(The following story by Dan Bellerose appeared on The Sault Star website on June 19, 2009.)
SAULT STE. MARIE — Don’t include Canadian Pacific Railway in any 11th-hour rescue scenario for the threatened rail link between Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury — a new operator is necessary to avoid derailment.
Huron Central Railway Inc., a Quebec-based short-line rail provider which has been operating the 300- kilometre line under a lease ar rangement with CP for over a decade, announced this week the branch line was no longer economically viable and it would be discontinuing service this summer.
“We will commence abandonment procedures as mandated under the Canada Transport Act if no new operator steps forward,” said Mike LoVeccchio, a media relations spokesperson with CP.
Huron Central, which began leasing the rail line in 1997, has announced it will discontinue freight service from the Sault to McKerrow (near Espanola) on Aug. 15 and then from Espanola to Sudbury on Oct. 31.
Under Canadian Transportation Agency guidelines, upon Huron Central wrapping up (Aug. 15), CP must either pick up the service itself, for which it has indicated it has no interest, or offer the branch line to anyone else interested in continuing operations.
If no operator steps forward within 60 days then CP will offer the line’s right-of-way to the three levels of government, federal, provincial and municipal, for 30 days at net salvage value.
At the conclusion of 90 days, if still nobody steps forward, the feeder line would be presumed “disand disposal would be discretionary but must include removal of the track itself.
“I don’t know if a solution can be found . . . At present, I am not aware of talks with any potential new operators,” said the media spokesman of the branch line which has been in operation for 122 years, since 1887.
Mario Brault, president of Huron Central, a subsidiary of Connecticut-based Genesee & Wyoming Inc., claims the short-line operator has lost money each of the past four years, including $2.1 million in 2008. “We made money the first few years then we started losing traffic volume and never recovered,” said Brault, whose firm lost $2.1 million on $7.4 million in revenue.
Huron-Central, which used to run a train a day, seven days a week, out of the Sault to the Sudbury intermodal yard, typically three locomotives and a minimum 40 freight cars, now only dispatches two or three trains a week, he said.
The railway, which shuttled 24,000 rail cars between the Sault and Sudbury in 2004, with each freight car handling about 100 tonnes, only handled 16,000 cars in 2008, and projections are even slimmer for 2009.