Canadian National Railway has opened a new employee training centre in Winnipeg.
The new 100,000 sq. foot facility, which opened Sept. 9, hosts more than 350 CN students a week from across Canada, providing hands-on training for a variety of railway jobs.
Company president Claude Mongeau said the new facility will serve as a cornerstone in CN’s workforce renewal plan, which this year will see the hiring of more than 3,500 employees across its North American network.
“Our training campus … will enhance our railroader training programs and help us instill a strong safety culture in our new hires and reinforce it among current employees who are learning new skills or upgrading existing ones,” Mongeau said in a statement.
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“The new Winnipeg training centre is also a symbol of the key role that Winnipeg and Manitoba play in CN’s network,” he said.
“Winnipeg is the hub of our transcontinental network. All of CN’s east-west, transcontinental traffic and our north-south cross border traffic are funneled through the city.”
The new centre will offer training for jobs such as conductors, car mechanics, track supervisors and signal maintainers.
Employees will receive hands-on training in indoor learning laboratories with equipment such as locomotive simulators and dispatcher stations. The facility also includes outdoor labs with dedicated rolling stock and other equipment for field training.
CN said it invested $35 million in the Winnipeg training campus, which is part of an ongoing plan to improve network resilience and meet customer demand.
The railway undertook a major program last year aimed at upgrading its main corridor between Edmonton and Winnipeg at a cost of $70 million.
The company increased capacity on the line by extending sidings, double-tracking certain segments, and improving yards in Saskatoon and Winnipeg.
Another $30 million was spent to improve CN’s Prairie North line, a secondary line that runs parallel to the company’s main corridor. It acts as a detour route for the main corridor, which makes the network more flexible.
CN plans to make additional investments to its Edmonton-Winnipeg line this year and expand capacity on its Winnipeg-Chicago corridor, it said.
