Judging by the number of trains that continue to pass through the center of Portage la Prairie, you might think things were back to normal with Canada's rail lines. However, the country's main railways continue to work to ramp back up following the rail shutdown in the latter part of August.
CN's Assistant Vice President of Grain, David Przednowek says the process takes some time noting the key to an efficient ramp up or recovery is a very measured and planned ramp down.
He says that involved implementing embargoes so that products (especially toxic, hazardous or dangerous goods) wouldn't be left in transport on the rail line.
Przednowek says it's important to review how everything played out to fully understand the process involved in gearing back up.
"On August 18th CN announced it would be locking out the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference effective 00:01 ET Thursday, August 22. Essentially, we ran hard all the way right up to the late hours of Wednesday in front of the labour disruption. So we had traffic moving, but it was very much planned and targeted."
He notes the lockout occurred on August 22nd and then the Minister of Labour made the decision to refer the matter to the Canada Industrial Relations Board under his powers under Section 107 of the Canada Labor Code.
"CN then initiated its operations recovery plan and we were back up and rolling on the Friday morning. About mid-morning, the TCRC served CN notice of a strike to commence on August 26th. Of course, that did not materialize because, on the Saturday evening on the 24th, the CIRB mandated binding arbitration (which during that period prevents any strikes or lockouts through the arbitration period)."
Przednowek says they've been restarting the network adding that when you combine the Western and Eastern Canada region and to the South, if he sees velocity (which is the average number of miles of car travels in a day) north of 205 to 250 things are going well.
"As of this morning (August 30), we're in that sweet spot. We've come out pretty good, if you really think about it. The disruption was for us basically a day. Appreciating that for every day you're down, it takes at least three to five days to catch up. And of course, we gotta remember that as we were phasing down operations (you're planning as you go), you gotta account for that as well. So you measure the recovery in weeks, but I can tell you that we're running pretty good here."
He points out that during crop week #3 when the shutdown hit they were able to move about 289 thousand tonnes, adding it will take time to get back up and fully operational.
Another key issue impacting movement to the east has been a rail bridge disruption at Fort Francis, Ontario (which is the gateway to Thunder Bay) that happened a couple of weeks ago.
"That bridge outage continued to disrupt CN's traffic flow, and it is today. At this present time, it remains out of action and a timeline is yet to be established as to when it will come back up. So we're managing that as well."
Przednowek says that's also going to have an impact on grain flows for Manitoba and Eastern Saskatchewan.
To hear Glenda-Lee's conversation with CN's Assistant Vice President of Grain, David Przednowek click on the link below.