A group of farmers in northeastern Saskatchewan is ready to do battle with Canadian Pacific Railway.
The 25 farmers want to load producer cars at a number of sidings on a branch line running through their area, as they did two years ago when 135 producer cars were shipped off the line.
But CP is refusing to spot cars along the branch line.
It wants producer cars coming out of the area to be loaded at Nipawin, a larger community farther down the line.
Last week, the farmers were getting ready to file a formal level-of-service complaint against CP with the Canadian Transportation Agency.
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Ron Shymanski, who farms at Choiceland, Sask., said discussions with the railways have gone nowhere, leaving them no choice but to go to the CTA.
“CP won’t listen to us,” he said. “As individual producers, even as a group, we have virtually no clout whatsoever with the railroads. The CTA is there to be the watchdog of the transportation system.”
CP spokesperson Leah Olson said it simply makes more sense to centralize producer car loading in one location than to send cars along the branch line to a series of small loading sites.
“We’ve looked at the surrounding areas and from what we can see, Nipawin is the best location for producer car loading at this time.”
It’s a reasonable distance from most of the producers and as a larger rail centre it gets service six days every week, which actually means better service for producer car shippers.
“From both parties’ perspective, the farmers’ and the railway’s, that makes it a lot more efficient,” she said.
Farmers along the White Fox subdivision have always loaded a few producer cars, even when there were elevators at towns like Choiceland and White Fox.
With the elevators gone, producer car loading took off in the 2001-02 crop year, when farmers organized four train runs totalling 135 cars.
That came to a screeching halt in 2002-03 when drought, coupled with a wet harvest, left area farmers with a small, poor quality crop. Farmers couldn’t meet the 25-car minimum train run and no cars were shipped.
This year farmers got a decent crop and in September began ordering cars, only to be told by CP the locations at which they wanted to load had been removed from the official list of public loading sites and they would have to go to Nipawin. Shymanski said the farmers were shocked, since all of the track infrastructure remains in place from two years ago and there is no reason cars couldn’t be loaded as before.
“What they really mean is they just don’t want to come here, I guess,” he said. “But they have a responsibility to provide a service.”
Hauling to Nipawin will mean an additional 40-50 kilometres trucking for some, which negates the financial advantage of producer cars.
Olson said CP’s grain group takes that into account when making its strategic planning decisions and felt Nipawin was a reasonable distance.
She acknowledged that farmers have the right to ship producer cars and said the railway is happy to work with them.
“But we are trying to develop a more efficient grain handling system and part of that is developing these hubs where people have to go,” she said.
