The solution is ....drumroll please.....

[bucket]

Reading about the poor state that omnitrax left the Churchill rail line....an engineering professor figures it is feasible to build a highway to Churchill. ...Brilliant....replace the rail line with a highway. ...


They can't build a ****ing highway from my hometown to moose jaw in sections over a 2 decade period on stable land let alone building up north.


Why why the **** do people think this way.....

Take Trudeau's infrastructure money and fix the rail line to include freight and passengers and make it a tourism destination ..... and then never let a private organization own it again because to date it always comes back to the taxpayers anyway.

Omnitrax bled money to their shareholders. ...a good thing I guess....to end up with a dilapidated rail line....

Disclaimer....I do realize mother nature had a hand in this...

BUT .....the rail line originally got built somehow and lasted the test of time....

[farmaholic]

Wasn't Provincial and Federal money given to Omnitrax for this rail. Or????

[bucket]

Probably and it was transferred to shareholders with no one watching to see if anyone was maintaining the line.....idiotic ....

[stonepicker]

Dilapidated rail line? Not sure how you can blame omnitrax ( with a teeny disclaimer ) The rail line is still under water, pretty hard to deal with a flood like that in a very remote area. Huge undertaking to fix it. Approx. 300 km. of track to repair i believe? Big job.

[sumdumguy]

Churchill could have been the goto shipping port but Easterners own the lakers in the St. Lawrence. capeesh?

[bucket]

And a highway to the port wouldn't be....

They have rail infrastructure in place to haul the ballast in if need be....

Big undertaking? What about when they built it the first time.

This is like inheriting a farm but can't afford to keep it up.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

I read a lot of history books, some WWII stuff.

To say nothing of the adverse conditions the soldiers faced, consider the civilians in Germany, Russia or Britain ( or many others). At a time when manpower was in extremely short supply, raw materials were rationed, energy was in extremely short supply, even food and shelter for those doing the work was compromised, and air raids were happening almost daily to add continual harm. Add in weather events which inevitably took place to mess up the plans then too. Yet those folks managed to build, rebuild, or move entire factories, power plants, air ports, rail lines nearly overnight, then do it all over again the next day. Without most of the tools and equipment we have now. Yet in 2017, with all the equipment and technology, and unemployed available, it takes years to repair an existing rail line.

[Hopalong]

Reports blamed closure on washouts, claimed would not be fixed before next winter.
Wonder what was done to fix washouts in the past.
Took a summer rail tour to Churchill a few years ago, big problem appeared to be muskeg rather than excess runoff causing washouts.

[stonepicker]

If the port of churchill could of had a shipping season of at least 180 days instead of approx. 90 days, it may have been a viable port.

[farmaholic]

Dollars and "sense" and a lack of willingness.

[Oliver88]

Churchill could have been the goto shipping port but Easterners own the lakers in the St. Lawrence. capeesh?

Part of the problem for sure.

CNR did not help get grain efficiently by essentially letting a line or two go to hell through a lack of maintenance as well......which coincidentally has its HQ in Montreal, Quebec.

[Daylate]

I think the 100's of millions of dollars of rail overage paid to farmers that is going to be used on research to help us create a bigger infrastructure/transportation demand and dump it into the rail line. Any income goes back to rail and port maintenance. Or is this making too much sense?