I heard the oil patch was or is on a downward spiral. How has this affected frieght service up to Fort Mac? Did CN Rail get back to buying that section back?
CN bought back all the remaining branch lines across northern Alberta during 2006 and 2007. RailAmerica’s Lakeland & Waterways (Edmonton to the large Alberta Pacific mill north of Boyle) and Cando’s Athabasca Northern (Boyle to Lynton, just south of Fort McMurray) were two of the purchases. Cando had originally acquired its line with the intent of selling it for scrap, only after the purchase did they realize they could make more money operating the line instead.
CN has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into track repairs across northern Alberta over the last 10 years, replacing ancient 85 lb jointed rail with heavy new welded rail, and adding mountain rock on top of the old local pit-run “ballast”.
Currently there is about one train per day each way between Edmonton and Fort McMurray, L556 and L557. There is a local crew based at Boyle (L537) to perform local switching and run up the branchline to the Alpac mill, working about every other day.
Unit petroleum coke trains (C756 and C757) from Prince Rupert to Fort McMurray run as needed, usually a couple times a week. The coke is trucked from various oilsands plants to the transloading yard at Lynton.
Traffic across Alberta is down, in line with the oil industry, but the railroads are still busy out here.
SD70Dude,
How’s the Sultran traffic faring these days?
Sultran is doing quite well, and they finished replacing their old fleet of steel bathtub gondolas with aluminium ones last year. The ‘new’ cars are actually ex-coal cars from various previous owners in the U.S, notably Detroit Edison.
A new solid sulphur production plant opened recently near Scotford, northeast of Edmonton. They receive liquid sulphur in trucks and process it into solid prills. Well, they aren’t really prills, true prill towers are no longer legal to construct, on account of environmental regulations and the amount of dust they produce.
It seems that most sulphur is shipped in bulk solid form in unit trains now, not nearly as much moves in tank cars. Fort McMurray is one of the few places that still ships liquid sulphur in tank cars. The other major liquid movement out here is a unit train that originates at Ram River, AB, and runs all the way to a chemical plant in Lee Creek, North Carolina, on the Atlantic coast.
Sultran itself only handles bulk solid sulphur to the two terminals in Vancouver.
Nice to see trains moving in the Great White North!
What is happening on CN’s MacKenzie River, Great Slave Lake and Pine Point Route these days?
Main Line to the Beaufort Sea.
Thank You.
The line is fairly busy all the way from Edmonton to Roma Jct (just west of Peace River, where the Great Slave Railway began). There are several large grain and crude oil terminals in the Peace River area, and pulp and lumber mills at Slave Lake, High Prairie, north of Peace River (Daishowa) and High Level provide a lot of traffic.
Viterra opened a new grain terminal at Grimshaw just a couple years ago, which is on the other side of the infamous Peace River Hill (long 2.5% grades on both sides). They take a 100+ car spot, and the loaded train must be doubled from Grimshaw to Judah, on the other side of the valley (this is where the runaway caboose started from).
Between Edmonton and Roma Jct there are about 2 trains each way per day. Between Roma Jct and High Level it falls to one at most, in the past this run was handled by an assigned crew who ran on alternating days each way, working 6 days a week.
There are roadswitcher crews based at Smith, McLennan (many jobs), Roma Jct (2 assignments) and High Level to perform local switching.
The only freight traffic left north of High Level is northbound fuel going to Hay River, for the supply barges on the Mackenzie River. This line sees 3 trains each way per week at most, and in slow times they may only run once or twice a week. Short trains too, usually less than 20 tank cars. On a few occasions the crew ran north light engine, and then returned light engine the next day.
The Meander River Sub is a long, bleak, boring run, 190 miles of 25 mph track, with no enroute switching and muskeg as the only “scenery”.
One warm line, built by the hand of Pearson, reaching for the Beaufort Sea. But it never even got close.
Big thanks for that Dude. That entire segment of the country I know really well and was wondering how the railroading has fared. It’s better than I had hoped.
There is a feasibility study going on right now regarding opening up the former Pine Point Mine as terrific new ore reserves have been outlined.
I was up that way in 1999 and walked to the End of Steel at the Shipyard in Hay River where the MacKenzie River Barges were hauled out and the Tugs maintained for downriver service on the MacKenzie.
Fuel was the major shipment, other cargoes brought up by truck??
End of Steel, here.
Are the gondolas open-top, or do they have covers or something else to control sulfur dust.
Open top. No covers at all. CN tried fibreglass lids on woodchip cars decades ago and found they did not work well, as they were too light and could blow off at track speed.
None of the sulphur loadouts spray the loaded cars either.
I suppose there aren’t enough sulphur trains for the dust to be a major problem, or perhaps the towns in BC’s lower mainland just haven’t noticed it. Their complaints about coal dust are what caused the western Canadian mines to start spraying the cars, and CP even ended up installing a sprayer on their mainline between Sicamous and Kamloops, on Notch Hill:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZCq0rIwZk8
Our operating manual still contains instructions specifying that dust-producing commodities such as coal and sulphur must not be marshalled ahead of sensitive traffic (exposed vehicles, trailers, etc) in trains. But as the dust-producing commodities usually move in their own unit trains, and we ship very few carloads of “sensitive” products I have never actually seen this restriction come into play.
Also, a bit of trivia, our computer system has a limitation of six characters for a commodity description, and it is all caps. The yellow stuff is spelled “SULPHR”.
The tech staff obviously never considered the legitimate alternate spelling for the substance that fits in a six-letter restriction.
My thought was, “Just use the common USA spelling”–or is that heresy north of the border?[:)]
We would rather misspell something than butcher the Queen’s English with wretched Yankee drivel!
I saw pics a year or two ago with the ex DTE hoppers being used in sulfur service, was somewhat surprised. I wondered where the fleet would end up as DTE will only have one coal fired plant left in a few years. Everything else is getting converted to NG or demolished.
[quote user=“NDG”]
I was up that way in 1999 and walked to the End of Steel at the Shipyard in Hay River where the MacKenzie River Barges were hauled out and the Tugs maintained for downriver service on the MacKenzie.
Fuel was the major shipment, other cargoes brought up by truck??
End of Steel, here.