SASKATOON (Staff) – CN Rail should be using more hopper cars to haul grain to Churchill, say promoters of the northern port.
The rail company has been gradually introducing aluminum hoppers into its Churchill shipping program this year.
As of last week, 10 aluminum cars were being included in trains of boxcars heading to the northern Manitoba port. That’s more than ever before, but it is still not good enough for supporters of the Hudson Bay route.
“It’s a disappointment,” said Gord Peters, a Brandon, Man. business person and chair of Gateway North Transportation System Ltd., a company bidding to take over the Churchill line and port facilities.
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“Our reading on it is that everything is performing very well, which raises the question, why not use them more?” he said.
Grain shipments to Chur-chill have always been restricted to aging wooden boxcars because the rail line to the port, over unstable permafrost terrain, can’t support heavy steel hoppers. The 2,300 aluminum hoppers in the grain fleet have a carrying capacity of 63 tonnes each, compared with 83 tonnes for the steel cars.
Churchill supporters say the use of the aluminum cars is essential if the northern port is to have any future as a grain export outlet, in part because only about 1,000 boxcars remain in service and their condition is deteriorating. Some had hoped to see 100 percent hopper car trains in service this summer
Peters said because the aluminum cars carry less grain than steel hoppers, the two national railways aren’t all that thrilled about using them to to haul to Vancouver or Prince Rupert.
“It’s in everybody’s best interest to send them north,” he said.
Jim Feeny, of CN’s public affairs department, said the railway is continuing to gather data from its field tests with the hoppers and plans to have as many as 20 cars in a train before the end of the Churchill shipping season.
“That will give us a pretty good idea of about how things are going to work under real-life conditions,” he said, adding the railway is only beginning to analyze the results of the experiment so far.
Higher expectations
He defended the railway against criticisms that it has been dragging its feet on the hopper car issue, saying when it comes to Churchill, “there’s always an expectation that we could be doing it bigger, better and faster.
“But from our point of view, we’re going as quickly as we safely and practically can,” he said.
While there have been no operational problems to date, the railway remains concerned about whether the hoppers affect the handling of the train and their long-term impact on the roadbed. However there is a world of difference between having 10 or 20 cars in a train and running a 100-car unit train of all hoppers, said Feeny.
Meanwhile, a Canadian Wheat Board official said last week the agency has firm orders for shipments of about 225,000 tonnes of grain through the northern port.
However “there’s still room to move up beyond that,” said information officer Rhea Yates.
Two other Churchill sales for a total of about 60,000 tonnes were diverted to Thunder Bay after the shipping companies changed their mind about using the port, she added.
