Eastern Railroad Discussion > St. Lawrence Seaway impact on railroads

I am curious if anything has been written about the impact of the opening of the seaway in 1958 on Northeastern railroads. Prior to the opening of the seaway everything for export had to be transloaded. How big a factor was this in the events that lead up to the creation of Conrail.

John (a curious Texan)

I always thought the creation of Conrail was the Governments way the keep freight traffic alive and separate from the creation of Amtrak, As the Railroads were going Bankrupt and freight still needed to move , Conrail was formed to take over from Failing Rails, keep in mind ,most RR's had Passenger and freight traffic that they handed off to each other as the case may be,, roughly, this is how I understood it as a Teenager,,
ST Lawrence Seaway was opened to get Mid North American and Canadian Ports open to Europe and beyond and probably relieve port congestion in the lower 48,,, don't flame me to bad

Ed Stewart
Jacksonville, FL

Good book on "Coal Trains: The History of Railroading and Coal in The United States" By Brian Solomon & Patrick Yough. Has a really good chapter on the plight of the PRR Elmira Branch to Sodus Point NY and the precipitous drop off of coal shipments post seaway completion.

abocanyon Wrote:
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> I am curious if anything has been written about
> the impact of the opening of the seaway in 1958 on
> Northeastern railroads. Prior to the opening of
> the seaway everything for export had to be
> transloaded. How big a factor was this in the
> events that lead up to the creation of Conrail.
>
> John (a curious Texan)


The St Lawrence Seaway was a major factor on the New York Central Railroad, as was the New York State Thruway. Both had the effect of breaking virtual railroad monopolies on grain and boxcar / LCL traffic.

St Lawrence University has an archive of research on the seaway. I was surprised to learn it was seen as a power generation plan long before anyone saw it as a navigation improvement.


http://www.stlawu.edu/library/sites/default/files/finding-aids/MSS40fa_0.pdf

It also hurt the Alphabet Route roads that were competing with the big roads like NYC, PRR, B&O etc

calsubd; no flaming, you are essentially right for understanding it the way you did as a teenager. All the Eastern RRs fought the Seaway project because they knew it would siphon off certain traffic the Eastern RRs could haul to US east coast ports. Probably the Canadian RRs objected too, but they had only two, the CP privately held, and the CN which was owned by the Canadian Government. I'm sure I am simplifying things; and many articles and books have been written about this subject by folks who are smarter and with more resources than I.

It hurt the railroads closest to the Seaway the most. CN, CP, NYC, NKP to LV and DLW, ERIE. It was a joint Government sponsored project to compete with privately held (stock ownership) common carrier railroads that were almost totally regulated as to what rates they could charge to a shipper. They could not even LOWER the rates if they found the means to do that and still make a profit (SOU RR Big John covered hoppers versus boxcar case). So after it was built with Government money, both Canadian and US; ships usually owned and manned by offshore countries that could set their own freight rates and with little direct ties to Canada and USA could thrive because they could haul our stuff on an infrastructure paid for by taxpayers of both nations, including the railroads as taxpayers!

Of course, this situation was very advantageous to some large companies in both Canada and the USA. They supported it. Some of the goods they needed to manufacture their products could come cheaper by water, and some exports could leave cheaper, because railroad rates were regulated, and higher, because the water rates were not regulated. So the Seaway got built and opened when the railroads were entering the most difficult economic time of their history before the depression, and maybe before then.

But, alas, times do change. The US railroads got partially de-regulated in 1980; not sure when the Canadian RR's did, but the Canadian Gov't decided to sell their 'albatross' and put CN public. I bought stock in it, I knew from it's route structure it could exceed.

Then ships got bigger. The Seaway was built to (I think) only 80 foot canal width. The Panama Canal was built to 110 foot width in 1900 teens; the ships that can transit there are called 'Panamax's' generally 106ft with altho battleships like the New Jersey could squeak thru at 108' beam. And the Seaway is now old; over 50 years, and few things, even concrete, survive 50 years in a colder climate without some re-investment. Being Government supported, it will have a hard time to get funds from two countries to upgrade it's facilities. Most cargo ships in the world are already too large to transit the Seaway. Making the many locks larger will require HUGE investment. But on the other hand, I think it can, and should, survive, because water is the cheapest transport method. But with it's new limited restrictions, to fewer destinations. I think fewer ships will call the ports for grain exports because they might be limited to Europe or similar distances. I have no doubt when I was at the Port of Saigon in 1967-68 we might have gotten US AID ships of grain that came thur the Seaway, across the Atlantic, thur the Mediterranean sea, Suez Canal then to Vietnam.

The Seaway in the future will have a place for ATB's of coal and maybe new oil to compete with rail to the East Coast, but I think rail will excel; the further south the better.

Thanks tp117, Not even singed LOL

Ed Stewart
Jacksonville, FL

The opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway didn't harm only railroads. It also facilitated the damned sea lamprey's invasion of the Great Lakes.

The Seaway basically killed the port of Buffalo, which was a major transload point for cargoes crossing the upper Lakes and reloading to rail at Buffalo to finish the trip to New York. Used to be a lot of flour mills in Buffalo -- the grain arrived by boat, was milled to flour at Buffalo, then shipped elsewhere by train. The loss of this sort of traffic meant an immediate glut in the Buffalo-East Coast rail market, which NYC, LV, Erie, and DLW (along with, by roundabout route, PRR) all served.

