After nearly a year of hard work, a coalition of farmers, community groups and local governments in southwestern Saskatchewan are the proud owners of their own railway.
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” said farmer Con Johnson of Bracken, Sask., who now also holds the job title of president and chair of the board of Great Western Railway and Westcan Saskatchewan Ltd.
But it’s also one of the most rewarding, as local citizens successfully banded together to resist the negative economic forces that threaten rural communities.
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“It seems like in rural Saskatchewan we’re constantly fighting to keep things like hospitals and schools and good roads,” said Johnson. “This is one thing where people stuck together and saved something and I think there is a good feeling out there.”
The local groups took over the railway on Nov. 2, following an all-day negotiating session in Regina. There, the final details of the $5.5 million purchase were hammered out with the line’s previous owner, Westcan Rail Ltd., a rail salvage company based in Abbotsford, B.C.
The Saskatchewan group raised a little more than $4 million by selling shares to 400 local individuals, organizations and governments. They also sold shares to a couple of grain industry players from outside the immediate area that have a vested interest in grain being shipped off the line. Class A ownership shares in the new company were sold for $5,000 apiece; class B non-ownership shares were $2,000 each.
The company also received a $1.7 million loan under the federal-provincial Short Line Railway Financial Assistance program to be repaid over 15 years.
In all, the company raised about $6 million, enough to cover the purchase price as well as an estimated $500,000 in start-up costs.
The line was originally operated by Canadian Pacific Railway, which sold it to Westcan in July 2000.
The track winds its way through the country southwest of Swift Current, running west almost to Alberta and south almost to the United States. It connects to the CPR main line at Swift Current and at Moose Jaw via a connection at Assiniboia.
The line has handled as many as 12,000 cars, but that changed after CPR sold it in 2000. Most of the elevators on the track were abandoned and rail traffic plummeted as grain companies used generous trucking incentives to attract grain to their terminals on the main line.
There are now four elevators and a number of producer car shipping facilities along the line, which moved about 3,000 cars last year. The break-even point is estimated to be around 3,400 cars a year.
Johnson said the new owners have met with the Canadian Wheat Board and CPR to discuss the line’s future and were encouraged by the response. For example, he said, the board was keen to work with the new owners to put together trains of 100 producer cars. As for CPR, the more cars that are shipped off the GWR line, the more cars it will have to haul along its main line.
This could be a good year for the railway to get up and running, as southwestern Saskatchewan produced some of the better quality wheat grown on the Prairies this year.
“We don’t have the quality we usually do, but we do have the best quality that’s out there this year,” said Johnson. “There should be good movement.”
