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Girouxville line one of three Alberta rail lines to be abandoned
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Denis Boisvert of Wesport Agricultural Services explains many businesses have signed contracts to move their businesses to Falher upon closure of the Girouxville railroad line.
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Susan Thompson
for South Peace News
Girouxville producer car companies are preparing to move to Falher after CN announced it was abandoning the rail line to Girouxville.
CN had given Merlot Agricultural Services and Wesport Agricultural Services until July 3 to sign a new contract to relocate.
“We did sign the contract CN had given us. Now it’s up to CN to follow up and keep their end of the bargain by producing a site to accommodate our business. If so we’ll proceed and move to Falher,” says Denis Boisvert at Wesport Agricultural Services.
“We haven’t ordered any crop cars for the new crop year. All cars will be stationed out of Falher.”
The companies still need to move key components of their businesses, such as scales and office space, which will require time and money.
Now that the contract with CN has been signed, the rail line to Girouxville will only stay open if a company or group purchases it from CN and operates it as a short rail line.
“That would help the whole situation. If [someone] could pull this off and buy it, we’d stay in town and keep the status quo, depending on if the short line was operating on a cost that wasn’t too high,” Boisvert says.
The Girouxville rail line is one of three lines slated for abandonment in the province according to Wild Rose Agricultural Producers, Alberta’s largest producer-funded general farm organization and one of the founding members of the Farmer Rail Car Coalition.
“We know of three prospective rail line closures in Alberta right now, and each have significant producer car loading capacity,” says Rod Scarlett, Executive Director.
Besides Girouxville, CN is also abandoning the Killam line, and a line near Drumheller. The Drumheller line has the least amount of impact on producers, while the Girouxville line impacts producers the most.
“We will do whatever we can to keep the rail lines open,” says Scarlett.
The group has met with the provincial Minister to talk about rail line closures, but the province doesn’t have jurisdiction until a rail line is sold.
“It’s a grey area,” Scarlett says.
Wild Rose Agricultural Producers has also spoken to the Canadian Transportation Agency (CPA), and has met with producer groups looking at taking co-operative ownership of rail lines.
“We do know on the Killam line, some work is being done towards producer ownership.”
Scarlett says it makes sense to keep rail lines open.
“In the long-term we’ll see a push again to keep the rail lines open, for economic reasons, but also for environmental reasons. It has far less impact on the environment than trucking.”
But that may mean municipalities may need to consider purchasing lines themselves.
“We’ll probably see municipalities getting involved. They have to sit back and put an economic comparison on it, by looking at the cost of maintaining roads versus the purchase of a rail line. [Buying a short rail line] may be something county tax payers may benefit from more than paying for road maintenance.”
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