Admiral Beez
Superstar
True. We'd need some major mineral find.
Oh, I know I am guilty of that. My Calcutta-Singapore Imperial Railway makes me guilty, for certain.
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General railway discussions
- Thread starter Urban Sky
- Start date
micheal_can
Senior Member
Straight line, is is about 1,200km. That is slightly longer than straight line Windsor to Quebec City. You would also be dealing with the fact ht it is a massive wetland subject to seasonal flooding. As much of a train nut as I am, even I, after looking at it over a decade ago came to the conclusion that unless the Hudson Bay and the Northwest Passage becomes ice free year round, there is no realistic reason to put it in.Very cool, thanks for sharing that.
I wonder if a railway from Moosonee to Churchill has ever been considered? With no roads, it could connect communities and possible commercial/resource expertise along the Hudson Bay shoreline.
View attachment 604742
RAC Canadian Rail Atlas
rac.jmaponline.net
Hudson Bay Lowlands - Wikipedia
Admiral Beez
Superstar
Looking at the national railway map I am surprised that the track ends just shy of Yellowknife. I'd figure the territorial capital merited a connection. But your note on difficult geography likely also applies here.
Outside of a tourist train from Skagway Alaska (I took this from a cruise in 2018), Yukon has no railways whatsoever. Same as Nunavut and Newfoundland (Labrador has the Schefferville-Sept-Îles, QC line passing through Labrador City).
micheal_can
Senior Member
The Newfoundland railway issue is less of terrain and more of viability. There was one and it was a narrow gauge.
crs1026
Superstar
Is that such a surprise? Railway lines only appear (or remain) where somebody has a very large amount of stuff to move to market. Not all provinces or large cities can meet that criterion.
- Paul
Admiral Beez
Superstar
Another question...
That depends. Is this a genuine inquiry from a place of intellectual, open-minded curiosity, or merely a rhetorical dismissal?
micheal_can
Senior Member
They only recently got a road connection to the rest of the network. Prior to that, they had to rely on a ferry or ice road.
Deh Cho Bridge - Wikipedia
lenaitch
Senior Member
Not too many places can say they need cattle grates to keep Bison off the bridge.They only recently got a road connection to the rest of the network. Prior to that, they had to rely on a ferry or ice road.
Deh Cho Bridge - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
lenaitch
Senior Member
Neither does PEI.
The coastline of the western side of Hudson's Bay in the Hudson's Bay Lowlands region is pretty much salt marshes and sand/gravel dunes with shallow approaches. As discussed earlier probably in another thread, any attempt at creating a commercial port would require significant and ongoing dredging. If you notice on the map, the Hudson's Bay RR takes a hard left just past Gillam. Originally, it was supposed to continue n/e and terminate at the mouth of the Nelson River. Most of the roadbed was set and they even built a bridge to an island. The whole thing was abandoned when they determined that silting, currents and shifting sandbars made the port unviable. Churchill sits at the extreme northwest end of the Lowlands and, atypically, has a fairly stable deep water harbour.
Even with resource activity in the area (the Ring of Fire isn't all that far inland), unless you are shipping something pretty much intact like coal, there is still a need for refining or processing, and there is no infrastructure for that. The fact that whoever owns the claims in the RofF (I loose track) is intending to schlepp it south should be telling. The FNs in the area say they want to be partners in resource development for, for the foreseeable future, have only the capacity to be junior partners and even that has a number of challenges.
crs1026
Superstar
I would indeed be interested in your rationale for why the places you mention need rail service.
- Paul
Towered
Superstar
Is there a schedule available for the freight trains that run on the CP corridor through midtown Toronto? I enjoy train watching, but I hate having to wait around for one to appear, not knowing when that might be…
dowlingm
Senior Member
The track ends shy of Yellowknife because goods are barged across the lake from Hay River. However, the last 30 miles of track is being abandoned by CN because they don’t want to repair wildfire damage
crs1026
Superstar
There really isn't a schedule that is precise enough to help you. The operation is pretty consistent in the sense that each train in the roster will generally run within the same window of a couple of hours, but on any given day the call times will vary. Various social media groups report on train movements relentlessly, you might search out a couple of these. Some people use a scanner radio to get information, and others watch the signals and try to interpret the indications.
