The short-line chair says cars can be loaded in half the time
A short-line railway in northeastern Saskatchewan is putting the finishing touches on a car loading facility that can store 56,000 bushels of grain.
It is enough to load 16 hopper cars at a time.
The $1 million dollar facility at Choiceland, Sask., includes four 14,000 bushel steel storage bins, a 30-metre scale and two legs that will allow it to receive and elevate grain while rail cars are being loaded.
Torch River Rail chair Ron Shymanski said the new facility should be ready to receive its first load of grain this month.
Read Also
Increasing farmland prices blamed on investors
a major tax and financial services firm says investors are driving up the value of farmland, preventing young farmers from entering the business. Robert Andjelic said that is bullshit.
The new loading site will nearly double the short-line’s existing storage capacity.
“It was a fairly easy decision for us to make in that we were getting a lot of commitment from producers,” said Shymanski.
“We were confident that our volumes were going to be sufficient to support this … and we were in a fairly good cash position when we started.… Right now, we’re looking forward to getting it going and making use of it.”
Torch River Rail is one of 13 short-line railway companies in Saskatchewan. It operates 45 kilometres of track between Nipawin and Choiceland.
Local investors acquired the line in late 2007 after Canadian Pacific Railway announced its intention to discontinue operations on the line.
After several failed attempts to negotiate a deal, a group of 46 shareholders comprising farmers and local governments from Nipawin, Choiceland, White Fox and the Rural Municipality of Torch River raised enough capital to buy the line and equipment for $1.2 million.
The company shipped its first grain train in July 2008.
Since then, shipments have been increasing steadily.
TRR’s initial business plan suggested the company would need to ship 150 to 200 cars per year to stay afloat.
Last year, the company shipped nearly 600 cars, delivering locally produced crops to a core of major buyers including Quaker, CWB, Bunge and The Andersons Inc., an American grain merchant in Ohio.
Torch River shipments in the 2013-14 crop year were on track to set a record, but car supply has been an ongoing challenge.
Shymanski said the new loading facility will allow the short line to ship grain more quickly and efficiently.
“We should be able to do the same amount of work in half the time or less,” he said.
“But we are still dependent on producers choosing to ship through us and hopefully, they will continue to support us as they have in the past.”
Plans to build the new facility started two years ago and construction began early last year.
The company initially loaded hopper cars with a grain auger, but it eventually built an eight-car loading facility with 30,000 bu. of storage and a short-axle scale.
“We had eight cars of storage in that facility, but there were many train runs where we put 14 cars through it in a day and a half,” Shymanski said.
“The big terminals talk about having to turn (terminal capacity) 10 times to make it pay. In the first year, we turned (ours) 16 times.”
Supply agreements with large buyers have assured grain volumes at TRR and added financial stability.
“We stress the fact that we are a railroad … but we also connect the local growers with buyers and it certainly has opened up markets for our local people,” Shymanski said.