Among the influences also not mentioned above was development of the Labrador iron-ore vein. Building the Seaway gave steel mills in the Great Lakes region access to this ore as a competitive alternative to Minnesota ore. That ended up being the main reason the U.S., which otherwise had a lot of domestic opposition from coastal shipping interests as well as the railroads, agreed to participate in the project.

Lot of half truths and misconceptions in this thread. First, let's properly identified what is the St. Lawrence Seaway and what is not. The St. Lawrence Seaway consists of 7 Locks, a two short canals, and a dredged channel between Montreal and Lake Ontario. Three of the Locks and the two canal sections are in Quebec, two locks are in New York, and one lock is in Ontario. What is not part of the Seaway are the Welland Canal and Locks between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Also not part of the Seaway are the separate Locks, US and Canadian at Sault Ste. Marie. The distinction is because the Seaway is jointly controlled by a US/Canadian Commission, while the Welland Canal system is controlled solely by Canada, and the locks at Sault Ste. Marie are controlled by the owning country(US controls the two operational US locks and Canada controls their lock). The US became involved in the Seaway because Canada was going to build it with or without the US. The depletion of natural high-grade Iron Ore in Northern Minnesota and Michigan was an important factor in the US decision. Over the years traffic has fluctuated, the highest point was during the period when Russia was buying US grain. This also was the period when a lot of Labrador and Quebec Iron Ore was moving through the Seaway. Grain traffic dropped during the '90s and even further during the new millenium. Some traffic figures comma delineated for 1997, 2009, and 2013, with all figures in millions of tons;

Grain 13.4, 7.8, 8.1
Iron Ore 10.1, 3.8, 8.7
Coal 0.5, 0.7, 2.0
Other Bulk 7.6, 7.2, 7.9
General 5.1, 0.9, 1.6

So far in 2014 Grain and General Cargo is running well ahead of 2013 YTD, Iron Ore is off 30% from prior year, Coal and Other Bulk are off a small amount.


What has changed is that Steel production in both the US and Canada have dropped. Most remaining integrated steel mills in the US are further west. Quebec/Labrador Iron mines are no longer competitive in the US market. Russia has gone from a net importer of grain to a net exporter. Less US grain goes east to Europe or Africa, and more to Asia. Most general cargo is now containerized, except for project cargo and semi-finished steel. Container traffic has never flourished into the Great Lakes due to the greater efficiency of the railroads and the ports of NY/NJ and Montreal.

Thanks all for the information. I was prettyy sure from my reading the the seaway was harmful to the railroads serving Buffalo and other ports on Lake Erie.

Soo 6617; not sure if the 'half thruths and mis-conceptions' apply to my response. I do know the 'Seaway' was essentially the east end of Lake Ontario to Montreal, and the Welland Canal totally Canadian, but it connected to the rest of the Great Lakes, mostly USA, and did have a vast impact on Eastern USA rail business, as did the development of the 'free' Interstate Highway system for bigger trucks at the same time. Books have been written on this subject, don't rely on me, I just lived it. I did not know that Labrador iron moved west thru the canal to the extent you show, since a lot of iron ore has, and still, moves from US lakeheads to Burns harbor, etc to what few integrated steel mills still exist. I know a lot of Labrador iron ore moved to the US east coast for inland steel mills, to Fairless, Philadelphia, and Baltimore during th sixties and seventies. In fact, I thought most of it moved to those ports. At that time, combined with Venezuelan iron ore, eight or more iron ore trains a day could move west from these ports. I saw and logged them, and have PC and CR statistics on that ( if I did not donate them to the Conrail Historical Society).

I'll still maintain from when the Seaway was opened to a few years after US railroad partial de-regulation in the early 1980's, and larger ships, that the Seaway had a signigficant negative impact on the railroads that could move traffic east from the territoy it served or could reach thru the Great Lakes.

Toledopatch is absolutely right about what happend to Buffalo. With another CR employee I walked and mapped the industrial area of that nice city around 1975. Most of it is gone now. Not all of it was caused by the Seaway, there were many other economic factors, which would make my too long responses even longer. In PC and early CR years PC/CR would originate at least eight trains at Frontier yard that went in all directions, now it is closed and CSX can serve most industry with just pick ups and set offs.

The St Lawrence Seaway was just one of many nails that sealed the coffin of profitable Eastern US railroads in the '50's, '60s, and '70s. Now the Seaway itself is almost obsolete and faces a dark economic future.

A more likely reason for the demise of Flour milling in Buffalo and Rochester, NY is the mills became old and many were owned by small companies that closed when they couldn't compete. Like many industries there has been a lot of consolidation among the companies. The four largest companies control more than half the market. The most recent merger involved ConAgra Milling forming a joint venture with Horizon Milling, already a JV of Cargill and CHS, to form Ardent Milling LLC.

ADM Milling still operates a flour mill in Buffalo, NY.

SOO6617 Wrote:
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> A more likely reason for the demise of Flour
> milling in Buffalo and Rochester, NY is the mills
> became old and many were owned by small companies
> that closed when they couldn't compete. Like many
> industries there has been a lot of consolidation
> among the companies. The four largest companies
> control more than half the market. The most recent
> merger involved ConAgra Milling forming a joint
> venture with Horizon Milling, already a JV of
> Cargill and CHS, to form Ardent Milling LLC.
>
> ADM Milling still operates a flour mill in
> Buffalo, NY.


as you note, the grain business is extremely consolidated. like the railroads, etc.