Efforts are continuing to re-establish a rail line that could carry grain, lumber, potash and other goods between Prince Albert, Sask., and Hudson Bay, Sask.
Sinclair Harrison, president of the Hudson Bay Route Association (HBRA), said an engineering study should be complete early this summer on a 55 kilometre portion of the line between Birch Hills, Sask., and Melfort, Sask.
Canadian National Railway owns the portion of track between Birch Hills and Melfort but the company has indicated that it intends to offer the track for sale or rip it up for salvage.
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The section of track has not been in use for years.
The HBRA, which has been promoting a rail corridor from Prince Albert to Hudson Bay and then north to the Port of Churchill, has commissioned a $41,000 engineering study to determine how much investment would be required to upgrade the Birch Hills-to-Melfort section and return it to use.
Engineers are expected to examine the line beginning later this month and will produce a report within the next few months.
The Birch Hills-to-Melfort line is one of four sections of track that would be required to make a continuous rail connection between Prince Albert and Hudson Bay.
The first section, owned by OmniTrax Canada, runs from Prince Albert to Birch Hills.
That section, part of the Carlton Trail Railway system, is also out of commission and would require repairs before it could be returned to service.
The second section, between Birch Hills and Melfort, is slated for sale or removal.
The third section, also owned by CN, runs from Melfort to Crooked River, Sask., and is still in service.
The fourth section, from Crooked River to Hudson Bay, is also owned by CN and is in a state of disrepair.
CN had indicated last year that the Crooked River-to-Hudson Bay section would also be sold or ripped up for salvage but the company has since changed its position and is reassessing the viability of that portion.
According to Harrison, resurrecting a continuous line from Prince Albert to Hudson Bay would give shippers, including Saskatchewan-based grain companies, a low-cost shipping alternative with direct access to the grain export terminal at the Port of Churchill.
A Prince Albert-to-Hudson Bay link would also allow shippers from the Saskatoon area to move goods to Churchill via Prince Albert, a route that may prove less costly than shipping goods west to Vancouver or east to Thunder Bay.
Ideally, one or two companies would assume ownership of the entire Prince Albert to Hudson Bay rail line and perform necessary upgrades, Harrison said.
More realistically, there would be two owners involved — presumably CN and OmniTrax.
In theory, those two companies could negotiate running rights so that each company’s trains could run on the other company’s track, he said.
