Bill C49

[bucket]

Has anyone read this?

Apparently if APAS is now asking the railways to pay for the demurrage someone forgot to put that in the bill as it was moved through the process.

Why is it that farm groups start asking for changes during or after the process?

Why not ask for them when it starts as non negotiable points?

Why try to change things to delay the process further?

It seems we will still be stuck with railways and graincos holding the balance of power when shit hits the fan and the result will be """I am or we are SORRY"

How does nothing change after 1997 2013 and now 2018?

When does a commerce committee start looking into the gross economic loss to western Canada and the country by these episodes of incompetence?

And when does the infrastructure of this country get linked to the economy?

The liberals shouldn't be saying the environment and the economy go hand in hand....they should be saying infrastructure and the economy go hand in hand.

We would have SFA in this country if the tree huggers were aroundd when this nation was putting in the infrastructure of a young country.

And we need that infrastructure to be worked on again.

Its just ****ing stupid to listen to CP workers on Rocky Mountain Railway talk about how old the company's (the Nation's) infrastructure in the mountains is.

Ottawa needs a good housecleaning because no party is paying attention.

[Misterjade9]

You have touched on a very good point that if the same environmental mentality was prevalent when this country was built nothing would have gotten done and that is why nothing will get done now. I will reiterate what I said in an earlier rant, pipelines are dead in this country, major rail projects are dead in this country as much as I would like to see a viable railway and port in Churchill it is not going to happen. When we have a government in Ottawa that is more concerned with the upstream and downstream carbon emissions of a project and and a reduction of CO2 that even they don't know what the number should be, major infrastructure projects will not proceed. I believe we have to resign ourselves to the fact that grain movement is going to stay status quo that being said it doesn't mean grain movement has to stay status quo. Let's do a little comparing, how many of you leave your crop in the field and harvest it when the grain companies call for your contract? Oh yea weather seams to dictate to us that we need to get our grain harvested, conditioned and into storage so we can export it to the elevators. What is the difference between how we handle our grain and how the line companies should handle it to get it into export position. In a combined effort between the government, the railroads and the grain companies they have successfully offloaded the cost of storage on the prairies to the farmers and we have gobbled it down hook line and sinker. to be fair we have had no choice but to do so. I mentioned this in another post that we need more inland port capacity, port capacity not terminal capacity. Ideally these ports should be at tidewater, but land is expensive in the lower mainland and with a NDP/Green party government in BC no new ports will get built. So what would be wrong with inland ports on the east side of the mountains a collection point where the grain companies could get the commodities closer to tidewater during good weather and would give the railroads a shorter haul when weather is bad. These projects would create jobs, would have less carbon footprint than a pipeline or rail line project so should be an easier sell to the environmentalists, should work with the same amount of rail capacity, and keeps the terminal space open for us to deliver our grain when we are supposed to. I apologize for the long winded post, but with no space to haul grain, most everything done in the shop, and 2' of snow on the ground and -25 this morning I have nothing better to do than think.

[GDR]

You have touched on a very good point that if the same environmental mentality was prevalent when this country was built nothing would have gotten done and that is why nothing will get done now. I will reiterate what I said in an earlier rant, pipelines are dead in this country, major rail projects are dead in this country as much as I would like to see a viable railway and port in Churchill it is not going to happen. When we have a government in Ottawa that is more concerned with the upstream and downstream carbon emissions of a project and and a reduction of CO2 that even they don't know what the number should be, major infrastructure projects will not proceed. I believe we have to resign ourselves to the fact that grain movement is going to stay status quo that being said it doesn't mean grain movement has to stay status quo. Let's do a little comparing, how many of you leave your crop in the field and harvest it when the grain companies call for your contract? Oh yea weather seams to dictate to us that we need to get our grain harvested, conditioned and into storage so we can export it to the elevators. What is the difference between how we handle our grain and how the line companies should handle it to get it into export position. In a combined effort between the government, the railroads and the grain companies they have successfully offloaded the cost of storage on the prairies to the farmers and we have gobbled it down hook line and sinker. to be fair we have had no choice but to do so. I mentioned this in another post that we need more inland port capacity, port capacity not terminal capacity. Ideally these ports should be at tidewater, but land is expensive in the lower mainland and with a NDP/Green party government in BC no new ports will get built. So what would be wrong with inland ports on the east side of the mountains a collection point where the grain companies could get the commodities closer to tidewater during good weather and would give the railroads a shorter haul when weather is bad. These projects would create jobs, would have less carbon footprint than a pipeline or rail line project so should be an easier sell to the environmentalists, should work with the same amount of rail capacity, and keeps the terminal space open for us to deliver our grain when we are supposed to. I apologize for the long winded post, but with no space to haul grain, most everything done in the shop, and 2' of snow on the ground and -25 this morning I have nothing better to do than think.

