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Caption: Eastbound CP #486, behind CP 5832, 5989 and EMDX 6417; slows for a crew change at the CP North Bay station. This scene is an event of the past.
In 1999 the line was negotiated to be under control of the Ottawa Valley Railway, operated by Rail Link, which is the CDN subsidiary of RailAmerica.
In 2009, CP decided rather than to continue using this line which went down the Ottawa Valley to Smiths Falls, that they would reroute their trains over their own line, running south from Sudbury.
As a result, the OVR line became unprofitable and despite many attempts to save it; it was abandoned east of Mattawa and the pulling up of the track began in 2012.
The controversy over the lifting of the North Bay sub east of Mattawa and all the Chalk River Sub. was intense, but if traffic didn't warrant keeping the line in the ground; what was the point?
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Great photo Arnold. I think, there used to be more tracks (station leads) for passenger service closer to the station. But I believe those might’ve been removed after the infamous Mulroney cutbacks of 1990.
However, I think the intense disapproval when CP removed the North Bay sub.
to Matttawa and all of the Chalk River to Smith’s Falls….may have been warranted. After all I too understand if it isn’t profitable…then why keep it? We know too many stations have been removed in Ontario. But, from a personal standpoint we had friends of the family that lived in Carleton Place for years. I can remember seeing what I assume was a portion of the Canadian traverse the line through town, heading north through Almonte, onwards to North Bay. And the freights….were plentiful. I realize in later years CP became more focused on using their ‘mainlines’ like the Belleville Sub…but, there was still traffic on the Chalk River. I dunno…as I read this over I feel more and more like this is all favouring removal of the line due to lack of traffic. But the historical aspects I think is where the ‘intense disapproval’ came from.
Yeah, there sure was a lot of controversy. One of the things I heard was that a number of people still remembered the Mississauga wreck, and so they did not see the ‘wisdom’ in rerouting dangerous commodities thru the heavily populated GTA, not knowing commodities of that sort went thru the GTA every day.
If the issue was simply one of a private company operating a private asset, sure, why would they continue something that costs money to own, maintain, and operate, if it isn’t returning enough revenue?
That’s hardly the full picture though. There is an absence of strategic long-term thinking, both from the company and from government.
Rail doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it is major transportation infrastructure, and has benefits and impacts beyond the rail operator – it affects local communities and the wider economy, and has strategic benefit to society as a whole.
From the perspective of the company and communities, the economy is cyclical. There are great periods of growth and then there are recessions, and the pattern repeats. When an industry is affected by a downturn, sometimes they reduce production, reduce hours, or mothball a plant. However, when conditions improve, production increases again – maybe. If the industry uses rail, either it doesn’t reopen in the town that lost rail during a recession, or it operates at a competitive disadvantage, neither of which is good for workers or the local economy.
Strategically, most countries treat rail as the infrastructure that it really is. The only comparable country that still leaves its major rail networks to be private property is the US – and they allow rail banking, so lines can mothballed for future use without financially penalizing the private owner. It’s also much more common for states and municipalities to buy rail corridors there and contract out their operation to support local economies, or just retain them as an asset for future development. We have only a few examples of that here (Guelph, Ottawa, and previously Orangeville, but they can take off, eh?)
Speaking of strategic, CFB Petawawa is on the Chalk River Sub, and the last revenue train on this line was a military movement. That base is important, and that to me is one very good reason to preserve rail access. I remember watching double-stacks fly through the base multiple times a day when I was there…
A much shorter route for traffic between the west and Montreal, avoiding a longer route, extra crew hours, and the bottleneck of Toronto, only makes sense. It also makes sense to me to have some resiliency in terms of an alternate route as a contingency when infrastructure is, you know, important to a functioning economy and stuff (but I still think of railways as something where the trains need to keep running no matter what and timeliness matters). The idea of having it run as a joint line with CN and CP (a pitch circa 1995) was far to practical for Canada, I suppose. Remember the blockade of the CN Kingston Sub in early 2019? Some detours had to go way up the Ontario Northland and make a ridiculous maneuver to connect to the line across northern Quebec – but an Ottawa Valley line would have really come in handy then.
One last gripe – you might say, governments missed their opportunity (as they do) to scoop the line, so at the end of the day, it belonged to CP and CP could do with it what it wanted. They were paying for it, right? Sure – except remember who paid to build the CPR. None of us remember first-hand, of course, but all of this was initially financed by us. It wouldn’t be here without Canadian taxpayers. It was the Highway 407 of the 19th Century. When CP removes a line thinking about how that affects next quarter, they abandon those communities forever. It would be nice if CP – or somebody – actually gave half a shoot about them.
Well written, Jakob. But isn’t that the way of our world now? It is all about money. All about greed. All about the bottom line.
Just as I have always said we should have more than one road connecting Canada, as at Nipigon when there was trouble with the TC highway bridge; but no, traffic doesn’t warrant it. Huh? What about emergencies?