Personally, I find the waiting to be the nicest part of the experience - quiet reflection, enjoy the outdoors, watch the wildlife, feed some birds, take a walk.
- Paul
micheal_can
Senior Member
I need to stand on a soap box....
I drove from Sudbury to Windsor. What shocks me is the sheer number of transport trucks on the 401. If you are traveling at the traffic speed of the cars, you cannot go 5 minutes without passing trucks. I thought the idea of containerization was supposed to remove trucks from the highways. However, this speaks to a much bigger elephant in the room - the state of our railways. Trains can only be a certain length,not due to any safety reason, but because we have way too much single track and those trains need to fit into sidings to allow other trains to pass. Much of our rail network in Canada is single track. Even within Southern ON, much of it is still single track. That makes a truck faster. Even when they crawl through the congested sections of the 401, they are still faster.
To fix this, the rail companies need to add tracks. Here is my over simplified suggestions:
1) If it is a mainline track, it should be at least2 tracks the entire length.
2) If a passenger train uses the line, then it needs to have at least 3 tracks.
3) Remove most, if not all rail crossings.
4) Hire more staff and get more trains going. If we assume 1 block between each train, there is no reasons that in a 24 hour day, a given location should have less than 24 trains a day each way.
Trucks should be for short hauls or for things that cannot fit in a container.
I will climb off my soap box and return to dreaming of more frequent passenger trains....
I drove from Sudbury to Windsor. What shocks me is the sheer number of transport trucks on the 401. If you are traveling at the traffic speed of the cars, you cannot go 5 minutes without passing trucks. I thought the idea of containerization was supposed to remove trucks from the highways. However, this speaks to a much bigger elephant in the room - the state of our railways. Trains can only be a certain length,not due to any safety reason, but because we have way too much single track and those trains need to fit into sidings to allow other trains to pass. Much of our rail network in Canada is single track. Even within Southern ON, much of it is still single track. That makes a truck faster. Even when they crawl through the congested sections of the 401, they are still faster.
To fix this, the rail companies need to add tracks. Here is my over simplified suggestions:
1) If it is a mainline track, it should be at least2 tracks the entire length.
2) If a passenger train uses the line, then it needs to have at least 3 tracks.
3) Remove most, if not all rail crossings.
4) Hire more staff and get more trains going. If we assume 1 block between each train, there is no reasons that in a 24 hour day, a given location should have less than 24 trains a day each way.
Trucks should be for short hauls or for things that cannot fit in a container.
I will climb off my soap box and return to dreaming of more frequent passenger trains....
Bojaxs
Active Member
Just stop! Please. No more!
Freight rail's networks being majority single track has nothing to do with the large amount trucks you're seeing on the highway.
Trucks have to haul goods to southern Ontario because the closest container yard is in Brampton.
Or what most likely happens, the container goes from the Intermodal yard to a nearby "cross dock" warehouse, where the contents of the container get transferred to a truck trailer. The empty container is then shipped back via truck to the Intermodal facility while another truck hauls the newly loaded trailer to somewhere in Southern Ontario.
CN and CPKC aren't going to construct any Intermodal facilities in Southern Ontario. So you're going to continue to see quite a few trucks on the 401.
CN's new Intermodal yard they're building in Milton will probably better serve Southern Ontario.
I noticed a lot of the land around the Intermodal facility is for sale. I'm guessing a lot of warehouses/ cross dock facilities are going to setup around the Milton Yard. The containers will most likely travel a short distance by truck, but the truck trailers will travel much further.
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