Always good to float ideas but problem with an inland terminal is huge cost to build and operate and it takes a day to load the train, likely the same to unload so now you have 2 extra days of rail service wasted for the same train load of grain. Both cost and time. We all know who's pocket any extra costs would come out of.

Not a big idea here but I would like all grain to be cleaned at the elevator. Lots of capacity tied up in dockage on those trains, then they make GSPs at the coast and haul them back to Feedlots by truck. Seems counter productive to me.

[bucket]

GDR

You do realize that ships are transloaded from the great Lakes to ocean vessels in the St. Lawrence seaway....

Easier to unload railcars at an inland and reload to shuttle to the port than a boat.

But in theory it's the same process. Paul Martin is making a shitload on us peasants transloading vessels
...

[Daylate]

send the full load downhill on the muskag. we'll keep it froze in the summer with (wind generated and geo thermal for subsidies) ice plants.
sorry. neighbours here for an afternoon drink.
But seriously. they couldn't turn that bitch enough because rail was shit when water was good to go. keep it froze? might be cost effective. a lot less miles! and easier pulling miles. quicker turn around. it just sucks that we are going backwards that's all.

[Daylate]

stay tuned. more stupid ideas to come this afternoon

[GDR]

GDR

You do realize that ships are transloaded from the great Lakes to ocean vessels in the St. Lawrence seaway....

Easier to unload railcars at an inland and reload to shuttle to the port than a boat.

But in theory it's the same process. Paul Martin is making a shitload on us peasants transloading vessels
...

No didn't realize they did that with the boats but doesn't change the reality of the situation. Just think the extra time spent loading and unloading would actually get the same load to the coast. I realize the point was in regards to poor mountain weather but just can't see it. Maybe instead of an inland terminal maybe just one massive railyard and double the rail cars and be able to just drop a whole train and go shuttle more on the prairies until weather changes. Rolling storage likely cheaper than concrete anyhow.

[GDR]

Rail service is a disappointment for sure. The excuse of cold and winter is questionable. On a related note we sent 34 btrains west over the mountains this winter to an end user that has rail service but still trucks most because it's more reliable. You would think that someone in government would take notice of situations like this and realize the road damage / maintenance from those trips not to mention the carbon emissions from all that burned diesel. Could have been one trip of a handful of cars as part of a train????

[Misterjade9]

More rolling stock means more locomotives, more employees, more fuel, more repairs more costs etc. etc.etc, which ultimately end up costing producers more in freight costs, all on an already antiquated and woefully inadequate rail system. We know the railroads are not going to invest massive amounts of money into any upgrades or start laying rails back down. I believe any improvements in our grain movement will have to be accomplished within the constrains of what we are working with now. In 2013/14 when the RR's got their PeePee's slapped, very weakly I might ad, they started emptying out the western prairies with a massive onslaught of cars because of such a quick turnaround to the coast so as to make it look like they were actually doing something. This smoke and mirrors show didn't do anything for producers east of the AB/SK border. GDR, I like your idea of a massive marshaling yard but with that we need surge capacity storage that we can fill up when the weather is good to empty out the elevator system. Yes more terminals on the prairies adds to storage but it is like pissing in the ocean you'd never know you did it. The RR's have shown us that they can move grain and at a fairly good pace when they want to and when the weather is good and when the grain is in a convenient place for them. I keep harking on the inland port idea but there are other ideas, why can't we move grain south to the headwaters of the Mississippi or to the Columbia and get it on barges to tidewater? I really believe that the RR's have no interest in increasing the transportation capacity of any products and if they did the physical rail system could not handle it.