CN investments in Northern BC include track, rolling stock and employees

A CN Video highlighting the railway's operations across North America

(From CN Rail website, with video contributions from
Prince Rupert's Lonnie Wihsart)

As an answer to complaints from customers of earlier this year, Canadian National Railway is about to launch an expansion of its footprint across the northern mainline, with the railway about to lay a significant amount of track and invest in additional rolling stock to get products to and from the Port of Prince Rupert.

CN announced their  plans to allocate 340 million of their 3.4 billion dollar capital spending plans towards British Columbia, with work to create additional passing sidings and extends others to ease some of the congestion issues that have been an ongoing issues towards operations.

For the Northern region between Prince Rupert and Jasper, Alberta CN has outlined its blue prints for construction of four new train passing sidings, along with the extension of three existing passing siding on the northern mainline in BC.

The maintenance program for British Columbia also will see the replacement of 115 miles of rail, installation of 225,000 new railroad ties and the rebuild of 50 road crossing surfaces, as well as work on culverts, signal systems and other elements of track infrastructure.


“We are investing for the long haul with these projects to boost capacity and network resiliency to meet growing traffic on our corridors to and from the West Coast and across B.C.,”  ...“Our investments in infrastructure, equipment and people will help us deliver superior service to our customers across the province and North America. Additionally, our substantial investments to renew our existing railway infrastructure underscore our commitment to operating safely.” -- Doug Ryhorchuk, vice-president of CN’s Western Region.

Over the last few weeks, the railway has also taken to Social Media to highlight it's additions to the rolling stock making note of new purchases for their grain and forestry operations.

The attention to the grain sector in particular has been a major concern for the railway which has been called to task by the Federal Government and grain producers for delivery issues for much of the winter and spring period.

As well, the railway is addressing labour shortages having just graduated its last course of train conductors, a group which ensure that the train loads are in place as the engines roll across western Canada.

Some further background on CN's plans for Western Canada can be found here.

You can find more information related to CN's rail operations from our archive page here.


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