National Steel Car will provide the cars over the next two years
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Canadian National Railway (CN) has placed a substantial order to replace aging equipment and keep up with increasing grain yields.
The railway will have 1,000 new grain cars on its tracks in the next two years. National Steel Car in Hamilton, Ont., will manufacture the cars.
CN will spend about $100 million for the total order, a source told The Globe and Mail on May 24.
Each car will have a capacity of 5,431 cubic feet, so it can hold about 4,364 bushels of grain.
The new cars will replace some cars in CN’s fleet which are over 30 years old. They’ll also help address some of the backlog challenges producers recently faced.
“This substantial investment in higher capacity payload hopper cars, with up to 10 per cent more capacity than the older generation, demonstrates our commitment to safely, efficiently and reliably moving the steadily increasing Prairie grain crop for our customers,” JJ Ruest, interim president & CEO of CN, said in a May 24 statement.
The grain car order is also an example of the benefits to the recently passed Transportation Modernization Act.
The Maximum Revenue Entitlement (MRE) lets railways set rates for moving grain, but limits their total revenue. The new rules allow capital spending to be part of the MRE, so railways can collect more revenue to cover costs of investments like hopper cars.
“This decision will help grow the agricultural sector by ensuring farmers are able to reliably get their products to market,” Lawrence MacAulay, federal minister of agriculture and agri-food, said in the May 24 statement.
The 1,000-car order will create 550 jobs at the National Steel Car facility in Hamilton.