Eastern Railroad Discussion > CN exits Roadrailer Service

From the BLE web site comes an article from "Today's Trucking" stating that CN has formally ended Roadrailer service between Chicago-Toronto-Montreal. An excerpt stating reason:

"Louise Fillion, spokesperson for CN, confirmed to Today's Trucking that the service has been for the most part discontinued mainly due to the financial fallout of 5,000 mechanics, clerks, and intermodal yard workers who went on strike in February of this year.

''During the month the strike lasted, CN's executives had to take care of some tasks. They realized RoadRailer's activities were not [as profitable] and it could be integrated to the regular train service," Fillion said. "

Didn't CN takeover CP's operation of NS Triple Crown service between Detroit and Toronto about a year ago? Is that terminated as well? Did this service revert to CP rails?

LOL, this isn't a surprise. They may as well get rid of the Intermodal they hardly run in the US anymore. On the GTW side anyway they run minimal Intermodal service, so did they lose it to the CP or what?

I thought they already had, unless they were taking a routing other than the former GTW through MI and IN... of which doesn't exist.

It's been about 2 years since I've seen a roadrailer come through here on the CN. They were interesting to see when they did though, because they ran with those GP40-2W's that had the GO Transit paint showing through.

-Ryan
Granger, IN

Rats !!! That was one of my favorite trains, especially when it had a full cowl Dash 8 in the lead. When I saw it last week, it had 58 trailers, which was an improvement over the size of the trains after CN got it from CP. I thought they were growing the business, guess I was wrong.

Ken

This is old news. The Montreal-Toronto Roadrailers have been gone for months. The ex-CP Detroit-Toronto service is all that remains.

KG

Hopefully the loss of CN RoadRailer service increased CP's ExpressWay business.

Isn't intermodal the least profitable of any of the freight hauled by railroads? If that is the case who blames the CN for ending the service. Lots of demands for something that doesn't bring in much profit. On the CN money is the only thing that matters.

Well just to let everyone know the Rumor I heard from a few CN people was that CN was going to cancel the train at the time of the strike if it did happen, and sell off all its trailers to Triple Crown. Which has already happened. The second phase of what I had heard was CN wanted to pull out since Triple Crown wanted to Expand there service and go to Montreal, (which is listed on the TC Web page that the go to MOntreal). From what I have heard that Triple Crown will start the service either later this year or early next year to Montreal from Toronto, and also expand the service to many other Loacations that Connect with Toronto & Montreal. I have also heard talks of Having a train go from Toronto to Buffalo Region, and also one from Montreal also. Just have to wait and see whats going to happen.

Telus6429
Ian
Windsor, Ontario
http://www.trainweb.org/swontariotrain/index.html
http://www.trainweb.org/wmrc/index.html
http://www.railpictures.net/showphotos.php?name=Telus6429

Big mistakes by both Canadian roads in forsaking intermodal the way they have. This is the one segment of rail traffic that is consistently growing and helps take trucks off the highways.