A forgotten lunch bag and a chance meeting at a gas station have led to a short-line railway negotiating with CN Rail to buy about 150 kilometres of track in northwestern Manitoba.
The rail, stretching from north of Dauphin to just west of Minitonas, could have ended up as scrap. It is one of the grain-dependent branch lines CN plans to clear from its plate by 2000. While groups had expressed interest in buying the line, nothing had come together.
Maxine Plesiuk was driving her kids to school the day before the line’s slated closure this May 31, when her daughter announced she had left her lunch at home.
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So Plesiuk headed back to the Mohawk service centre she owns with her husband, who was pumping gas.
“He said, ‘There’s an American here. He’s in the store. He’s here looking on bidding at ripping up the line,’ ” Plesiuk recalled.
“So I marched in there and introduced myself and we had a bit of a conversation and I guess he made the comment to me that it might be more fun to run one than rip one up.”
By the next day, she had formed the nucleus of a plan with the American, who owns a railway construction company, and his friend, who owns a short line running on 645 km of track in North Dakota.
On Aug. 21, a new entity known as the Great Northern Railway offered to buy the line and it and CN have 90 days to come to an agreement on the price.
Plesiuk said CN has suggested the net salvage value of the line is $3.7 million. Negotiations have started from that figure.
She said if the two sides can’t agree, the Canadian Transportation Agency may set the value.
But Plesiuk said the new short line has a locomotive it wants to get on the track before winter. The group wants to settle quickly to avoid losing more traffic on the line.
A pulp and paper company in eastern Manitoba hauls logs from the nearby Duck Mountains. Traditionally, they’ve moved by rail, said Plesiuk, but with a steady decline in service, more has been hauled out of the region by truck.
Two Manitoba Pool elevators on the line handle about 50,000 tonnes of grain. The company is trucking the grain from the elevators for now.
Losing the elevators would crush the tax base for Ethelbert and Fork River, Plesiuk said. Losing the traffic through town from farmers who deliver grain would also be devastating.
“In Canada, communities were formed around the building of the railway. I don’t think that was done by coincidence,” Plesiuk said.
She hopes the short line will help the region attract more industry, noting a new oriented strandboard plant near Swan River would not likely be there without rail service.
She knows now is the time to set the future course for the region. When the Canada Transportation Act is next reviewed in 1999, she said she doesn’t want to be mulling over how the loss of the rail affected her community.
“We don’t want to wait to see if we can be one of the ones that can survive.”
