The elephant in the room: Terra Transport and the Cape Breton and Central Nova Scotia...

In previous entries we (Andrew, Chris and myself) have talked about the Halifax South-Western and The Dominion Atlantic. We briefly touched on Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and mentioned development into terminal operations in Halifax, Dartmouth and Moncton. However, we’ve skirted around the ‘Central Nova Scotia’ element of this scheme, it’s the ‘elephant in the room’…

Northbound train bound for Sydney N.S. crosses the narrows on Bras d'Or Lake on Cape Breton Island. Bill Hooper photo (https://flic.kr/p/7UGi4i)

And for good reason. The Cape Breton and Central Nova Scotia is a successful short-line, operating through a period of industrial change in the region with a loyal group of employees and rail fans. The last thing we wanted to do was suggest any of this was somehow ‘substandard’. Instead, it is the success of the enterprising operation that inspired the whole ‘TerraTransport’ alternative history in the first place. However, it leaves us with a problem in that we need to somehow re-frame the CBNS in a ‘TerraTransport’ history as the Central Nova Scotia. Over to Andrew to kick things off...

We don't need to assume that the CBNS didn't go through the changes it has. Instead of being picked up by Rail Tex and Rail America, CN’s own ‘TerraTransport’ stepped in on the request of the provincial government (Yeah, let's get politics into this since NS's railway history is full of backroom deals and political meddling).

Andrew raises a really good point here. Both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have long histories of attempting to mediate that margin between the corporation and the community that depends on it. I like that Terra Transport originates as part of a publicly-owned CNR but could be spun into something, not unlike Devco, because the Province of Nova Scotia sees a need. This is not unlike how Maine or Saskatchewan are involved in their rail banking programs and support for local operators for those railways. The stage opens as CN is being privatized and part of that is severing its TT operating unit. Nova Scotia understands this is a key component and sees a potential in it that should be "saved" and explored so steps in to help it transition out of CN…

This puts the timescale firmly in the same window as the Halifax South Western story circa 1988, the province explores with CN the opportunity to transfer the Cape Breton line to TerraTransport, to shield it from the perceived risk of abandonment post privatisation (in reality, discussions start a few years later with the real CBNS being formed in 1992). Our fledgling TT-CNS has the same feel as the beginning of the CBNS…

It doesn't require much re-thinking to move the CBNS story into ‘our TT’ one. Of course ‘our TT’ also includes DAR and similar operations and I really like the idea of using it as a hub where CN releases all their cars for TerraTransport (in Truro). It's funny because once we started talking about moving the CBNS into TerraTransport the whole story really started to make sense without altering history too much. CN did create TT and it did move NR into it. It would have made sense to incorporate Truro to Sydney in that too for all the same reasons we are…

It's also important to remember that at the time when CN first spun these lines off into a shortline they were heavy track and high speeds. A second foundational point our story would commit to is needing to protect the quality of the track so it didn't deteriorate as it has. At the time when CN left the picture anything they owned could operate over these lines and that opens a window for what we could be employing for the line haul of containers and coal into and out of Cape Breton and Newfoundland. 

Traffic Sources

Towards the end of the 20th century it was hard to find a major industry in northern Nova Scotia that wasn't government-owned or supported. When Sydney Steel and DEVCO stopped working, they were owned by the provincial government. Ditto for Trenton Works for a long time (until Greenbriar took them over). The government in NS has a long history of trying to prop up industries and then inadvertently taking a 20-year bath on them. I think the only recent major closure was Northern Pulp and Paper and even it had some government backing at various points, and having been built in the 1960s, it's arguably the shortest-lived major industry on the line. 

Despite all the turbulence for coal in the preceding ten years, in 1996 the largest commodity moved by the railway was coal, making up 38% of the traffic along the line. Other commodities moved at that time were newly built cars from TrentonWorks, newsprint, wood pulp and pulpwood. The CBNS moved a total of 26,000 carloads in 1996, declining to 22,000 carloads in 2008. In 2014, Genesee and Wyoming Canada (GWCI) reported that the railway moved about 12,000 cars per year comprising of coal, lumber, petroleum products and chemicals. Assuming car counts remained roughly the same, the bulk of this loss could be attributed to the collapse of DEVCO and Port Hawkesbury Paper, which now does most of their business by truck. 

Basically, to imagine an alternative history to any railway in the region, we'd have to re-write the economic history of the whole province. This is especially true for northern Nova Scotia, which appears to have been hardest hit in the last 20 years by closures.

The only difference is the continued operation of NR… the CNS is our lifeline to continued rail service in Newfoundland so we need it!

A container terminal in Sydney makes sense, and in the medium term it could be expected that this grows in parallel with the general shift to intermodal. Trans-loading containers in Sydney also allows us to originate and terminate cans there rather than Moncton and Halifax - it allows us to move them to NL where we reload them onto TT-NL rail cars, and it offers possible water connection to place those cans straight on or off a ship. We don't need rails on the NS-NL ferry, the gauge difference negates any benefit anyway.

Locomotives

If we parallel the history of CBNS then at ‘start up’ CN transfers a motley collection of MLW units including RSC-14, RS18 and C630Ms. These units are 30+ years old, and kindly described as ‘tired’. In the early days TT’s make do and mend approach combined with a skilled and passionate workforce keep these old dinosaurs roaming, however, just like the CBNS, we look to ex-BN GP50s. 

However quickly realising their 645 prime movers are stretched to the limit we recycle ours through a rebuild program (not un-like Norfolk Southern) derating them to 2000 hp and creating GP 38–3. They still ply the rails today, providing the backbone of our fleet, light footed yet reliable, flexible for both read switching and heavier line trains in multiple, and they count as the most numerous class across all of our operations.

I like the idea of our RS18 rebuild program but those smaller engines might wind up in Stellarton-Granton, switching in Stellarton, or elsewhere in the TT network such as Windsor-New Minas or even on the Dartmouth Sub.

I think that, too add to this, we also see how Irving evolved their MNR, EMR, NBSR operations based on the former CP/CAR rail lines in New Brunswick. Why I mention it is that Irving went a very different route with their railway. On day one they had a small fleet of MLW but quickly pivoted to GM power and also imported a lot of ex-American engines. Most importantly, Irving's operation transformed that ex-CP trackage into a railway that's a whole lot like what CBNS actually became and what our TT-CNS could have looked like. 


I think that, as much for personal interest as necessity, a blog about the evolution of our roster and rebuild programs is a worthwhile endeavour. However, there are a few chapters left to consider - the story behind Dartmouth Terminal, what happens in Moncton, how Prince Edward Island becomes involved and probably the most important being our Newfoundland operations.

Until next time, more soon…

ABBREVIATIONS:

CAR - Canadian American Railway (a wholly owned subsidiary of CP)

CBNS - Cape Breton and Central Nova Scotia, initially RailTex and Rail America, later Genesee and Wyoming.

CN - Canadian National railway

CNS - Central Nova Scotia (part of TT)

CP - Canadian Pacific railway

DAR - Dominion Atlantic Railway

EMR - Eastern Maine Railway (owned by NBSR)

GM - General Motors

MLW - Montreal Locomotive Works

MNR - Maine Northern Railway (owned by NBSR)

NBSR - New Brunswick Southern Railway (part of Irving)

NR - Newfoundland Railway

NS - Nova Scotia

PEI - Prince Edward Island

TT - TerraTransport