Canadian Railroads > Ships calling at Churchill this year

Does anyone know how many ships called at Churchill this year
to take grain to overseas ports? Is that rail line from central
Manitoba to Churchill very busy this year?

According to the Port of Churchill report found here:
http://www.portofchurchill.ca/uploads/HBPC.pdf
the port loaded a total of 17 ships the first arrived 3 August and the last departed 31 October.

It would be interesting to know what the railcar count was. I know that Hudson Bay Ry. claims success in utilizing conventional 100ton covered hoppers on this route while CN limited it to boxes and later the smaller cap covered hoppers. I recall that CN had a number of special "articulated" covered hoppers in use on this line, two smaller hoppers resting on a 70 ton truck at each end and sharing a single 100 ton truck in the middle, this kept gross weight on rail axle loadings down, wonder if these cars are still in use or what became of them.

George

Whoops!! The report I linked to is for the 2011 shipping season, can't find anything for 2012.
With the demise of the Wheat Board it would be interesting to know current year data.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/12 23:13 by mns019.

I don't think CN had a number of articulated covered hoppers for Churchill service. I think there was only one such car, an experiment.

KG

mns019 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I recall that CN had a number of special
> "articulated" covered hoppers in use on this line,
> two smaller hoppers resting on a 70 ton truck at
> each end and sharing a single 100 ton truck in the
> middle, this kept gross weight on rail axle
> loadings down, wonder if these cars are still in
> use or what became of them.

There was exactly 1 such car:

http://cnlines.ca/CNcyclopedia/hop/hop4.php

As far as I know, it may be still in service. I did see it on a train in Montreal maybe 10 years ago.

Ray