we could be moving 5,000 cars per year,
but they don’t want to go there.”
The relationship with the national
rail providers is a delicate point for all
short-line railways. Regardless of their
capacity or aspirations, they are totally
dependent on the main-line carriers for
rail car supply. It is the Achilles heel of
the short-line operation. The issue hit
a peak in early 2014 when the federal
government set minimum targets for
CN and CP to get the backlogged 2013
harvest moving.
“When the government stepped in,
the main-line carriers favoured their own
high-throughput elevators where they
could get more commercial bang for the
buck instead of servicing short-lines,”
Beaulieu observed.
For their part, CN and CP
acknowledge the service that short-lines
provide.
“We proudly work with short-line
partners so we can move goods to
almost any North American location,
even beyond the reach of our own rail
network,” said CP spokesperson Jeremy
Berry. “In 2013, we moved approximately
35,000 carloads with connecting short-
lines across the Prairies.”
In the past year, both companies have
issued new rail car allocation policies
that limit the number of cars that a
short-line can request within a certain
time period. What neither company
offers in its policies is any commitment
to service standards for car allocation
or delivery to the short-lines, making
planning difficult and limiting business
opportunities.
At the federal level, the minister of
transport and the minister of agriculture
and agri-food have asked CN and CP to
submit plans outlining how they intend
to improve services for producer cars
and short-line railways for the remainder
of the 2014/15 crop year. Both CN
and CP have submitted the requested
winter plans, which are being reviewed,
according to Transport Canada.
Gerald Gauthier is the Railway
Association of Canada’s (RAC) vice-
president of public and corporate affairs
and says the biggest regulatory risks to
short-line rail companies are unintended
consequences. The association
advocates to the federal government on
behalf of the entire industry, including
Class 1 and short-line freight, passenger,
urban and commuter rail.
Spring
2015
Grains
West
38
RAIL MAINLINES
Canadian National
Canadian Pacific
Other Railways
Across the Prairie provinces, 20 short-line railways serve over 3,900 kilometres of track, moving thousands of producer grain cars and other goods
each year. Saskatchewan’s Great Western Rail is the longest of the Prairie short-lines, running 495 kilometres of track. The smallest, Manitoba’s
Boundary Trail Rail, runs 38 kilometres. While there are no concrete statistics about the capacity of short-line rail, Quorum Corporation’s Marcel
Beaulieu estimates that two-thirds of produce car volumes are carried by short-line railways, accounting for roughly 10,400 of the 15,600 producer
cars scheduled in the 2013/14 crop year.
