Western Railroad Discussion > CanAm Corridor

Here is a article on UP's CanAm Corridor that is posted on UP Online:

Teamwork between Union Pacific and Canadian Pacific led to record traffic on the Pacific CanAm corridor last year, and goals are to increase it even more in 2005. Annual volume climbed to 76,942 carloads in 2004, the highest number ever on the corridor.

This year, plans call for increasing carloads by 20 percent to 91,703, with grain traffic targeted to increase 24 percent and potash to increase 49 percent. The corridor began seeing a resurgence in business this past fall as process improvements were implemented. November was a record month, with 9,497 cars and 192 trains operating over the route.

During the first half of 2004, about five trains a day traveled through the corridor. While demand was higher, bottlenecks at the border prevented additional trains from passing through the yard. The Kingsgate half of the yard is in Canada, while the Eastport half is in the U.S., with customs clearance located in the middle.

A team of UP and CP personnel collected data and determined that the No. 1 issue was cars being cleared at the border. In many cases, trains waited at the border while pre-clearance information was filed.

"We’ve made process changes on the administrative side and also received programming changes to produce and provide advanced information to brokers to ensure timelier advance pre-filing of information by the brokers with U.S. Customs," said Bob Polka, director-International Customer Service Center. Teams of UP and CP personnel meet weekly to discuss progress and assign accountability to these process changes, he said.

These efforts have streamlined the clearance process and reduced dwell time on trains from about 7.5 hours in the first half of 2004 to about 3.5 hours by the end of the year, said David Fisher, manager of train operations in Eastport. The goal is to further reduce the dwell time to 2.5 hours.

The number of trains per day increased from five in early 2004 to 7.5 by the end of year, with plans to reach 10 trains in 2006.

Capital improvements by both UP and CP also are contributing to the increase in volume. Each railroad added two sidings to the corridor last year, and track upgrades have reduced slow orders.

Traffic on the Pacific CanAm originates on the Canadian Pacific and travels through the Kingsgate/Eastport gateway to the I-5 corridor for destinations in the western United States. Major products include corn and soybeans from Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota; potash for export to Asia; forest products; and chemicals, primarily liquefied petroleum gas and sulfur.


Ted Curphey
funnelfan@icehouse.net

To add some more details. All new rail and lots more ballast between Joso and Fish Lake. The plan is to replace all the jointed rail between Joso and Fishlake with CWR. So far new rail has been dropped between Joso and just north of Hooper. The steel gang will arrive in June, so get your photos before then. There are 3000 carloads of ballast to be dumped, raising the track six inches in places. Crews just got done totally replacing the track in some of the tunnels between Joso and Park. It's easier to just replace the track with track panels in the tunnels, than to replace the indiviual componets.

Since the Canadian roads finally defrosted last week, traffic has gone through the roof. The extra traffic up here also means more traffic on the UP in the Columbia River Gorge. UP is still detouring some of the empty grain trains over the BNSF between the west coast and Spokane, this due to a long MOW window for a tie project in the Columbia River Gorge.

Ted Curphey
funnelfan@icehouse.net

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On my last run through there in August of 2003, there were slow orders a-plenty along that stretch of the Washy... It was definitely a change from the fast (for the Washy) 50mph running along the river and almost up to the bridge at Joso when you apply a little dynamics for the 20mph restriction across the bridge...although you're probably well aware of that Ted, since you have your sources. :)