer and later 1929. The original track to Churchill was completed 29 Mar 1929, being laid over frozen muskeg in order to complete the job quickly.
Ballast trains with side dump cars then spent the next eight ot nine months doing nothing but stabilising the definitely soft track (now on thawed muskeg) all the way to Churchill and back in large part to Gillam. Most of the Herchmer sub (Gillam to Churchill) still functions on a 30mph track speed
In addition they had to construct the port of Churchill and the elevators. No wonder a ten track yard in the middle of nowhere.
Hope this helps
Charlie
Chilliwack BC
Very interesting, thanks.